Making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I stand before this body today to talk about the omnibus spending package the Senate will be considering over the next few days. I have some concerns related to this omnibus spending package that relate to a program called PILT. It is an acronym with which most Americans and probably even most Members of Congress are not familiar. It stands for payment in lieu of taxes.

The program was developed to help those States, including my home State of Utah, in which the vast majority of the land is owned by the Federal Government. Beside me is a map of the United States. In red we can see all of the land that is owned by the Federal Government. As we can see by looking at the map, most of the land west of the Rocky Mountains--more than 50 percent, in fact--is owned by the Federal Government. Very little of the land east of the Rocky Mountains is, by contrast, owned by the Federal Government.

Being from a public land State presents some interesting, very significant, very substantial challenges. Among those challenges is the fact that the Federal Government has deemed this land, has legislated this land as being beyond the ability, beyond the authority of States and their political subdivisions--including counties and local taxing jurisdictions--beyond the ability of the States and their subdivisions to tax. So we can't collect property tax revenue from any of that land. As a result, a lot of our communities in public land States are impoverished--at least impoverished relative to what they might otherwise face. They are impoverished relative to what their ability would be to collect revenue through property taxes in public land States.

For that reason, this PILT Program was created to try to offset--at least to some degree--the heavy cost, the disproportionate burden that is placed on the shoulders of public land States and communities.

So each year Congress funds this program, and that program then partially offsets the lack of property tax revenue flowing through these public land States and communities.

Here is the problem I wish to focus on today: The omnibus spending package we are considering this week contains no funding for PILT--no funding whatsoever. This is potentially devastating to public land States, including Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and many other States, especially those throughout the West. The problem is that America's public land States and counties can't wait any longer. This program must be funded, and it must be funded in this bill.

Here is a letter from a commissioner in Piute County, UT. This commissioner states:

PILT not being funded in 2014 will have a devastating

impact on all counties in the West, but it is particularly

devastating to a county the size of Piute. With 74 percent of

Piute County under Federal control, $225,000 of our $1

million budget--almost one-fourth--comes in the form of PILT

payments from the Federal Government. Without this funding,

we will be in the midst of one of the biggest disasters to

hit Piute County in years.

We have been scraping and scraping to try to figure out how

to fund a fourth deputy sheriff in our county and thought we

had it figured out until this $225,000 evaporated from our

county's revenue.

At the present time it is virtually impossible to staff all

of the police, search and rescue, and emergency services we

need. With this cut, it will be impossible.

The Piute County commissioner continues:

We will be forced to abandon services, including all

services on public lands. It will be sad to have our public

lands left without police, search and rescue, and emergency

services. I think it is critical to understand that the loss

of PILT funding cuts clear to the bone and will be

devastating to counties such as Piute.

Now, some argue--some insist when faced with arguments such as these--that this is all OK and we can just wait to make PILT funding available, that we will make it available through another legislative vehicle we will supposedly pass later this year. In fact, some of these same people maintain that we will make it better, we will make it automatic, we will make it mandatory spending when we actually do this later this year.

It is true that between 2008 and 2013 PILT was funded through a mandatory spending mechanism. That has now expired. But it is important to remember that there is nothing mutually exclusive about these ideas; no reason why we can't go ahead and fund PILT now with discretionary spending and then adopt something later to restore the mandatory nature of funding for PILT. We can fund PILT now in this bill, and then we can make it mandatory later. We can and we should. This would give States and counties the certainty they need, the certainty they have been waiting for, the certainty that will allow them, finally, to plan their budgets.

Remember, for many of these counties, such as Piute County, UT, PILT is a substantial portion of their annual revenue stream. It is about one-fourth of the money that Piute County, UT, has to spend every single year.

Importantly, I offered an amendment to last year's budget that would build a deficit-neutral reserve fund to make sure PILT continued to be fully funded. That amendment passed. Unfortunately, the fact that it passed has apparently not been enough to make sure it continued to be funded.

