Joint resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, this is no time for this body to be playing dangerous games with the American economy and with American jobs, and yet that's exactly what's going on on the floor of this House today. Our Republican colleagues are taking the position that unless and until we accept their radical budget plan, they will prevent the United States from paying its bills.

And what does their budget plan do? Yes, it is the same old plan to end the Medicare guarantee, to slash Medicaid, to cut education while protecting special interest tax breaks, like subsidies for Big Oil companies.

And here's what they're saying: Unless we do that, unless we take that, they're going to prevent the United States from paying its bills.

Remember, these are bills that are coming due on actions that this Congress has already taken. These are the bills to pay for two wars. These are bills to pay for the prescription drug plan that was never paid for. And one of the primary reasons we don't have enough revenue coming in to pay those bills is because of the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 that disproportionately benefited the very wealthy.

It's interesting to hear some of our Republican colleagues who have been here for that entire period of time and voted on all those things saying that it's a sacrifice for them to accept responsibility and pay the bills for the things they voted for. Imagine if the American people took that position.

And what are the consequences of the United States failing to pay its bills? The same thing that would happen to an American family that decided not to pay its bills, whether it's its mortgage, its car payment, whatever it might be. It would undermine the creditworthiness of that American family.

And taking that action will undermine the creditworthiness of the United States. That will lead to a rise in interest rates and a sinking economy. It would hurt every American family. And it would increase-- not decrease--the deficit of the United States. That is the result our Republican colleagues are threatening in this bill if their demands are not met.

So let's dig a little deeper into those demands. As I say, what they want to do is impose the same budget plan that they voted on earlier in this House and we debated. It does end the Medicare guarantee, it does slash Medicaid and education, and it does protect corporate tax loopholes. Only this time it's worse, because they want to take that budget plan and implant it in the Constitution of the United States.

Now, nobody in this body should be fooled for one moment. This is not an ordinary balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We can have that debate, and there are legitimate arguments. This does something very different and very sinister. It manipulates the Constitution of the United States in a way to graft the Republican budget plan into the Constitution. How does it do it? There are two devices, and the gentleman knows them well.

The first is, it says you can cut Medicare, you can cut Social Security, you can cut education, with a majority vote. But if you want to cut a subsidy for a Big Oil company for the purposes of reducing the deficit, if you want to

cut corporate jet loopholes for the purpose of reducing the deficit, that's not a majority vote. That's a supermajority, two-thirds vote. So it biases the Constitution itself in a manner that prefers cuts to Medicare beneficiaries who have a median income of under $22,000 before asking the very wealthiest in our country to return to the same tax rates that were in place during the Clinton administration.

Secondly, it says, we have to pass a constitutional amendment in the next 2 days that also includes an overall cap on spending. And if you look at the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee, what that would impose is an 18 percent cap. Maybe 18 percent, maybe 19 percent in the end, we don't know, but you have to have a cap. And the one that's come out so far has an 18 percent cap.

Now, let's put that number into context. Not since 1966, just after we enacted Medicare to protect our senior citizens from health crisis, not since that time has the United States met that level of expenditures. We've been over that level of expenditures. So by putting that cap on, combined with the provision to make it easier to cut Medicare than it is to cut corporate tax subsidies, they are writing into the Constitution itself this bias. They're stacking the constitutional deck in favor of engrafting their budget plan into our founding document.

Now, I heard the gentleman say, and we hear it many times, and I hope we won't hear it again on this floor today, 49 of the 50 States have balanced budget amendments. That's true. But they don't have this kind of balanced budget amendment. They don't have balanced budget amendments with these pernicious features, with some exceptions.

Fourteen States have a supermajority requirement written into their constitution. For a good number of those, it's less than two-thirds, which is what this would require. Sixteen States write into their Constitution spending caps, and only seven States in the country combine the two.

So let's not talk about how every State can balance the budget, an argument which also ignores the reality that the Federal Government is not just any old State. It is the Federal Government of the United States of America. It needs to be able to respond to emergencies and wars and the like.

So let me close with this, Madam Speaker. We do need to, number one, make sure we pay our bills; and, number two, we need to get our deficits under control in a way that helps our economy, not hurts it. And that's why the President of the United States put forward a proposal that is modeled on the framework that was put forward by the Simpson-Bowles commission. It doesn't have every detail in it, but it adopts that framework that says let's cut the deficit by approximately $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Let's do it in a balanced way. In fact, it's tilted toward spending cuts--$3 of spending cuts for every dollar in revenue. He makes it very clear he wants to get the revenue, closing some of these corporate tax loopholes, asking the top 2 percent of income earners in the United States to just go back to the rates they were paying during the Clinton administration, a time we all remember when the economy was booming and we created 20 million jobs.

So let's take a balanced approach to this. Let's not take the position that if our demands are not met, if we can not manipulate the Constitution of the United States to engraft our budget plan into that founding document, then we're going to let the United States fail to pay its bills and suffer the terrible economic consequences. It's not so much Members in this body that will be suffering those; its the American people. Let's not do that to the American people.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I wish the gentleman had yielded because I think it would have become very clear that the Republican position is they won't close a tax loophole that generates one penny for deficit reduction, not one penny.

So you can't close a corporate jet loophole if it's going to deficit reduction. You can't say to the oil and gas companies we're going to end your subsidy if it's going to go for deficit reduction. We all know there are a lot of

Washington lobbyists that manipulate the Tax Code around here. Getting a tax break, a taxpayer giveaway to the Tax Code, is just like getting something through spending, and yet our Republican colleagues refuse to allow any cut in a loophole to go to deficit reduction, not one penny.

Again, we heard it from the majority leader, we're going to hear it I guess all day, 49 out of 50 States have balanced budget amendments. This is not the kind of balanced budget amendment States have. This writes into the Constitution of the United States again a preference for cutting Medicare and Social Security--that requires a majority vote--but in order to close one of those corporate tax loopholes for the purpose of reducing the deficit you need a two-thirds vote. You're going to imbed into the Constitution of the United States those policy preferences. That is exactly what this does.

So let's not hear about the 49 States. They don't all have these spending caps, and they don't all have that preference protecting special interest tax breaks from use for deficit reduction.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to our distinguished leader of the Democratic Caucus, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just want to make a couple of points in response to statements that have been raised.

Not only would this write in the Constitution a two-thirds requirement for getting rid of special interest tax breaks for the purposes of deficit reduction, it would make it easier to create new special interest tax loopholes than to eliminate them. If a Washington lobbyist is pushing for a big special break, you can do that with a majority vote under this constitutional amendment. But if you want to eliminate one of those special interest tax loopholes, whoops, you need a two-thirds vote.

Now let's be very clear on what the President has said. Yes, we want to close those corporate loopholes. He has also been very clear that beginning in 2013 we should go back to asking the very top income earners to pay the same rates they were paying during the Clinton administration, which, as I said, was a time when the economy was booming. Now every time we mention that fact we hear our Republican colleagues talk about small business and how they're going to protect small business. When you hear that language, you really know that they're using that as cover to protect some of these big special interests.

Why do I say that? We agree that small businesses are the engine of this economy; but if you look at the Joint Tax Committee report, July 12, nonpartisan, they say that 3 percent of all businesses would even be impacted--

only 3 percent. Less than 3 percent of all businesses would be impacted by the President's proposal, those that file as S corporations. And then it goes on to provide a warning here, specifically saying beware because these entities might not be ``small,'' in quotes.

In fact, they say in 2005, over 12,000 S corporations and 6,000 partnerships had receipts of more than $50 million. Among those are KKR and Pricewaterhouse. Now these are all good businesses, but I would ask my colleagues whether they are small businesses. And let's not use the rhetoric of small businesses to protect preferences for the big guys.

We all need to share responsibility for getting this deficit under control. We need a balanced approach to doing that.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz), my colleague on the Budget Committee.

Madam Speaker, the sponsor of the bill mentioned some House rules. I think he is well aware that you can always waive House rules by majority vote. Thank goodness you cannot just waive the Constitution of the United States. Our Founders made it difficult to get bad ideas into the Constitution. Again, I want to make it clear, this is not your garden-variety balanced budget amendment. This is manipulating the Constitution of the United States itself in a way that makes it easier to cut Medicare, easier to cut Social Security, and easier to cut education than it is to cut corporate tax loopholes for the purpose of reducing the deficit.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), a member of the Budget Committee.

Madam Speaker, when we were all sworn in, we were also sworn to protect the Constitution of the United States, not manipulate the Constitution of the United States to protect special interest tax breaks for oil and gas companies or other special interests by implanting into that document a requirement that two- thirds of this body and the Senate have to vote to get rid of them for purposes of deficit reduction.

I also think that while we're all entitled to our own opinions, we're not entitled to our own facts. If you look at the Medicare trustees' report, it will indicate that the health care reform bill extended the life of the trust fund, and we also did it by getting rid of the overpayments to some of the Medicare Advantage plans that were being paid at 114 percent of what other plans were being paid for. Taxpayers were oversubsidizing those plans, as were Medicare recipients.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to a terrific member of the Budget Committee, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, we have been making a point that this is not your garden variety constitutional amendment. This is--

I will yield on your time, Mr. Goodlatte, and I'm happy when you have some time to do that.

In fact, I think you're going to want an opportunity, because the gentleman from Virginia was asked at the hearing

on his proposal for a constitutional amendment, which was voted out of the committee, to identify one budget that would meet the requirements of their version, this version of the constitutional amendment, and it was pointed out that even the draconian--

I will not yield on my time.

The gentleman pointed out that not even the Republican budget that passed the House, that ends the Medicare guarantee and is draconian, not even that would meet those requirements, that the budget that would meet those requirements was that passed by the Republican Study Group, which is like the Republican plan on steroids. In fact, a lot of Members on the Republican side decided that was way overboard. That would require slashes in things like Medicare and Social Security even more than the Republican budget that passed the House.