Now we have a major funding bill before us. This spending bill occupies no fewer than 1,582 pages. It spends in excess of $1.1 trillion. Yet PILT still isn't funded.

It is important to point out that even if we do the right thing and even if we fully fund PILT in this program this year, the PILT Program is itself still not adequate. It is still in need of reform. PILT payments are quite insufficient.

PILT was intended to soften the economic impact associated with the Federal Government owning so much of the land in the United States. In the case of Piute County, it is about three-fourths of the land. It is about two-thirds of the land throughout the State of Utah. In some counties in Utah, it is well in excess of 90, sometimes 95 percent of the land in a county. PILT was designed to soften that economic impact. But, regrettably, the Federal Government gives States, through the PILT Program, what amounts to in many instances only pennies on the dollar of what the taxing jurisdictions would receive if they were to tax that land, if they were to collect taxes--even if they were to collect those taxes at the lowest property tax rate, let's say the Greenbelt rate in many counties. We must correct that imbalance.

In the coming days I plan to introduce legislation to begin the process of doing precisely that. After all, it makes no sense to have a program that some would argue is deceptively entitled ``Payment In Lieu of Taxes'' if, in fact, the payment in lieu of taxes doesn't even closely approximate the value that counties would receive if they were actually allowed to tax that land and collect that revenue as taxes.

If an American citizen, a U.S. taxpayer, for example, decided to adopt his or her own PILT Program and on April 15 of each year just sent a check to the IRS saying: These are not my taxes, but this is my payment in lieu of taxes; I am just paying what I feel like paying, that would cause problems. The taxpayer in question would probably end up in prison. In any event, it wouldn't end well for the taxpayer. Yet we have allowed the Federal Government to get away with this over and over, often to the detriment of vulnerable communities, of poor communities, of communities that rely on the Federal Government's unsteady stream of revenue--a stream of revenue that, insufficient as it is already, is now being threatened altogether.

In a sense the problem we face with the Federal Government owning all this land is not new. It is a problem that has been around for a long time. In many respects it was a problem envisioned by some of the Founding Fathers. In fact, we can go all the way back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and see that it was on the minds of some of the Founding Fathers.

On September 5, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention they were discussing the public land-related authorities in the Constitution, including the authority that has now been included in what is often referred to as the enclave clause--article I, section 8, clause 17.

One of the delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787, Elbridge Gerry, the delegate from Massachusetts, stood before the Convention and made an astute observation. Mr. Gerry said as follows. He expressed concerns that ``this power''--that is, the power of Congress over Federal public lands--``might be made use of to enslave any particular State by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the State into an undue obedience to the General Government.''

Then, as now, wise observations often came from the State of Massachusetts. Then, as now, we have a grave risk associated with the fact that when the Federal Government owns this much land, the Federal Government has this much power. It was on the minds of the delegates to the Convention of 1787 that one of the things they needed to protect against was the concentration of too much power in the hands of a few, especially the concentration of too much power within the Federal Government. Each of them had a mission to protect the sovereignty of their respective States. And they understood that if Congress had too much power to simply buy up too much land in any one State-- disproportionately in some States--the Federal Government would have too much influence within that State.

I would ask you, when you look at this map I have in the Chamber, does that look equitable? Does that look like an equitable distribution of Federal land ownership? We have to keep in mind that, just as there are benefits associated with some of our public lands, there are also burdens attached to those benefits. When you look at those burdens, it is difficult to say anything other than that they are disproportionately allocated into a certain region of the United States. They are overwhelmingly located within the Rocky Mountains and areas west of the Rocky Mountains.

So to the extent these benefits benefit everyone in the United States, then the burdens ought to be shared by everyone in the United States as well. Yet they are not. PILT, again, is woefully inadequate as it is. But now Congress is trying to withdraw funding for PILT. Even though some may say: Well, we will fund it later this year, we have no guarantee of that, and we should be funding it right now.

As an interesting side note, in response to Elbridge Gerry's concern on September 5, 1787, the Founding Fathers put a qualifying clause into article I, section 8, clause 17. They said that Congress's plenary legislative jurisdiction over Federal public land lying within a sovereign State's boundaries would exist and could be exercised only if that land--the land in question--was acquired by the consent of the host State's legislature.

Some have suggested that this may well mean that when the Federal Government owns land, when it acquires land within a sovereign State's territorial boundaries, that it owns that land just as any other proprietor would own it; that is, subject to the authority of the State and its political subdivisions to tax and regulate that land, unless or until such time as the host State's legislative body parts with that bundle of sovereign rights relative to that land. In other words, the State retains its taxing power over that land unless or until it voluntarily relinquishes it, gives it up, hands it over to the Federal Government. Yet, in nearly all instances where you see red on this map, that has not occurred.

Many of these States have been content with the fact that they have been receiving PILT funds, however inadequate those PILT funds may be. But now even those are going away. Even if there is a promise that they might be restored later--later this year--they are still inadequate, and we still do not have the promise that is going to occur now. There is still a lot of uncertainty in a lot of parts of the country--in places such as Piute County, UT, and elsewhere within my State and elsewhere within the western United States.

In order to protect against this kind of concern, the kind of concern that the delegate from Massachusetts described on September 5, 1787, Congress adopted a practice, when admitting new States into the Union, of incorporating language into the enabling act for each new State, describing what would happen to public land within the new State's boundaries after statehood. They adopted this practice and this language that would be used each time a new State was admitted into the Union.

That language was included in Utah's statehood enabling legislation-- legislation that was adopted about 18 months before Utah finally came into the Union in January of 1896.

Section 9 of Utah's enabling legislation says that public land located within the State, lying within the State of Utah, ``shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said State into the Union. . . . '' Adding to that, section 9 of Utah's enabling legislation said that 5 percent of the proceeds from the sale of that land would be given to the State and would be held in a trust fund by that State for the benefit of the State's public education system.

So, as I mentioned, Utah was not the first State to have that kind of language in its enabling legislation. Many of the States that were admitted into the Union much earlier than Utah had similar language in their enabling acts. Missouri had such language. North Dakota had such language. We could name State after State after State that had such language.

When you look at Missouri, when you look at North Dakota, and when you look at most of the other States that had language such as that in their enabling acts, you see very little Federal

public land. You see because Congress and the Federal Government honored the promises made to those States. Congress followed through with that commitment. Congress did what it was supposed to do. It sold that land subsequent to statehood. Holding on perhaps to a few parcels here and there that it deemed necessary for one reason or another, it made good on that promise. Those States benefited. The Federal Treasury benefited. The American people benefited.

It is important to remember that what we are talking about here--when you see all this red on the map, representing Federal land ownership-- is not about national parks. National parks represent a very tiny percentage of Federal land ownership. We are not talking about national monuments, which also represents a very tiny percentage of Federal land ownership. What we are talking about in the context of the PILT program are lands that are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency that is considered obscure, almost unheard of throughout most of the United States, but an agency that operates with a particularly dominant force in States such as mine, where you see a lot of red on the map.

I remember the first time I showed this map to my children, my daughter Eliza, who was about 8 years old at the time, was just barely old enough to understand what I was explaining to her. I told her that the red indicated ownership of land by our national government. And 8- year-old Eliza looked at that portion of the map that represented our State, and she said: Look, dad, they own Utah. I said: You're right, Eliza, they own Utah. They certainly own the overwhelming majority of it.

Some of us have not forgotten this promise made in the statehood enabling acts of most of the States admitted into the Union, and yet Congress seems to be determined to overlook it. I am determined not to let that happen. Some of my friends back in Utah are likewise determined not to let that happen.

A good friend of mine, Representative Ken Ivory, who serves in the Utah State legislature, has done an amazing job educating people throughout Utah and, in fact, across America on this very subject, on what happened with these statehood enabling acts, and why it is that States in the western United States got left behind when it came to promises made long ago by the Federal Government. I commend Representative Ivory for his work on this issue and pledge to continue working with him on this important project.