So that is the one budget that was identified as meeting the requirements of that constitutional amendment. This is not a simple constitutional amendment. They know that that's a popular idea.

So they're dressing up their particular version of it in that language, talking about 49 out of 50 States have this. Again, two devices: One, supermajority; a two-thirds vote required to cut corporate tax loopholes when only a simple majority is required to cut Medicare and Social Security. We don't think things like that belong in the Constitution of the United States.

I yield 3 minutes to a distinguished member of the Budget Committee, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass).

I would be happy to entertain a debate.

Here's the question----

Let me just say this. I would not want to prevent the United States from being able to respond in cases of war, in national emergency.

I'm happy to work with the gentleman on that enterprise, but that's very different than what you're talking about.

I would just remind my colleagues that the President has put on the table a balanced approach to reducing the deficit. It would cut about $4 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 to 12 years. It's a balanced approach, again, based on the overall framework of the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission. It calls for $3 in spending cuts for $1 in revenue. It would be raised after 2013 by closing special interest tax loopholes and asking the folks at the very top to go back to the same rates that were in place during the Clinton administration. That's what the President said.

It's hard to have a conversation when the other party to the negotiations takes the position that they will not allow one cent from closing a corporate tax loophole to go for the purposes of deficit reduction. And now we see them trying to enshrine within the Constitution a limitation on our ability to get rid of those special interest tax loopholes. They would now require a two-thirds vote. That is a Washington lobbyist's dream in the Constitution.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Small Business Committee, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

Madam Speaker, nobody is saying that we shouldn't balance our budget. We should balance our budget. In fact, the last time it was in balance was during the Clinton administration when they took a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, including having in place sufficient revenues from the folks at the very top to help cover our bills.

Then what happened in 2001-2003 is that we had back-to-back tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the very wealthy, which are a significant contributor to why there is now a mismatch between the bills we have to pay and the revenue coming in, which is why the President of the United States has said, Let's reduce the deficit. Let's do it in a balanced way. Let's do $3 in cuts to $1 in revenue.

I go back to the fact that the Republicans in the House want to insert in the Constitution of the United States a provision that would require a two-thirds vote to get rid of a special interest tax loophole for the purpose of deficit reduction. That kind of makes it difficult to have a balanced plan.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Madam Speaker, the one surefire way that we're going to send interest rates up in this country and add to the cost of living for every American is if the United States doesn't pay its bills--bills for obligations that we've already taken on, which is what this is about. Some people, again, think it's a sacrifice to pay bills for actions and decisions that they've already supported and voted for. I would also point out that the Republican budget that passed the House and that would be put into this bill would require us to raise the debt ceiling by $8 trillion between now and 2022. So let's not play this game with respect to paying our Nation's bills.

We have to do two things: We have to pay our Nation's bills--every family knows they have to pay their bills--and we have to come up with a deficit reduction plan.

The reality is the President has put a plan on the table. The reality is our Republican colleagues don't happen to like it because, as I said, for every $3 in spending cuts, it would ask us to have $1 in revenue from closing these special interest tax loopholes. Again, they want to manipulate the Constitution of the United States to protect those loopholes, to make it hard to get rid of them.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, as part of the plan the President has put on the table that would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over about 10 to 12 years, he has about a trillion dollars in cuts in discretionary spending. He does ask the Pentagon, which is the one agency that has never passed a GAO audit, to help contribute toward resolving that deficit problem. And he also does it without making deep cuts in critical investments for our country like education, like investment in infrastructure.

We're going to see in a couple of weeks a bill that may come out of the Transportation Committee that dramatically slashes infrastructure investments at a time when we have 20 percent unemployment in the construction industry.

So, yes, we have to make these cuts. The President's plan makes the cuts. But let's not take a hatchet to education investments. Let's not take a hatchet to investing in critical infrastructure, and let's not enshrine in the Constitution of the United States a preference for cutting Medicare and Social Security over cutting special interest tax loopholes. That's what this provision will do.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).

Mr. Speaker, I think the American families gathering around their tables do not have the option of not paying their bills on obligations they've already incurred. They can't say, Oh, it's okay to not pay my car payment, but I will pay my mortgage. They don't have that choice; and, frankly, the United States Government should not be saying that we're going to make those choices. We should be paying all our bills. And I would remind my colleagues that the reason we have to raise the debt ceiling is for obligations that have already been incurred, votes that have already been taken. For example, two wars, an unfunded prescription drug bill, and the reality of two tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the very wealthy.

Now, I would urge my colleagues to read the bill. The section the gentleman referred to dealt with the sequestration. There's nothing in the bill that says not to cut Medicare or Social Security as part of reaching those targets. In fact, they're going to implant in the Constitution of the United States a spending level that we have not achieved since just after we passed Medicare.

So what they would do through this is call for deep cuts in Medicare. The numbers in this particular statutory provision track the budget that the Republicans passed off this floor. The CBO analyzed that. It looked at the impact on Medicare beneficiaries, and it's in a letter dated April 5, 2011, to the chairman of the Budget Committee, pointing out that under the Republican budget plan, Medicare beneficiaries will end up paying about 60 percent of the costs compared to 25 to 30 percent under Medicare today.

It's interesting that Members of Congress have written into the statute provisions that say for Members of Congress, we will have about 72 to 75 percent of our premiums and costs covered when we're saying to seniors on Medicare, let's put in these spending caps that will require you to pay a whole lot more.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, again, the President has said two things: Number one, America pays its bills for the obligations that it's incurred. Number two, he put a plan on the table to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion; again, $3 in spending cuts for $1 of revenue.

I would point out to the gentleman, the President was very explicit. He said that the revenue component would begin in January of 2013; and in the meantime, he's actually proposed extending the payroll tax for another year during the year 2012 so that consumers would have more money to generate more demand in the economy, which is very fragile right now.

But make no mistake: Our long-term challenge is getting the economy going again and reducing our deficit, and the economy needs that to happen, and it should happen in a balanced way.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal) a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with much of what the gentleman said, especially that we need to take responsibility for our own actions. And that's why nobody should be taking the position that we won't pay the bills of the United States of America unless we get a plan that's 100 percent our way.

American families can't say to the mortgage company, you know what? I don't like the way you're handling this. I'm not going to pay you, or whatever. And so we need to take that same approach.

Decisions have been made in the past. We're obligated to pay the bill for those decisions. Let's not try and duck those responsibilities for our own actions.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the distinguished ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.

(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, I would again remind my colleagues that the last time we were running a budget surplus was during the years of the Clinton administration. During that period of time our spending was at a level that was higher than the limitation in here, and we were paying our obligations. What this would do would create an anti- majoritarian, anti-democratic provision in the Constitution that says you can't balance your budget at 19 percent of GDP, even if that's the will of the American people, even if it's how we did it back during the Clinton administration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), a member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I know that the gentleman is new to the body, but there were lots of decisions made over the past years for which the bills are coming due now. For example, in 2005 when our Republican colleagues headed up the House, we passed a prescription drug add-on to Medicare which was not funded, not one penny. It was all put on the credit card. Two wars were put on the credit card; and again, tax cuts in 2001, 2003 that disproportionately benefited the very wealthy that created this gap.

So I agree with the gentleman. It is time, sir, to take responsibility for our actions. And it is interesting to hear some folks say that it is a sacrifice for us to have to pay bills for decisions that were made in the past.

Now, yes, we need to get the deficit under control. And again, the President of the United States has put on the table a balanced approach over 10 years, $3 of spending cuts to $1 of revenue. And again, our Republican colleagues have walked away from the table because they don't want to raise one penny of revenue from closing corporate tax loopholes.

Just to be clear, the President's plan would extend middle class tax cuts beyond 2013. The President's plan would say let's extend the payroll tax cut for 2012. But he says let's get serious about our deficit and let's do it in a balanced way with shared responsibility.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis), a member of the Ways and Means Committee who knows a lot about the importance of shared responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I would just ask my Republican colleagues to consider why they want to write a provision in the Constitution of the United States that would make it harder to shut down a special interest tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit for our children and grandchildren.

I now yield 4 minutes to our very distinguished Democratic whip and my colleague from the State of Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

This is a time for choosing. We have to reduce our deficit. We have to get the budget in the balance. The question is, how we do this? And we believe that it is a corruption of the Constitution to write into the Constitution itself a provision that says a majority vote can cut Medicare and Social Security but you need a two-thirds undemocratic vote to close a corporate tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit.

I yield 1 minute to gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

I would hazard a guess that Thomas Jefferson would not want to write into the Constitution of the United States anti- democratic provisions that said you need two-thirds in order to close special interest tax loopholes for the purpose of deficit reduction or to say that we're going to decide now, for all time, that we have to balance our budget at 18 percent of GDP rather than some other number that may be the will of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam President, I will yield to the Senator from Rhode Island, and then I will make my statement.

Madam President, well, I want to thank Senator Reed for his comments. Senator Reed is one of the leaders on the Banking Committee. I appreciate his comments.

I do want to set the record straight on a couple of things though. It is not a 12-month delay plus a 6-month study. It is a 6-month study and then implementation of the rules.

The Senator said Chairman Bernanke had plenty of information. The problem is he does not have much information from community banks and credit unions, and that is what this amendment is about.

The exemption that is in the amendment that we passed last year, called the Durbin amendment, every regulator at the Federal and State level has said they cannot make the exemption work because market forces will determine where the customers flow.

I am glad we are here to vote on the amendment that Senator Corker and Senator Hagan, Senator Crapo, Senator Bennet, and I have worked so hard on. This afternoon we are finally going to have an opportunity to vote for an amendment that has been crafted in the right way.

Senators Hagan and Crapo and Bennet came to Senator Corker and I about a month ago to share their interests in fixing the unintended consequences of that amendment that was passed in the Senate about a year ago. The amendment directed the Federal Reserve to issue regulations limiting the cost that banks can charge retailers when consumers use their debit cards to buy things. Based on the law, the Fed intends to limit those costs to 12 cents, even though the actual costs of these transactions may be higher.