You see, this is about much more than land. This is about the ability of local communities not only to thrive, but to survive. This is about communities where it is very difficult for people to get jobs. It is very difficult for people, in some instances, even to access their own property, even to access their own farms because it is impossible to get anywhere without crossing Federal public land and in some instances Federal land managers will block access to the only roads they can use to access their own property. This has to stop.

In the meantime, it is vitally important that we focus on the issues at hand, that we focus, at a bare minimum, on promises that the Federal Government has extended in lieu of the other promises. That is not to say we are going to forget about the promises made in the statehood enabling acts. We are not. But, for the moment, my attention remains focused on making sure we fund the PILT Program. It has to be funded. In fact, it has to be funded even more than it has been in the past. It ought to reflect at least a rough equivalent of the amount of money the taxing jurisdiction could collect if it were taxing that land at its lowest rate. And, at a bare minimum, even below that, we have to make sure the program continues to exist. We have to make sure the program is funded at least at its current levels. This is not asking much. But it is necessary that we do this.

The broken PILT Program is, one could argue, just another example of government applying significant and unnecessary weight to the shoulders of hard-working Americans, many of whom are struggling just to get by, many of whom are barely able to keep food on the table for their families, others of whom are able to provide for the day-to-day needs of their families but they are worried about what happens next. They find that whenever they find a little bit of additional income, no sooner have they earned it than they find it has been swallowed up-- swallowed up by increasing taxes, swallowed up by higher prices for goods and for services, and they do not know how to get out of this rut in which they find themselves somewhat trapped. These are the kinds of people who suffer the most as a result of the Federal Government's failed policies relative to its Federal public land.

We have to remember that lifting these weights is not only within the government's power, it is the affirmative obligation of government to lift those weights. In an 1861 address to Congress, President Abraham Lincoln said the ``leading object'' of American government was ``to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.''

Current PILT policy imposes government waste that makes it more difficult for communities to provide important services such as schools, police, and fire departments. It hampers the ability of States to budget, plan, and provide for infrastructure improvements, make needed reforms to their tax systems, and attract new businesses and new jobs.

This policy--and the Federal land management policies that accompany the PILT policy more generously--is broken, and it is imposing a heavy burden on our communities, particularly in rural areas where the Federal Government owns much, most or in some cases nearly all of the land and where needs are at their very greatest.

The program is already broken. The program is already causing millions and millions of Americans to suffer. The program is already severely impeding economic opportunity for Americans, deepening the existing crisis of opportunity that we have in this country, which manifests itself on three different levels: immobility among the poor, insecurity among the middle class, and cronyist privilege at the top.

If you live in one of these States, it might be great if you are one of those people who owns one of the few parcels of land that is not owned by the Federal Government. It is not so great if you live in one of the areas where the Federal Government owns basically everything, where you can do very little anywhere around you without permission from the Federal Government, where your local government is barely able to survive because it lacks a property tax base, and the Federal Government fails to adequately fund PILT and threatens--in this circumstance--to withdraw funding from PILT altogether.

I respectfully implore all of my colleagues to consider the inequities inherent in this map, the inequities inherent in the PILT Program, and, for present purposes, to remember we need to fund PILT.

It has to be reformed, absolutely, and we have to examine our Federal land ownership and management policies more broadly. Today we need to focus on making sure PILT is funded.

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

Would the majority leader yield for a question?

I would like to ask the majority leader through the Chair for clarity: Is the Senate Republican filibuster holding up unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans?

Again, addressing the majority leader through the Chair, so the refusal of the Senate Republicans to allow us to vote on the extension of unemployment benefits is denying, on average, about $300 a week to 1.4 million or 1.5 million Americans; is that a fact?

I would like to ask the majority leader this question: Is it not true that the initial complaint of the Senate Republicans was that this payment of unemployment benefits was not paid for?

Is it also true that Democrats came up with a pay-for that would have paid for the unemployment benefits, as the Republicans requested?

I would like to ask the majority leader: After the Democrats came up with the pay-for, the first demand of the Senate Republicans to stop their filibuster, did the Senate Republicans then join us in calling this measure for passage?