The big Wall Street banks can handle that. They are not happy about it, but they can live with it. They have plenty of tools that will help them make up the difference. The Main Street community banks and credit unions are a different story. These small guys, who had nothing to do with the financial crisis, do not have that same flexibility the Wall Street banks have. These are the banks in Montana. These are the folks I want to make sure have a fair shake. So folks from both parties came together and said: How can I fix this to make this protect the local banks and credit unions since the original amendment does not?

Senator Corker and I suggested initially a 2-year delay, a study, and then more legislating to fix any problems that were identified in the study. The Senators who are here today with me thought we could do better, and we could, and we did. After talking with our colleagues, we worked together to reduce the study period down to, as I said earlier, 6 months.

At that point the Fed and other regulators will decide if the rules can adequately prevent the small banks from getting hurt. I do not know what the study is going to find, and I do not think anybody knows. If the agencies find that the rules consider all costs, that consumers would not be harmed, and that the small issuer exemption--those that apply to credit unions and community banks--if that exemption will work, then the pending rules would move forward as passed. I would be the first person in line to tell Senator Durbin that he was right about the two-tiered system.

But if the Fed and the other regulators find that the changes must be made to ensure that current rules do not include all costs or that small banks and credit unions and consumers might be harmed, then they will have to issue new rules within 6 months, and every 2 years the Fed would have to tell us in Congress whether these rules are still working for the small banks and credit unions.

That is all we are asking. Before the Fed's new rules get implemented, let's make sure we have them correct. Yesterday the good Senator from Illinois said this was not truly a compromise. But when you sit down with folks who think you are on the wrong track and you work together to find the middle ground, well, to me that is the definition of compromise.

Some other charges have been made about this amendment, and I would like to take a moment to discuss those. Some say it is a favor to the big banks. Well, it is not. In fact, this amendment corrects a very big problem that only affects the community banks and credit unions. The good Senator from Illinois said yesterday that he crafted this amendment with awareness that a major reduction in interchange fees would kill small banks and credit unions.

No one denies that small banks and credit unions would be deeply harmed if they are forced into a system where they can only charge 12 cents per transaction. No one denies that. This is why Senator Durbin tried to establish a two-tiered system. Under his proposal, big banks, the Wall Street banks, could charge one rate, 12 cents per transaction.

The small banks, the community banks, credit unions, could continue to charge a percentage of a transaction, 44 cents on average. But there is a big flaw in the plan. The two-tiered system simply will not work. Let me repeat that. The two-tiered system simply will not work. I did not make that up. Here is what the Chairman of the Federal Reserve said:

It is possible that the merchants will reject the more

expensive cards from smaller institutions, or because

networks will not be willing to differentiate the interchange

fee for issuers of different size. It is possible that the

exemption will not be effective in the marketplace.

That was Ben Bernanke saying that. He went on to say that because the exemption will not be effective, small banks could be hurt or even fail. Here is what the head of the FDIC said:

The likelihood of this hurting community banks and

requiring them to increase the fees that they charge for

accounts is much greater than any tiny benefit that the

retail customer may get.

Again, everyone agrees if the Fed's rules go into effect, the small banks and credit unions will suffer because the exemption simply will not work. So today we can stop and doublecheck to make sure that does not happen or we can just flip a coin and hope for the best and watch as more small banks and credit unions fail, reducing consumer choice and reducing banking options, especially as they currently exist in rural America.

These small banks and credit unions are the ones that make the loans to small businesses in rural America. They are in places where folks are still willing to put their money. They are the ones that folks in Montana still trust. They do not trust the big Wall Street banks. We probably will not lose too many banks in Washington, DC, or Chicago, IL, but we will in rural America. I do not want to see that happen.

Another good one that I have heard this week is the argument that the amendment will allow banks and credit unions to factor executive compensation into the cost of interchange fees. It will not. In fact, the amendment specifically states that the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators must look at the costs associated with debit card transactions and program operations.

We also know how dangerous it is to set a price for a product without understanding all of the costs that go into that product.

Home Depot would never allow the Federal Government to set the price of garden hoses simply by looking at the cost of manufacturing a garden hose.

No, Home Depot charges us for the cost of manufacturing it, shipping it, keeping it in stock, having someone tell you what aisle it is in, and on and on.

Likewise, if we are going to be regulating debit interchange fees, we need to understand all of the costs associated with debit transactions and debit programs.

When we voted on this amendment last year, we thought we were voting to allow the Federal Reserve to consider all costs. However, the reality is that last year's interchange amendment limited the costs that could be included. Some fraud costs were allowed to be included but not others. Some technology costs were included but not others. If we are going to be regulating this market, we need to be fair about it.

So the amendment directs the Fed to determine what is ``reasonable and proportional'' but it gives the Fed the discretion to look at all of the costs associated with debit transactions.

That does not mean executive pay. That does not mean a special rewards program.

All costs will still need to be justified, and if they cannot be justified they will not be considered. The Fed has been very clear with me--no executive pay, no bells and whistles.

But the decisions about the cost of routing networks, the costs of fraud and other technical details are much better left to the Fed than decided by the U.S. Senate.

Finally, Madam President, some have said that this amendment hurts consumers. It does not.

As someone who voted against the Wall Street bailout, who wrote part of the credit card reform act, and who voted for the Wall Street reform bill, I can tell you that if this amendment was somehow bad for consumers, I would not offer it.

In fact, the amendment requires the regulators to certify that the Fed's rules address consumer concerns.

The current law does not require anyone to look at the impact of interchange fee regulation on consumers. They are out of the picture.

I am not aware of any specific plans by any retailers to lower prices or provide customer rebates if interchange fees are lowered. I know that one large big box store held an earnings call at the beginning of the year where a company executive called the proposal to lower interchange fees a ``$35 million windfall.''

If I were a shareholder, that would have sounded pretty good to me. But as a customer, it is not clear how I benefit.

I understand that there are some folks who wish the amendment could go further to include additional consumer-oriented agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission as agencies that will conduct the study.

I would be happy to work with those Senators to see how we best protect consumers in this process. But the only way to make that happen is to get this amendment adopted; otherwise, the Fed's rules go into effect on July 21 regardless of what any consumers think.

I am looking forward to today's debate because we have an opportunity to address the unintended consequences of the Durbin amendment. Make no mistake, those unintended consequences will be felt all over rural America--and not for the better.

For the folks who think the two-tiered system will work, there is not a regulator out there who will tell you that it will. Some folks will tell you the Durbin amendment has an exemption for community banks under $10 billion and for credit unions under $10 billion. If they think that will work, there is not a regulator out there who will tell you that they can implement it and it will work because the free market system will drive it to the lower price. That is the way it is.

I am saying, let's slow down a little bit and make sure we get it right.

If we are going to create regulations, we are doing it in a way that is fair and consistent with the intent. Let's not try to solve one problem and create three others.

And let's not take shots at the folks in my neck of the woods who were not part of the financial meltdown.

That's all I am asking, and I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield the floor and ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum calls until the vote be divided equally.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, let me take a moment here to clarify for my colleagues the intent of this amendment. Not surprisingly, a number of groups have made a number of claims about what this amendment ``is'' and ``is not.''

In drafting any regulations required by the amendment, any agencies involved are required to not only abide by the letter of the law but also the congressional intent of its authors.

Let me take a minute to try to make crystal clear what exactly the intent of this amendment is.

First of all, let me address some of the claims that have been made about the implementation date of debit interchange regulations. My amendment would direct the Fed to implement these provisions on a date of their determination.

Why was this language included in this way? The intent of this language is to provide the Fed with the discretion to implement these regulations as quickly as is practically possible for merchants, issuers and networks to prepare for such new regulations.

The hope with this language would be to avoid the situation we are in right now where parties impacted by these changes would likely have less than a month to implement significant changes to the debit interchange system.

To be clear, the Fed may not disregard implementation of debit interchange regulation, as some have articulated. They also may not arbitrarily decide to implement these rules 5 years from now. Any delay in implementation beyond a reasonable timeline of a few months would need to be justified by the Fed.

Let me also take a minute to address concerns that have been raised about the language we have used to describe what considerations the Federal Reserve must make if a determination is made in this amendment and the Federal Reserve is directed to rewrite the debit interchange rules.

The language states that the Federal Reserve shall ``consider''-- again, shall ``consider''--all fixed and incremental costs in determining what is a reasonable and proportional interchange fee. Let me say this again. The Fed shall ``consider''--not include, not calculate, but shall consider--all fixed and incremental costs. That word is important because ``consider'' provides the Fed with the discretion to consider and determine, using their judgment, what is reasonable and proportional, meaning any costs considered would need to be justified to the Fed.

To further clarify, the language directs the Fed to consider ``all fixed and incremental costs associated with debit card transactions and program operations and allow incentives for a more innovative, efficient and secure payment card network.''

Why did we include all fixed and incremental costs? That is because the original statute limited the costs the Federal Reserve could consider to only those costs associated with the ``authorization, clearance or settlement of a particular electronic debit transaction.'' This language severely limits the costs to issuers that the Fed may consider in calculating reasonable and proportional rates and is in large measure why the Federal Reserve's proposed rule is currently at 12 cents.

There are a number of fixed costs associated with debit transactions, chief among them fraud costs, which are also arbitrarily limited in the original statute. The fraud language states that the Federal Reserve may--not must but may--allow for a fraud adjustment for costs associated with fraud prevention. Now, the Federal Reserve draft proposal did not include any fraud adjustment, and we have no idea what an adjustment might look like or whether the final rule would include one. But if it did, it could only include an adjustment related to fraud prevention but not the actual costs or losses associated with fraud.

Take for example the recent data breach by Michaels stores--a breach, by the way, which was the fault of the retailer, which had their debit kiosks compromised. What were the costs to the issuer of the cards that were compromised? They were significant.

First of all, it was a community bank in Illinois that had a fraud- monitoring program that identified the threat and alerted the retailer their kiosks had been compromised. Then there were the costs to these issuers of making their customers whole again for the losses they sustained by criminals removing funds directly from their bank accounts--$500 at a time. Additionally, issuers had to foot the costs associated with reissuing the cards and opening new accounts for customers with compromised accounts. But none of those costs--those associated with fraud and losses assumed by the issuers--could be calculated in the fraud adjustment under the current statute. That is why we included language directing the Federal Reserve to consider all fixed and incremental costs associated with debit card transactions and program operations to capture those costs. Fraud losses in monitoring programs are not associated with individual transactions, nor is the creation or reissuance of physical cards, account maintenance, or cardholder servicing.

Let me also say what we do not believe is included in any reasonable and proportional fixed and incremental costs associated with program operations. As a result of our conversations and consultation with the Feds, we do not believe rewards programs or miles would be nor should be considered as permissible costs, nor would or should any executive compensation, nor should the costs of maintaining ATM machines.

Why did we include the language allowing the Federal Reserve, in setting reasonable and proportional rates, to ``allow incentives for a more innovative, efficient and secure payment card network''? We added it because, in conversations with the Federal Reserve about what sorts of costs would be included in reasonable and proportional costs, they indicated that right now they do not have the ability to incentivize savings by issuers to make processing more efficient or secure. It seemed like a pretty good idea to Senator Corker and me that we should give the Federal Reserve this kind of discretion and that issuers should be incentivized to lower costs below whatever the Federal Reserve determines to be reasonable and proportional; otherwise, the fee would likely stay the same for years to come as there would be no incentive to lower costs.

In addition to the flexibility provided to the Federal Reserve to set the rates, the amendment also intends to provide discretion to the Federal Reserve to include additional factors in the study, such as the overall impact of regulating interchange fees on small businesses and the economy, as well as discretion in the agencies the Federal Reserve may consult when drafting the study.

In addition, it is intended that the findings must be made public and that the Federal Reserve is not required to start from square one. The intent is for the Federal Reserve to be able to build upon the information and insights which they have gathered already and which are a part of the current record.

Finally, this amendment doesn't undermine or inhibit the Federal Reserve's ability to implement the routing and network exclusivity provisions in the underlying statute. In fact, it does quite the opposite. We sought to preserve this language and these provisions as they were originally included in the statute.

In the last couple of days, several Senators have suggested additional changes that would improve the consumer-related aspects of the study proposed by my amendment. I very much appreciate their concerns and their interest on this critically important point, and the changes they have suggested are certainly ones I and other cosponsors are open to. Unfortunately, the Senator from Illinois filed a second- degree amendment which essentially closed off any chance to make additional changes to the amendment once it was filed.

I am more than willing to work with my colleagues to find ways to continue to improve this amendment and to ensure that consumers, small businesses, small banks, and credit unions get a fair deal as we move to a regulated interchange marketplace. And that is what we will get out of this amendment--the same idea of regulation that 64 Members of this body supported last year.

The difference between my amendment and the current law is that we will ensure that the Fed's regulations do not set the price below the cost of doing business. The current law prevented the Fed from looking at any number of elements of the cost of interchange. Some fraud costs were allowed to be included but not others. Some technology costs were included but not others. Why? Because the Senate made those arbitrary decisions. The result is a proposed Fed rule that sets the debit interchange rate at 7 or 12 cents for all transactions--a level most folks agree is too low. Let's allow the Fed to find the actual correct number. As a farmer, I can tell you that if it costs me $3 to produce a bushel of wheat, it won't matter if I sell it for $2 or $1 or 50 cents, I will still go out of business because it is below my cost of doing business. And that is precisely what will happen to our smaller banks and credit unions.

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

Mr. President, I too echo the thoughts of the good Senator from Illinois. Senator Durbin and I are friends. We may not sound like it today, but we are. We just happen to disagree on this particular piece of policy.

There is one premise that I think is being taken as a given that is not a given at all. It was in the original Durbin amendment. It said we were going to exempt banks of $10 billion and less and credit unions of $10 billion and less--so we are going to do that. A lot of folks voted for this amendment because they knew the small banks couldn't distribute their costs, and it would have undue harmful effects on the small banks, small credit unions, and community banks.

But the facts have borne out something different since the last year. They have not been borne out by stuff that I have made up. It comes from the regulators themselves.

I have said many times on this floor that every regulator I have talked to, State or Federal, has said the exemption for small banks and credit unions will not work. It will not work. We voted on something 1 year ago that we thought we had and it does not work. Let me read the quotes:

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke:

We're still not sure whether it will work. There are market

forces that would work against the exemption.

He said it May 12 of this year.

Another quote by Chairman Bernanke:

It is going to affect the revenues of small issuers and

could result in some of the smaller banks being less

profitable or even failing.

Once again, in the banking area, by FDIC Chairwoman Bair:

I do think this is going to reduce the revenues.

Let me say that again:

I do think this is going to reduce the revenues at a number

of smaller banks and they will have to pass it on to their

customers in terms of higher fees.

What does that mean? Checking, time getting the loan, fees, all that stuff. Money doesn't grow out of air. You have to have it, and if you don't have it and you are doing business, under the cost of doing business you have to make it up somewhere.

Another quote from Ben Bernanke, and it is about the two-tiered system that is unlikely to maintain--to protect smaller institutions. This is a quote:

A number of networks have expressed their interest or

willingness to maintain a tiered interchange fee system, but

of course it is not required.

Chairwoman Bair again:

If the Federal Reserve's view is there is no legal

authority to require that, it does become more problematic.

The fact is, the two-tiered system is not going to work. Every regulator said it is not going to work. Its impacts are going to be on small community banks, not the Wall Street boys. They are fine. We agree on that. But the community banks and credit unions are going to have incredible impacts on our small businesses that we are trying to help get us out of this recession we are in.

This is not a bailout. This will ensure a regulated debit interchange system. By the way, I do not believe in bailouts. I didn't believe in the TARP bailout. I voted against it. I voted against the auto dealers' bailout. Right or wrong or indifferent, I do not believe in bailouts. I would not be supporting this if there were a bailout. I would not be offering it.

Wall Street banks are going to be just fine regardless of what happens, but the fact is, the exemption for banks under $10 billion will not work. That is why I am here. It is as simple as that.

I wish to close for now with a statement made by the ``Frank'' in Dodd-Frank, whom this bill is named after, Barney Frank, who worked with Chris Dodd to craft this bill in the House and Senate. Here is what Barney Frank says. Is today the 8th, by the way? He said it today, the 8th of June, speaking of the Tester-Corker-Hagan-Crapo-Bennet amendment, this amendment:

This is a good, balanced, compromised approach. I support

it and I hope it will pass.

The author of this bill from the House thinks this is a good policy change to make Dodd-Frank better.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, just to clarify, I have 2 minutes, Senator Durbin has 2 minutes, and then we vote?

God bless the U.S.A.

Mr. President, let me say this, first of all, to the folks in the gallery and the Members who are still in their offices. Look at me. Do I look like a banker? Senator Corker and I drew up this amendment. The banks did not draw up this amendment. We drew it up with the help of Senators Hagan, Crapo, and Bennet.

As is usual, Senator Durbin and I agree on 90 percent, and there is 10 percent on which we disagree. Do I think swipe fees need to be regulated? Of course. But the problem with his amendment is that the exemption on community banks and credit unions under $10 billion does not work. It doesn't work. I have read all the quotes from Bernanke and Bair and the head of the OCC and the NCUA and all of them. They have said that they don't know how to make a two-tiered system work because the free market system will overrule it, and that is the way it ought to be in this country.

So the bottom line is, I look at this from a rural perspective and the impact the Federal Government has on rural America, and while we are trying to solve one problem, we are creating two or three others. I could care less about the Wall Street banks. They are going to do fine. But I will tell my colleagues, if we lose the banks in our small towns in Montana or Wyoming or Tennessee, then we can put another nail in the coffin of rural America.

With that, I yield the floor to the good Senator from Tennessee.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Wyoming. Our relationship and friendship has been growing over the years. I respect him so much as one of the real voices of retailers and small business. I had an opportunity to spend some time visiting China with him and his wife. We got to sit down and talk about their lives and what they have been through.

My colleague knows the small business side of this world better than anybody who sits in this Chamber. As I listened to him talking about the solution to this problem, I could not help but nod affirmatively. There is no reason we should have had to vote a year ago to establish this interchange fee. It reflected the fact that retailers, small businesses, merchants, hotels, restaurants, and shopkeepers across the board were literally given no seat at the table to discuss the fairness and propriety of these interchange fees. The point he made drives it home. The credit card networks, working through the banks, are charging our businesses in America the highest interchange fees--that is the fee charged every time someone swipes that plastic debit card--of any country in the world. The interchange fee in Canada is zero; in the United States, 44 cents on average on every transaction.

I could not agree with the Senator more. If the banks would come down out of their ivory towers on Wall Street and other places and sit down, roll up their sleeves with the folks running shoe stores and grocery stores and hotels and restaurants, and say all right, we are going to come up with a fairer system--if it is zero in Canada and it is 44 cents here, there is a number in between that can make sense to both sides. If that were the case, the Senator and I would be working on some other issues rather than this one.

But my colleague is so right. Today we have to defeat the Tester- Corker amendment; otherwise, we are sending a massive subsidy to the biggest banks on Wall Street, up to $8 billion a year that they collect in these debit card interchange fees at the expense of small businesses and consumers all across America.

I thank the Senator for his support. I know later this afternoon at 2 o'clock when we face this vote it is an important vote for every small business in his home State and mine as well. I thank the Senator for taking the floor.