After we came up with a pay-for, which the Senate Republicans insisted on, did they stop their Senate Republican filibuster on unemployment benefits and allow us to move forward?

I would like to ask the majority leader if this followed: It was my understanding the Senate Republicans then came up with a new demand, and the demand was they be allowed to offer amendments to the unemployment insurance benefit package before they would drop their Senate Republican filibuster that was stopping unemployment benefits for 1.4 million Americans.

I would like to ask the majority leader this question: Is it not true that yesterday, in response to this Republican demand, the majority leader offered a unanimous consent that would have given up to 10 amendments on each side of the aisle--Democrats and Republicans--to this measure and that the Democrats did not specify what the amendments would be; that it would really be the decision of the Republicans to offer those amendments? Did the Senate majority leader offer that to the Senate Republicans so they would stop their filibuster of unemployment benefits?

So the Senate Republicans insisted on a pay-for, and the Senate Democrats provided it. The Senate Republicans still refused to stop their filibuster. Then the Senate Republicans insisted on amendments. We offered up to 10 amendments on each side.

Can the Senate majority leader say, after offering that unanimous consent, whether the Republicans agreed to it and stopped their filibuster of unemployment benefits?

I ask the majority, at this point in time what are we waiting for? What are the Senate Republicans now demanding to stop their filibuster of providing unemployment benefits to 1.4 million people across America?

I would say to the Senate majority leader that it strikes me as unfair, if not cruel, that we are holding 1.4 million unemployed Americans hostage to this continued political negotiation where each day the Republicans come up with a new demand before they will stop their Senate Republican filibuster.

I ask the Senator from Nevada, our majority leader, does he believe that a majority of the Members of the Senate would vote for the extension of unemployment benefits to these 1.4 million Americans if the Senate Republicans would drop their filibuster?

I thank the majority leader.

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

Madam President, first, the state of play in the Senate is that we want to pass an unemployment insurance benefit bill for 1.4 million Americans who, on January 1, had their unemployment checks cut off. Unemployment checks are sent to those Americans who have lost their job through no fault of their own and who have to prove to us they are trying to find another one. So while they are looking for a job, they receive unemployment benefits.

These benefits come from a fund which employers and, in some way indirectly, employees, pay into while they are working. This insurance policy is there so that if you lose a job there will be, on average, $300 a week to keep you and your family together while you look for your next job. It turns out that on January 1, 1.4 million Americans saw those checks cut off. In my State of Illinois, that affected 83,000 people.

These are people who have been unemployed for a while and are still looking for work. They have to because that is what the law requires. But here is the problem: The average period when someone is out of work when they lose a job in America is 38 weeks. That is the average. We cut off benefits at 27 weeks. That means that for 11 weeks a lot of people out of work get no unemployment benefits. What do they do? They turn to their friends, to their savings, and then they are out of luck. They may find themselves unable to make rent payments or mortgage payments, put food on the table, gas in the car to go look for work or pay for that cell phone they absolutely positively need if they are going to find a job.

So we came here and said: That isn't right. We are getting better. The economy is getting stronger. But the unemployment rate is too high. The national average is about 6.7 percent. It is over 8 percent in my State of Illinois, and in some States even higher, unlike the State of North Dakota, incidentally, which the Presiding Officer lives in and so doesn't worry about this at the present time. We came in and said: Let's extend unemployment benefits to these 1.4 million unemployed people in America so they can get by while they are looking for work.

This isn't a new idea. This is an old idea. It has happened over and over. In fact, under President Bush we did it five times, and the unemployment rate was even better than the one we have today. So it used to be bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans would say: Come on, give these folks a helping hand. These are workers facing tough times. We hear from them. They tell us their stories.

I ended up getting an email from a lady. For 34 years she had worked for the same company. She must be a pretty good employee, right? But now the company has laid her off and she can't find work. Another person had 9 years with the same company and lost his job. When he applies for a job, they look at his resume and say: Wait. You are way overqualified for this job. If we gave you this job, you would leave the first chance you get to get a better job. So there he sits, unable to find a job. He is trying, but he can't.