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 have high regard for the Senator from Montana. He is my friend, and he will be my friend whatever the outcome of the vote happens to be, which will happen in about 40 minutes. But I do disagree with him on this issue.

I would like to make it clear from the start that the law on the books today specifically exempts community banks and credit unions-- specifically those valued at $10 billion or less. That means 100 banks out of 7,000 in America are affected by this new law and 3 credit unions in all of America.

Now, the banks and credit unions have come here and said: Not enough protection because we can't be sure you will protect us from the credit card companies coming back on us and hurting us. OK, we can write in more protection, if necessary. But to argue that we are trying to save mom-and-pop banks here--from whom? We are trying to save them from the credit card giants that have created this price-fixing mess.

If you are an autograph seeker and you happen to want to meet CEOs of major corporations, you hit it rich today. Get over here and walk the halls of the Senate office buildings, and you will meet the CEOs of the biggest companies and banks in America. Why are they here today? Because of this 2 p.m. vote. Why is this 2 p.m. vote important to the three biggest banks in America--Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo? Because right now what is at stake with the Tester-Corker amendment is $8 billion in fees they want to collect from consumers and businesses all across America--$8 billion.

When we got into the business of TARP--remember those days when the

banks had messed up the economy so badly that we had to come to their rescue with taxpayer money, and the average family across America watched the taxes they were paying this government going to the biggest banks on Wall Street? That was about $800 billion. The three biggest banks that will profit the most here from this amendment--Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo--each was a beneficiary of that TARP money, that bailout money. Chase received $25 billion, $45 billion went to Bank of America, and $25 billion went to Wells Fargo. They did quite well. When we rescued them, they sent us a little thank-you card. Do you know what it was? It was a notice that they were giving their chief executives bonuses out of the tax money we were sending.

So the question is not whether we are going to do another TARP today but whether we are going to do a baby TARP. It is only $8 billion for these three big banks this time, but I think it is an outrage. It is an outrage to make consumers across America pay this. They pay it every time they use their debit cards, and the merchants and retailers that collect it have no voice in this process.

I wish some of the people who come to this floor and shed copious tears over community banks and credit unions that are already protected in this law would shed a few tears for the people who run the shops and businesses across America, the restaurants and the hotels. These are the people who are being hit by these debit card fees every single day. Where is the sympathy for small business on this floor? They are all over Illinois, they are all over America.

If we really believe the key to economic recovery is the strength of small business creating and expanding jobs across America, for goodness' sake, let's stand up for them. You can't vote at 2 p.m. for this pending amendment and say you are a friend of small business. No, you can't. Small business is lined up across America saying: For once, give us a break against these credit card companies and the big banks on Wall Street. Give us a break. Are we going to do it? I am afraid not, if we pass this amendment.

I look at this amendment and I think to myself, Why did the banks write it the way they did? They wrote it so they could include more costs into their calculation of the fee they charge on an interchange transaction with debit cards. I will tell you this: Based on the language that was just read to us, they will easily justify the 44 cents they are currently charging and more.

I respect my colleague from Montana when he says on the floor that he didn't mean to include certain things. I wish he had been specific. I think the language of this amendment is broad enough and wide enough to drive a truck through. The banks are going to come out quite well, thank you, at the end of the day. But don't they always? When it is all said and done, aren't they usually the winners around here?

Today, we have a chance to turn the tables, to really make the winners small businesses and consumers across America. That is why consumer groups support keeping the law as it is. That is why, when the banks wrote this, they said the four agencies that would decide what the fee was going to be would be four bank regulators. I am searching-- searching, searching--for any reference to consumers or small businesses. Sorry, the banks couldn't include those people. They couldn't include those people in that calculation.

To say ``We are for the little guy, and that is why we need to vote for this amendment'' is to ignore the amendment's wording as written. If you are for the small businesspeople across America, there is only one vote, and it is a ``no'' vote.

Let the Federal Reserve issue this rule. Don't let the banks stop them in their tracks. That is exactly what they want to do. Let them issue this rule. If more needs to be done, I am on board. But the notion that we cannot even trust the Federal Reserve to come up with a rule on this that may protect small businesses and consumers across America is just plain unfair. It is wrong and we ought to know better.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

How much time is remaining?

Is there any time remaining on the other side?

Mr. President, if Senator Tester returns to the floor and wants to speak before the vote, I will ask unanimous consent to each have 2 minutes for that purpose. Perhaps he is not going to, but I want to make this a matter of record here because I want to give him a chance to close.

Let me try to get down to basics. Have my colleagues ever pulled out one of these cards to pay for something? If you are my age, you don't pull it out as often as younger people. This morning, I was down in the carryout here, and a young woman who is a Capitol police officer bought a pack of chewing gum for $1.20 and handed over her debit card. The debit card was swiped. She took the chewing gum and walked away. The average amount that is charged by the issuing bank of her debit card is 44 cents for each transaction. How much money do we think the owner of the carryout made on that pack of gum this morning? The answer is nothing. Now repeat that over and over again across America.

What is happening is that the banks issuing these debit cards are imposing interchange fees, swipe fees, on these transactions, and the merchants and the retailers have no voice in the amount of that fee, no voice whatsoever.

The Federal Reserve did a study and asked: Well, how much does it actually cost them to process that debit transaction? The answer was 12 cents, in the range of 12 cents. The charge is 44 cents; the cost is 12 cents. Is there something wrong with this picture? It means every person buying goods at stores across America pays more to pay for this fee.

We have heard the plaintive cries of those offering this amendment of how we have to have some sympathy for these banks--these poor banks, struggling to survive. If they can't collect the maximum on their debit fee interchange fee, the swipe fee, what is going to happen to them? Well, we have already exempted, incidentally, all banks with values of $10 billion and less, so we are talking about the big boys, the big banks.

So let's ask a few basic questions.

How does the debit card interchange fee in America compare to other countries? Visa and MasterCard do business all around the world. Banks issue these all around the world. So how do we stack up? Where is the good old U.S. of A? Well, I will tell my colleagues where we stack up. We have the highest interchange fees charged by Visa and MasterCard anywhere in the world--the highest. Thank you. Can America express its gratitude any greater than to say thank you to the banks for charging us the most for using plastic?

So what do they charge in other countries? Debit interchange fees in the European Union are less than one-fifth the charge in the United States. So let's do the math: 9 cents a transaction in Europe, 44 cents here. We want to give a big, sloppy kiss to these big banks at 2 o'clock for the way they are going to treat us. But it gets better. When we go to Canada, the Visa and MasterCard debit interchange fee in Canada is zero. There is no interchange fee. Now we have people on the floor begging us to show some sympathy for these banks and give them an interchange fee, and they charge nothing in Canada--zero. That is the reality.

The biggest banks make the biggest money on this process, far and away--Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo--to the tune of almost $8 billion a year. How long did they want to study interchange fees? If one is making $1.3 billion a month, one wants the study to go on for months, if not years. Get back to you later, we say to the banks. Yes, that is exactly what they want. At 2 o'clock, we will decide as a Senate whether we are going to give it to them.

This amendment, drawn up by the banks, compromises between the banks, gives to the banks exactly what they are looking for--a huge loophole to assess their interchange fees to justify what they are charging today and charge more. There is nothing in here--nothing--to protect consumers and businesses across America.

I got started in politics with a fellow named Paul Douglas. This goes back a few years. I was a college student. Douglas was a Ph.D. in economics--much smarter than I, for sure. He spent his whole life trying to pass something called truth in lending. All he wanted the banks to do was to tell their customers how much they were charging them and what interest rates. He spent 18 years battling that, and he left the Senate without getting it done. He couldn't finish it. Bill Proxmire of Wisconsin took up the battle and passed it. Paul Douglas fought those banks for 18 years.

It is a battle that has been going on a long time around here because, you see, there is a lot of power in this banking community, these financial institutions. When they come to the floor and say they want something, Congress decides, we better start talking. Rarely do they ever lose.

I guess we could say the Wall Street reform bill was a loss for them, but they deserved it. Look at the god-awful mess they put America into with their rotten practices, their stupidity and reckless conduct. We are still paying for that. We still have a lot of people out of work and businesses that failed. Many of the savings accounts of families across America are still suffering because those banks made those mistakes. And in the free market system, did they pay for their mistakes? No. The American taxpayers paid for their mistakes.

Giving credit where it is due to Senator Tester, he voted against the TARP bill. He said it, and I want it to be on the record. I voted for it. I did because I was told by Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and Hank Paulson of the Department of the Treasury: If you don't help these banks and they fail, you will see a worse depression than 1929. I bought it. I voted for it. Almost $800 billion in bailouts to these banks. I was seething to think we were going to spend taxpayers' money to help these banks be rescued from their own stupidity and their own greed. We did it.

The three biggest banks involved here--some $95 billion we sent to them. Well, they are back. They are looking for the second installment on their payment, this time not from the taxpayers, this time from consumers and businesses across America. What they are asking us for, the biggest banks, the three biggest ones, is almost $8 billion a year in these interchange fees.

We have a chance now to try to bring some balance to this conversation. We have a chance to finally stand up for small businesses and merchants and consumers across America who have been victimized by the credit card companies and the big banks for too long. Can this Senate stand up once a year, once a decade for consumers across America against these financial institutions? That is what is at stake with this amendment. I know it is going to be a heated vote because my poor colleagues have been beaten to a pulp by both sides by those who feel very intensely about this issue.

I wish to credit my colleague from Montana because he told me at the outside--when I said, Jon, please don't do this, he said, I believe it. And, Jon, I admire you for doing it. I still do. Even though I disagree with you, I admire you for doing it. You are a man of conviction and principle and a great Senator.

But this is a historic moment in the Senate. It is a moment where we will decide whether for once the big banks are going to lose and the consumers are going to win; whether we are going to reduce the cost of these transactions and help consumers across America and small businesses across America make the profit they need.

Some people say: Well, this hasn't been studied enough. For 11 months now, the Federal Reserve has been studying this, the best economists, the best minds there. They have entertained 11,000 comments. They have heard everything under the Sun. They have heard it all. In a matter of days, they are set to issue a rule--a rule which no one has seen, a rule which the banks don't want anyone to see. They don't want this rule to see the light of day, and that is why they are here today--to stop the Federal Reserve from issuing a rule that may cost them in terms of their bottom line.

It is our choice now. It is our choice whether these banks are going to prevail. History will record the strength of consumers and small businesses across America against the Wall Street banks that take away more than half of the interchange fees on debit cards that are collected across America.

I hope my colleagues will stand by the decision we made a year ago. I hope they will give each of us an opportunity to see this rule come into effect and from that build on it a stronger, growing economy, one that is fair--an economy where interchange fees have been dictated by the big banks and credit card companies for too long.

I reserve the remainder of my time. How much time do I have remaining?

I mentioned on the floor earlier that I would like to give to my colleague 2 minutes, and then I will take 2 minutes, and that will be it. So I ask unanimous consent.

Mr. President, I understand I have 2 minutes?

Mr. President, if my colleagues are interested in smalltown America, they should be interested in the businesses that operate in smalltown America, and they are begging us to vote no on the Tester-Corker amendment.

I happen to live in a town of 120,000 people. It is a little bit larger than my colleague's hometown in Montana, but I can tell you what the businesses there are saying. I can tell you what Wendy Chronister is saying, who owns the Qik-n-EZ gas stations. She is saying to me: Give me a break. They are hitting us so hard with these debit interchange fees.

We have letters put in the Record from military base exchanges which say this is the fastest growing, uncontrollable cost they are facing. This is a problem which the credit card companies and the banks have wanted to ignore and now this amendment wants to delay for 6 months, a year, or longer.

In terms of trusting the regulators, I am afraid the banking interests that wrote this amendment did not trust them to even issue the rule. You had to call this debate before they issued the rule. You do not know what the number is going to be on the interchange fee, but you had to stop them in their tracks.

If you will go look in the corridors and rooms around Capitol Hill, you will not find a lot of small town bankers.

You will find the biggest banks in America waiting in the wings, praying, putting in a billion dollars' worth of prayers that this amendment is going to pass.

I do not question the intentions or motives of Senators Tester or Corker. I never will. But I can tell you, the effect of this amendment is going to be giving to those big banks and those credit card companies a windfall of profit they do not deserve.

If the interchange fee is zero in Canada, why is it 44 cents here? Can we stand up, representing the people of this country, and say that is fundamentally unfair; you have to treat our consumers and merchants fairly? If we cannot stand up and do that, why are we here? To do the bidding of the banks and the credit card companies? I hope not. I hope we are here to stand up for economic fairness and for consumers and small businesses across America begging us to defeat this amendment.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I object.

I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Lieberman) is necessarily absent.

I Object.

Mr. President, let the games begin. That is what is going on here. I have full respect for my colleague, but you can tell from his tone and tenor that Senator Paul finds it amusing he is offering a clean debt ceiling increase that he is voting against. He is offering an amendment he is voting against, when we know we are in discussions with the President, and with the Vice President, and discussions with the Gang of Six to try to figure out a way that we can come together, not have ``gotcha'' votes on the Senate floor. It is outrageous.

I will tell you why it is outrageous. We have an underlying bill here that you have been very helpful with, Mr. President--S. 782--the Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011, which will reauthorize a very important program that has been in place in this great Nation since 1965. It was last passed when George W. Bush was President. It passed this Senate unanimously, without all these amendments that are going nowhere.

There are 27 amendments as of last night--actually, it is probably many more now. We know this game because we played it before, when Senator Landrieu stood where I am and tried to get a small business bill through here, which would have created thousands of jobs in this Nation.

Well, here we are. We have a bill that came out of the Environment and Public Works Committee with a strong vote. We had one dissent. Senator Inhofe is my primary cosponsor. For 50 years, this EDA program, the Economic Development Administration, has created jobs and spurred growth in economically hard-hit communities.

We know the struggle we are having in coming out of the greatest recession since the Great Depression. I remind the people within the sound of my voice that when President Obama took over, this country was bleeding almost a million jobs a month. We are getting back on our feet. We got the auto industry back on its feet. We are getting manufacturing back on its feet, but it is too slow. We have to do more. Once in a while, we get an opportunity to work with small businesses, the private sector, local government, and attract funds from nonprofit organizations and bring jobs and important work to our communities. This is one way.

An arm of the Chamber of Commerce wrote me a letter yesterday saying how important this work is. The Business Civic Leadership Center said:

EDA has served as a valuable partner in many communities

that we have worked in including San Jose, California;

Seattle, Washington; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Mobile, Alabama; New

Orleans, Louisiana; Atlanta, Georgia; Boca Raton, Florida;

Minneapolis, Minnesota; Newark, New Jersey, and many others.

It was signed by Stephen Jordan, executive director of the Business Civic Leadership Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

This is a bill everybody wants, but games are being played in the Senate--I guess just for the fun of it, to stop us from doing our job. What is our No. 1 job? To create jobs. What does the AFL-CIO say? You have business and labor. They say:

EDA has established an admirable track record in assisting

economically troubled low-income communities with limited job

opportunities by putting their investments to good use in

promoting needed job creation and industrial and commercial

development.

That is signed by William Samuel, director, Government Affairs Department, AFL-CIO, and that is dated yesterday.

Why is business and labor supporting this bill? Why do they want us to stop the games and pass this bill? Because they want jobs for businesses, and businesses want the work.

Now let's take a look at other people who were supportive in addition to the Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO: U.S. Conference of Mayors, American Public Works Association, National Association of Counties--I was a county supervisor and belonged to that organization many years ago. If you want bipartisanship, go to the National Association of Counties. There are Democrats, Republicans, Independents--people of every stripe, liberal, moderate, conservative. They all come together. Why? Because business and labor are together, and everybody wants jobs.

Why do we have to face an amendment by my friend Senator Olympia Snowe on deregulation--a bill that hasn't had one hearing in any committee and will, in many ways, eviscerate the important rules and regulations that protect public health and the environment? We should have a hearing on that bill. I am sure we can work together and make it a wonderful bill. Instead, it is offered on this bill.

Not at this time, but I will yield when I conclude.

We have a bill that will create tens of thousands of jobs, and we have the first amendment offered by my good friend, which has not had one hearing, and it repeals all kinds of protections for the public health.

I don't get it. There is only one thing that I can get, with all these amendments, we have amendments on the debt ceiling that have nothing to do with this bill. This bill will create income for taxpayers, because when jobs are created and people work, they pay their fair share of taxes. This bill does not deserve to be treated this way when it passed almost unanimously out of the committee and it is totally bipartisan and has been in place for almost 50 years. Yet that is where we are.

Every Senator has the right to do what he or she wants. They can play games. They can have fun. But I care about the people I represent, and they need jobs. I care about them whether they are in Kentucky, California, or Maryland--any State in this Union. We are United States Senators. We should care about the people, not get up here and play games.

EDA uses limited Federal dollars to leverage large amounts of private sector investment. It is the little spark that creates economic activity in areas that are distressed, and it creates these jobs all across the country. Every dollar of EDA investment attracts nearly $7.

Let me show some other charts. When we vote for this bill--and this is an authorization, by the way, not an

appropriation. We have authorized it at $500 million. Historically, in the last couple of years, it has been funded at about $300 million, $250 million. But every dollar attracts $7 from the private sector, and that is a fact. It was documented in congressional testimony made on March 3, 2011. So that is the history of this EDA.

People say, well, how much, Senator, do these jobs cost--each job? Well, here is what we know. One job is created for every $2,000 to $4,000 invested. So it is an average of somewhere around $3,000 a job. That is a good return on our investment. We know that between 220 and 500 jobs are created for every $1 million of EDA investment.

Here is what we know. Between 2005 and 2010, 450,000 jobs were created by these investments and 85,000 jobs were saved. Everybody in this Senate, I think--though I could be wrong--if asked what is the most important thing we have to do today, would answer it is to help spur job creation in the private sector. Most of these are in cooperation with the private sector. Sometimes they are sewer projects or water projects that are needed by the private sector.

Let me cite some examples of that. Since we are authorizing this, at this stage, at $500 million, one might ask, how many jobs would be created each year. It looks as if it would create nearly 200,000 jobs per year and between 430,000 and 1 million jobs over the life of the bill.

But let me use some examples, because this isn't rhetoric. This is a program that has been in place since 1965. The city of Dixon, in my home State, got $3 million for a water system that will increase the city's water supply and their storage capacity, which will eliminate a major impediment to planned development and expansion of the city's commercial industrial areas. When you don't have enough water, you can't expand. I learned that when I was a county supervisor. You need to make sure there is adequate water, adequate electricity, and adequate sewerage. You have to make sure there are adequate roads. All these things are necessary for development and job creation.

This project is expected to create 1,000 jobs and leverage $40 million in private investment. So we have a $3 million investment to improve the water system and it is going to leverage $40 million. I call that a good deal for our taxpayers and a great deal for the American people to see jobs created. So we have 1,000 jobs--good jobs-- created. That means 1,000 dads and moms bringing home paychecks for their families.

But what do we have here? The same thing Senator Landrieu had to put up with--amendment after amendment after amendment that has nothing to do with this bill. We even had an amendment from a Republican friend that would do away with this entire agency. Unbelievable.

The city of Shafter in my State, $2 million for sewer and water improvements to serve the East Shafter Logistical Center, which will allow development of an additional 600 acres to enable continued growth of the center and support a multimodal transportation hub. This project is expected to create 1,400 jobs and leverage $200 million in private investment. So that is a $2 million investment that is going to be leveraged, leveraged, leveraged.