So these people are asking us: Can you help us keep our families together while we go through this tough period? And I think we should. So we want to call this bill to the floor of the Senate and pass it and extend unemployment benefits for 3 months. I would like to see it for 1 year, but even for 3 months we should extend these unemployment benefits so folks in this circumstance can get a helping hand.

The Republicans come in and say: No. We object to that. You cannot extend unemployment benefits unless you pay for them.

Well, that is new. Five times under President Bush they voted for their President's extension of unemployment benefits and didn't pay for it. Now they insist we pay for it. I don't like that. I think this is an emergency expenditure. But we live in a divided Congress, Democrats and Republicans. We have to find some common ground. So we came up with a pay-for. We came up with a way to pay for the benefits for this unemployment.

Then they said: No. We are still going to filibuster. We are still going to stop it unless you allow us to offer amendments. We have some ideas we want to bring to the floor and get them to a vote. Yesterday, the majority leader came to the floor and said: OK. We will give you amendments, up to 10 amendments on each side, to this unemployment issue. You pick the amendments. We are not going to pick them. They said: No. We still object.

So today we sit in the middle of a Republican filibuster stopping unemployment benefits for 1.4 million Americans. What used to be a bipartisan effort has now turned into an extremely partisan effort. That happens too much in this town. It happens too much on Capitol Hill. But it shouldn't happen at the expense of 1.4 million unemployed Americans.

That is why this floor is empty today. That is why we are giving speeches on a lot of different subjects. We are stuck in another Republican filibuster stopping unemployment benefits. I don't think that is right or fair. A lot of us believe we ought to extend these benefits and move on to deal with our economy and putting people to work, trying to find ways to make sure those who are working get a decent wage.

These are some of the things we ought to be taking up. But again, we are stuck in this filibuster, and so that is why I come to the floor to give a speech on two unrelated issues.

Tobacco

Madam President, there is an issue that is very important to me personally, but it turns out it is important to a lot of people: Tobacco. I lost my father to lung cancer. He died when I was 14 years old. He smoked two packs of Camels a day and developed lung cancer at the age of 53 and died. I have to tell you it is one of the most profound events of my life, to be a high school student and to live through a parent dying slowly of lung cancer. My attitude toward tobacco and smoking, I am sure, is a product of that.

When I came to Congress, I decided that in some small way I was going to try to do something about it. I didn't believe I could solve the problem, but I thought I could help. So over 25 years ago I introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to ban smoking on airplanes. It is hard to believe--young people still don't believe it today--there was a time when half the airplane was smoking and half wasn't smoking. In fact, everybody was breathing secondhand smoke. We were successful. We passed the bill in the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote. It came over to the Senate, before I was here, and Frank Lautenberg, the late Senator from New Jersey, took it up and did a great job, and the two of us together made it the law of the land.

We didn't know what we had done, other than to make airplane flight a little more convenient, safe, and comfortable. But it turns out it was a tipping point. It turns out that when we banned smoking on airplanes, people started asking questions 25 years ago: If it is not a good idea to smoke on airplanes, why is it a good idea to smoke on trains and buses and offices and hospitals and schools and restaurants and taverns and everyplace we go? So today, if you walked into a room and did what people did normally 25 years ago--pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up--people would say: Stop. What are you doing? You didn't say a word to me. You are going to smoke in front of me?

That used to be normal. Thank goodness it isn't any longer. What happens is Americans have a different attitude toward tobacco. The actual debate on this issue began 50 years ago--serious debate--because it was 50 years ago the Surgeon General of the United States of America issued a landmark report that for the first time conclusively linked tobacco to lung cancer and heart disease. Remember this: Tobacco is the No. 1 preventable cause of death in America today, and it has been for more than half a century.