We are going through a time when we have to cut spending, and I love when the Republicans lecture Democrats about that. Wait till you hear what goes on here. Guess which party was the only party that balanced the budget and created a surplus in recent memory. The Democrats, with Bill Clinton. So don't lecture us about how to balance budgets. We know how to do it. And guess what. We know how to do it while creating 23 million jobs. So I don't need to hear the lectures, because they are misplaced. Talk to yourself. You are the ones who didn't say a word when George Bush did a tax cut for billionaires and put it all on the credit card. Now you still want to extend those tax cuts and bleed the revenues.

I will not yield. I have stated that before, but thank you for asking.

Here is where we are. I have to reiterate so I don't lose my place. Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats balanced the budget, created surpluses and 23 million jobs. George Bush came in and he held a press conference--I saw a rerun of it last night--and said, we don't need surpluses. This money belongs to the American people. Well, he didn't say what he meant. He meant it belongs to rich people--superrich people who earn over a billion and over a million dollars. He gave away the store. Then he went to war--two wars--and put that on the credit card. My friends on the other side never once said, Gee, I can't raise the debt ceiling to pay the debt. They all voted to pay. Almost to a person, they all voted to raise the debt ceiling, and it was doubled from when Bill Clinton was in office. But now, after George Bush left a mess--a god-awful mess in the debt and the deficit, and he handed President Obama a $1.2 trillion deficit--all of a sudden they blame President Obama for all of this.

The American people get it. They do not buy that. They understand this. They are not happy where we are, and they shouldn't be, but they know where the problem started. You know why. Because you can't rewrite history. You could try, but those deficits and those debts--those numbers--are in the books. Unless you erase them, they will remain in the books. I don't care whether it is talking about Paul Revere's ride or the deficits, that is history.

Let me show the deficits we had when we were in control. We got it down to zero, and we got surpluses and created 23 million jobs. That all was erased when we entered a situation in the last couple of years of the Bush administration, where jobs were bleeding at 800,000 a month, 700,000 a month, credit was frozen, and the automobile industry was in the tank. President Obama took action, but this recovery is tough. It has been the worst recession since the Great Depression.

This is what I know. We can do this if we work together, dare I say it? We can adopt a framework that understands billionaires and millionaires don't need their tax cuts now. We can get some more revenues in here and cut the fat and cut the duplication and go after the people who don't pay the taxes they owe. We can end the war in Afghanistan and save $1 trillion over 10 years. I can come up with $4 trillion easily. Allow Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. How is that--$200 billion?

But, no, instead, there is demagoguery and there are attempts to bring down bills such as this--clean, nice bills that will do everything we know we need to do now--leverage our spare dollars, attract public investment, create jobs and create jobs. But, no, we are facing a host of amendments, and I don't find it funny. I find it sad that we cannot come together.

I have a city in California, a very fast-growing city in the Silicon Valley--San Jose. We got them, through this program, $3 million for the renovation and expansion of the Center for Employment Training. What do they do there? They teach skills so when there are certain job losses going on, we have people with these new skills. We increased that center's capacity by 860 students. We expanded access to a GED, so people who didn't finish high school could get their diploma. We taught them how to speak better, how to read better, and we taught them small business entrepreneurship. This is what we are expanding to new people.

This project is going to create 4,900 jobs and leverage $3 million in private investment. This project was one to one. It was $3 million in public investment, $3 million in private investment, with 4,900 new jobs predicted.

By the way, these are not earmarks. We have six regional offices and there are applications made for these grants. They are made by the EDA and it is under the Commerce Department.

On the west coast, in 2003--to prove some points here--EDA invested $1.8 million in the construction of a water and energy technology incubator in the Central Valley of California. For those who don't know the Central Valley, it is where you get a lot of your fruits and vegetables. They are struggling in this downturn. In 2003, according to EDA, the incubator has housed more than 15 entrepreneurs since it opened, and those entrepreneurs have obtained over $17 million in private capital and created jobs for the Central Valley. So

a $1.8 million investment in the construction of a more than 2,300 square foot incubator for a water and energy technology business, and look what happened. From that small investment, it attracted $17 million. That is a huge leverage--a huge leverage.

You all know Boeing Company. In order to help mitigate the Boeing Company's decision to reduce manufacturing jobs in Renton, WA, EDA invested $2 million in 2006 to help build infrastructure to serve the commercial redevelopment of a 42-acre former aircraft manufacturing site. The redevelopment has created a mixed-use campus used by businesses focusing on commercial services, high-tech and life sciences, and helped create 2,500 jobs.

In the Midwest--I talked about this yesterday--in the city of Duluth, MN, they did something terrific there. They gave a grant of $3.5 million, matched by a city grant of $2.3 million, and they set up this aviation business--the Duluth Aviation Business Incubator at the Duluth Airport. This investment helped a company named Cirrus Aircraft grow from a handful of employees to a thousand employees by 2008. This incubator is now leased to Cirrus Design Corporation, which has the largest share of the worldwide general aviation market.

What we are talking about here is planting a seed of economic development, and that seed attracts more seeds from the private sector, from the local people, from the nonprofits. At the end of the day, what have we done by that little seed? It has grown. And this has been happening since 1965 when this program was created.

By the way, you will be shocked to know it was authorized at the same amount of money in 1965--$500 million. So the fact is this isn't a program that has grown and grown; it has stayed the same. That means, if you put inflation into the equation, it has been dramatically cut to a tiny part of what it once was for the country, but it is a beautiful part of our economic growth.

What do we need today? Jobs. What is the second thing we need? Jobs. And what is the third thing we need? Jobs. I am not amused by 27, 28, 29, 30 amendments, some of which have nothing to do with what we are talking about.

One of my friends on the other side of the aisle has an amendment that is pending to repeal banking reform--everything we did and worked on. I guess he wants to go back to the days when the banks got bigger, bigger, gambled with our money, and we almost lost capitalism in this country. OK, that is his right. Why is he doing it on this bill, without a hearing?

Another colleague has an amendment to end the regulations, I say to my friend, that protect the health and safety of the people. Not one hearing on it.

I think the American people have to wake up, so I am saying: Wake up, America, today. Wake up and pay attention to what is happening.

We have a bill on the Senate floor that is meant to do one thing-- create jobs in areas that have been hard hit by this bad economy. Why are the Republicans stalling it, hurting it, putting forward amendments that have nothing to do with it? We have to ask that question. They voted for it under George Bush unanimously, the same program. They voted for it nearly unanimously out of our committee, I say to my friend who is a senior member and a great chairman of the subcommittee on our committee--they voted for it. Now they are delaying it and offering all these poison pill amendments to it.

This is the second time they have done it. America, you have to wake up. It is the second time they have done it. They did it to the small business bill. They hurt small business. They are doing it to this bill. They are hurting job creation, and they are hurting small business again, and they are hurting big business. I said before, one of the provisions helped Boeing.

Maytag, there is another company you know the name of. In 2007 the Maytag plant, headquartered in Newton, IA, which employed 1,800 factory workers, was closed. By 2008 the city identified two new manufacturing operations that could be located on the old site: TPI Composites, a wind turbine blade manufacturer, and Trinity Structural Towers, a manufacturer of massive steel towers for windmills.

Can I ask my friend if he would like some time on this? I am going to continue telling the Maytag story. When I finish, I am going to turn to a very important member of the committee, Senator Cardin, for some remarks.

EDA invested $580,000 in 2008 for grading, site preparation, and surfacing for a wind tower storage facility that was leased to Trinity. That $580,000 attracted $21 million in public investment. That same year we saw other investments in Iowa.

I am going to stop and yield the floor so my friend can ask unanimous consent that he be recognized.

Right now we are on the bill.

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

Madam President, I wish to take a few moments to talk about the Republican budget, the so-called Ryan budget in the House. This has been widely condemned, of course, for its plan to end Medicare and for its radical cuts to Medicaid. But I have come to the floor to highlight yet another extreme element of that Republican budget--its unprecedented assault on education funding and the grave threat this poses to school reform efforts across the United States.

This Republican budget would slash funding for education by 15 percent next year--2012. Even more drastic cuts to education funding would come in each of the years to follow.

These Draconian cuts to education could not come at a worse time for America's public schools. The final budget agreement for the current fiscal year reduced education funding by $1.3 billion. It zeroed out, for example, the successful Striving Readers Initiative, the only comprehensive Federal program to help struggling adolescent readers. I might just add, that budget ended all literacy programs for kids in America funded by the Federal Government. The Federal Government now does not fund one literacy program in America. That is how bad it has gotten. Meanwhile, cash-strapped State and local governments are slashing school budgets and firing tens of thousands of teachers. In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry has called for a $10 billion cut in education funding. In New York City, the mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has proposed laying off 6,000 teachers.

I have an unusual perspective, as both the chair of the appropriations subcommittee that funds our Federal education programs as well as the chair of the authorizing committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which authorizes education programs.

There is no question in my mind that combined Federal, State, and local budget cuts pose a grave threat to education reform efforts across the country, just as these efforts are reaching a critical mass. Here is why. Forty-eight States and the District of Columbia have collaborated to create high-quality common education standards for the first time. The Obama administration's Race to the Top Initiative has jump-started ambitious State-level reforms ranging from expanded charter schools to stricter teacher and prep school accountability. In the HELP Committee, Senator Enzi and I together are working on a bipartisan effort to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

However, it is wishful thinking to expect improvements in school quality at a time when we are laying off teachers, increasing class sizes, and reducing instructional time. I am struck by the fact that the Republican budget's assault on education comes at a time when America's competitors are surging forward. For example, China has tripled its investment in education and is building hundreds of new universities. Even in times of austerity and shrinking budgets, smart countries don't just turn a chainsaw on themselves, they continue to invest in the future and, above all, they continue to boost investments in education.

So as we go forward with education reform in the United States, we are building on strength. Most kids in affluent communities already attend high-quality public schools and go on to higher education. Our challenge is to ensure that all American students have this opportunity, including the nearly 20 percent of children who live in poverty.