When this report came out, it was at a time when people smoked in offices, airplanes, elevators, even in congressional hearings. In 1964, 42 percent of American adults smoked. It is hard to imagine, but until a few months before the report was released the Surgeon General himself was a smoker. We have certainly come a long way since that time, and the Surgeon General's report played a big role in changing America.

Today we expect measures such as warning labels on cigarettes, keeping cigarette commercials off television, taxes on cigarettes, and now ``no smoking'' signs almost everywhere. Thanks to these commonsense tobacco control measures, smoking among U.S. adults in 50 years has been cut in half. The report released by Surgeon General Luther Terry in 1964 was a turning point.

We still have a long way to go. Approximately 44 million Americans, nearly one out of every five, still smokes, and more than 440,000 Americans die each year from tobacco-related causes. Last week the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that showed over the last 50 years about 8 million premature smoking-induced deaths were avoided thanks to tobacco control measures. However, the study also noted that despite this progress, more than 17 million Americans died prematurely from tobacco over the last 50 years.

According to the Surgeon General's report, released in March 2012, tobacco use among kids is a pediatric epidemic and is the No. 1 cause of preventable and premature death in America. The report also found that every day 700 young people become new regular smokers, and of these new smokers one-third will eventually die from it.

We have young people who come and visit us in our offices, in the Senate galleries, and other places. These young people are the targets of tobacco companies. If they can get a kid to start smoking at an early age, before they have the maturity to understand the seriousness of that decision, they become addicted. Nicotine is an addictive drug and it is in tobacco and so they are picking up new customers by recruiting kids.

I have yet to meet the first parent anywhere, any time, anyplace who has said to me: I have great news for you, Senator. My daughter came home from school and she started smoking. I have never heard that. I don't think I ever will because we know intuitively it is a terrible thing and it could affect that young person's great young life.

The tobacco industry gets it. Our Nation pays the financial burden of tobacco use through $96 billion in annual medical costs, $97 billion in lost productivity of workers and, at the same time, these tobacco companies invent new ways to lure in these young customers and to entice people to buy their products.

Ninety percent of adult smokers began smoking before they graduated from high school--they were just teenage kids--which is why the tobacco companies continue to prey on children. They push products such as e- cigarettes. They just had the Golden Globe Awards, and some of these red-hot actors and actresses, whom we all love to watch in movies-- Leonardo DiCaprio and others--were sitting there puffing away on their e-cigarettes. I looked at that and thought: You are killing the next generation of fans of your movies.

We have to bring an end to this. E-cigarettes--available in shopping malls--that release appealing fruit- and candy-flavored vapors so it is more of a candy experience than a tobacco experience is one of the new tactics. Unfortunately, it is working. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control released new data showing the use of e-cigarettes among the Nation's kids is rising.

The report raises concerns that for young people, e-cigarettes could be a gateway to traditional cigarettes. More than 3.6 million kids under the age of 18 currently are smokers, and each day more than 3,500 kids try smoking a cigar or cigarette for the first time.

This graph I have shows how far we have come in reducing the use of cigarettes but also how much we have left to do. Between 2000 and 2011, the consumption of cigarettes in the United States decreased 33 percent--by one-third. During the same time, the use of loose tobacco and cigars increased 123 percent. Cigar smokers--why in the heck would a kid want to smoke a cigar? Because it is similar to smoking a candy bar. They flavor these cigars with cherry flavoring, sweet chocolate or grapes, and they are trying to get kids to start smoking.

Over the past 50 years we have seen the growing popularity of these candy-flavored tobacco products such as smokeless tobacco, e- cigarettes, and nicotine candies that look like breath mints. All these products are geared to luring the young into this addiction.

I have called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand and assert its authority over tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and flavored cigars. Unlike traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes are not subject to Federal age verification laws. Kids can legally buy them in most places across

America. Although we do know that most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, we don't know what else is in them. Without FDA regulation, we will not.

This Congress Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut joined me in introducing the Tobacco Tax Parity Act, a bill that closes the loopholes in how tobacco products are defined and taxed. It will end the exploitation of these loopholes by tobacco companies. It means taxing the roll-your-own loose tobacco we talked about and pipe tobacco at the same level. It means raising the tax on a container of smokeless tobacco from today's 11 cents to $1, the same as a pack of cigarettes.