Again, certainly money is not the only factor in creating high- performing schools, but it does take money to modernize school facilities, to hire highly qualified teachers, to create effective assessment systems, and to provide appropriate instructions for students with special needs. To demand reform without resources is to set up students and teachers to fail. Let me repeat that. To demand reform without resources is to set up the students and the teachers to fail.

In the months ahead, Congress will be focused on reducing the deficit and trying to prevent a default on America's debt obligations. Of course, this is appropriate. But it must not preclude sustained, strong investments in education for our young people. We need to invest more, not less, in helping States and districts to close the gap between world-class schools that are in the affluent suburbs and the struggling schools in poor, urban, and rural communities. We need to provide resources to ensure that the goal of graduating students who are college and career ready applies equally to all students, including kids with disabilities, including English language learners. In the face of steadily rising college tuition, we must maintain the maximum Pell grant so kids from low-income families can achieve the American dream and get a college education.

Pundits have attributed the GOP loss in the special election in New York's 26th congressional district to voter anxiety because of the plan the Republicans have to end Medicare. So a lot of the pundits have said: Well, this recent election in New York's 26th congressional district is the result of that. But public dissatisfaction with the Republican budget goes way beyond Medicare. Americans see this budget as unbalanced and unfair, especially when it comes to education.

The American people are asking: Why do the Republicans insist that trillions of dollars are available for new tax cuts, mainly for big businesses and the wealthy, but supposedly we cannot afford to sustain funding for public education? This is a classic case of eating your seed corn. It is an approach that does not remotely reflect the priorities and values of the American people.

The Republican budget, as I have said before, is premised on the idea that America is poor and broke, that our best days are behind us, and that we have no choice but to slash investment required in order to keep our middle class strong. I totally disagree. Many Americans are hurting because of the struggling economy, but the United States overall remains a tremendously wealthy and resourceful nation. Quite frankly, we are the richest Nation on the face of the Earth. Even further, we are the richest Nation in human history. We have the highest per capita income in America of any major nation. So one has to ask the question, if we are so rich, why are we so poor? The question is not the lack of money. It is not the lack of wealth. It is because the system is broken. We have a system malfunction in this country, and we have to right that system. Because we are an optimistic, forward- looking people, we can do it. We can work together, and we can meet any challenge.

But we expect the government to be on our side--not holding us back, not dragging us down, not shorting our futures, not telling people who are low income or recent immigrants to this country or kids who do not have a good start in life that, sorry, we cannot give you a world-class quality education, we cannot afford to have the best teachers, we cannot afford to have good schools for you.

If you happen to be wealthy and live in a wealthy area that has high property taxes and you have a good school and you have good teachers, good for you. But if by happenstance of birth you are born to a family who does not have any money and maybe your parents never went to college--maybe, as I said, they are new immigrants to this country; maybe they do not speak English that well--if you are in a poor urban area or a poor rural area and you have low-quality schools, low-quality teachers, chances are you never had any early learning available to you. So when you started kindergarten, you were already way behind those kids in that affluent school in high-income areas.

Is that what we are about? Is that what we are trying to say, that we are going to have this kind of almost class warfare, that if you are born wealthy and stuff, you have it made but if you are born poor, forget about it when it comes to education? That is what the Republican budget says. We are not going to have quality public education for our kids.

As I said, this does not reflect the values of the American people. We want to make sure our public education system is good for all children, that they all have the best qualified teachers, that they have good schools, good facilities, the latest technology, that they are challenged to do their best, and that they know if they do their best and if they study hard and they get good grades, they will be able to go to college and not have a mountain of debt hanging over their heads when they graduate.

We have done great things as a society, things we have had to do together, which we could not do as individuals, such as building an interstate highway system, a rail system, mapping the human genome, and, again, creating world-class universities. We have done this. We have done this working together, as something we can do together as government that we cannot do as individuals.

Through our government, we come together to provide a ladder of opportunity to give every citizen a shot at the American dream--a ladder of opportunity that includes Pell grants, the GI bill, job training, early learning, and, yes, world-class schools.

I am convinced the great majority of Americans share this positive vision. Again, we are determined to bring deficits under control. But we cannot eat our seed corn. We have to make smart investments in education, and we refuse to be dragged backward into a winner-take-all society, where the privileged and the powerful seize an even greater share of the wealth, even as our schools are crumbling and our middle class is struggling and declining.

For nearly half a century, robust Federal investments in quality public schools and access to higher education have been a critical pillar undergirding the American middle class. The Republican budget will take a jack hammer to that pillar. This, I believe, is a grave mistake. The middle class is the backbone of our Nation. It is time our leaders show the backbone to defend it.

Amendment No. 390

Madam President, I would like to take this opportunity also to strongly oppose the amendment offered by the Senator from Maine. If passed, the amendment would impose severe and unnecessary burdens on agencies charged with protecting the American people and would severely weaken our vital health and safety protections.

My Republican colleagues have tried hard to make the word ``regulation'' into a bad word. They have created an absurd caricature: the nameless bureaucrat arbitrarily imposing random rules and regulations on businesses, and their sole purpose is making sure the business fails. That is ridiculous.

Most Americans understand this is grossly distorted. The truth is, the amendment offered by the Senator from Maine, Ms. Snowe, is not about the government working more efficiently--a goal we all share--it is about using the sort of feel-good slogan of ``regulatory reform'' as cover for an effort to paralyze the ability of the government to enforce vital health and safety protections.

In effect, the Snowe amendment ought to be called the ``buyer beware'' amendment. Go back to the days when the snake oil salesman could sell you anything and you took it at your own risk, where we did not have safe drug laws and food safety laws and things such as that to protect people. It was just a buyer beware society. Do we want to go back to that?

I believe the American people want clean air and clean water and to know they are not adulterated. The Snowe amendment would weaken environmental protection.

I believe the American people want to make sure their children's toys are safe, that they are not loaded with mercury and other elements that will destroy their health. The Snowe amendment would mean weaker protection of toys and other consumer products.

I believe the American people want workers to come home safely at the

end of the day. The Snowe amendment would mean more injuries and deaths in mines and other hazardous workplaces.

I believe the American people want the food they eat to be safe and untainted. The Snowe amendment could mean we cannot enact implementing regulations for our recent bipartisan food safety bill, which we just passed last year--bipartisan. But when you pass a bill, obviously, the Food and Drug Administration is going to have to issue regulations. Well, the Snowe amendment would severely restrict that. Again, you would be playing Russian roulette with the food you eat. Maybe it is safe; maybe it is not--buyer beware.

I believe, in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, which almost caused another Great Depression, the American people want oversight and regulation of banks and other financial institutions. The Snowe amendment, again, could mean banks would remain free to do the same reckless, predatory practices that nearly wrecked our economy.

There are already important checks on regulatory authority. The law already requires agencies to perform comprehensive assessments of the impact of regulations on businesses and local government. There is an extensive notice and comment period under the Administrative Procedures Act, where those impacted by potential rules--including small businesses--are given an important say in regulation. Agencies already engage in regulatory flexibility analysis to ensure that their oversight does not needlessly overburden small businesses.

In contrast, the aim of the Snowe amendment is to impose additional hurdles to dramatically slow down the issuance of critically needed rules and, in many cases, stop the rulemaking process altogether. For example, the Snowe amendment would require an analysis of ``indirect'' impact on small businesses--``indirect'' impact, whatever that means. Well, let me cite perhaps an example.

Instead of the Mine Safety Health Administration spending its resources protecting our miners, the amendment could require the agency to determine whether a new mine safety standard indirectly harms, say, a small paper company that supplies paper to the mine's corporate offices. This is a ridiculous waste of resources and time. So we do not even know what the ``indirect'' impact means. That could mean almost anything.

Likewise, the amendment would permit businesses to sue to block a rule even before it is finalized. In other words, businesses could seek to litigate a proposed rule. I often hear my Republican colleagues speak against activist judges. I can think of few things more activist than for unelected judges to review a rule even prior to the agency performing the lengthy notice and comment process to finalize a rule. It already takes years for agencies to promulgate health and safety rules. This amendment would exacerbate the problem and further clog up the court system. Think about all the court cases that would be filed just on a proposed rule, before it even goes to the comment period, before it is even finalized.

Moreover, the bill requires an agency to review the impact of all-- all--its current rules on small businesses to determine if a rule must be modified, rescinded or continued unchanged. In other words, rather than addressing new problems and implementing new acts of Congress, an agency would need to spend all its time reviewing past, settled regulations, some of which may have been in effect for the last 50 years.

To its credit, the Obama administration already is conducting a comprehensive, rigorous review of all rules in order to see which ones should be repealed, modified or kept in place. We should let this careful review take place before implementing severe constraints on agency rulemaking.

So the Snowe amendment would make government less responsive. It seeks to cripple the government's ability to make sensible lifesaving regulations.

Again, it ought to be titled the ``buyer beware'' amendment. If you like living in that kind of a society, I suggest you go to some Third World country, where you do not know what you eat or what you drink or whether the air you breathe and the water you consume is safe and healthy. If that is the kind of America you want, you should support the Snowe amendment. But if you want an America where our kids are safe from dangerous toys, where you know the food you eat is going to be safe and the water you drink and the air you breathe, where you know there are safety rules in place so you are not going to get unduly injured or harmed at the workplace, if you believe this is the kind of America that operates better and is more functionally productive than a buyer beware kind of society, then I suggest you should oppose the Snowe amendment.

Again, I urge my colleagues to oppose the Snowe amendment as ill- advised. Again, it is a part of a bill that has never gone through the committee hearing process. If nothing else, it ought to go through committee, have hearings, and let's see if it has any support at all out there before we bring it to the floor of the Senate. I urge my colleagues to defeat the Snowe amendment.

I yield the floor.