I would like to show this as well. This is a story about Sharon, a 52-year-old woman from my home State of Illinois. Sharon started smoking at the age of 13. She said it seemed as though everybody was doing it. After her first puff, she quickly went from being a casual user to a full-blown addict with an expensive tobacco habit. When Sharon reached the age of 37--37--she was diagnosed with stage IV throat cancer. Thankfully, radiation and surgery saved her life, but she had to have her voice box removed and now speaks through an electrolarynx.

Last year Sharon was courageous enough to allow her story to be used as part of the Centers for Disease Control's 12-week antismoking campaign, a federally funded national antitobacco campaign with hard- hitting ads. It sounds like a pretty good effort by the government. But compared to the $10 billion a year the tobacco industry spends on marketing, the CDC campaign spent only $50 million; the tobacco industry, $10 billion.

CDC expects the campaign to help 50,000 people quit. One of those who called in to the quit line at CDC was a woman named Kim in Rockford, IL. She was watching an ad which showed the devastating effect on smoking on a North Carolina woman named Terrie. Kim said the commercial scared her, and that her son turned to her and said: Mom, you have just got to quit smoking. Kim called the Illinois tobacco quit line run by the American Lung Association and was connected to the nicotine replacement-patch program.

CDC's anti-smoking campaign is one of the many tobacco control and prevention measures that saves lives and shows we must continue investing in effective tobacco control measures.

This is a tough habit to break. One of my best friends in politics happens to be the President of the United States, who used to be a smoker. He is not now, thank goodness. His family is thankful and we are all thankful. But he still takes a little nicotine gum to chew from time to time to deal with the craving that is there. It is tough. But if people work hard, they can get it done.

This week we commemorate the importance of the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health and many other legal and cultural changes in this country. But as we look around at the proliferation of new and dangerous products luring kids to tobacco, we still have a lot of work to do. With the right commitment, we can spare future generations from this deadly epidemic of tobacco use.

I yield the floor.

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

I come to the floor this evening to discuss an issue of national security, and that is how to prevent a nuclear armed Iran.

I was thinking about our troubled history with Iran and whether more sanctions at this time makes sense for our national security interests, and I asked myself these questions:

Can, in fact, a country like Iran change?

Is it possible for an isolated regime to rejoin the community of nations and change its behavior after several decades?

Must a country and its people be held captive because of the behavior of previous leaders in earlier times?

So I thought back in history. I was a young girl during World War II. I remember when Imperial Japan killed millions in Southeast Asia, and particularly in China, during its brutal wars of expansion. Today, Japan is a peaceful democracy and one of this Nation's strongest allies in Asia.

I remember when Hitler and the German Third Reich committed unspeakable atrocities across Europe, including the murder of 6 million Jewish citizens. Germany is now a close ally, a leader in the European Union, an institution created to ensure a war never again occurs in Europe.

I remember General Franco's Spain, which was so diplomatically and economically isolated that it was actually barred from the United Nations until 1955. Spain is now a close partner of the United States and a fully democratic member of the European Union.

The former Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and South Africa have all experienced tremendous change in recent decades. Independent states have emerged from the painful dissolution of Yugoslavia. Vietnam has opened itself to the international community but still has much progress to make. South Africa has shed apartheid and has emerged as an increasingly stable nation on a much divided continent.

So I believe countries can change. This capacity to change also applies to the pursuit of nuclear weapons. At one time, Sweden, South Korea, and Argentina each pursued nuclear weapons.

Following World War II, Sweden pursued nuclear weapons to deter foreign attack. It mastered nuclear technology and built and tested components for a nuclear weapon. It may have even obtained enough nuclear material to build a bomb. But in 1970, it signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and it ended its nuclear weapon program.

In the early 1970s, South Korea actively sought a nuclear device. The United States heavily pressured South Korea not to go nuclear, and in April 1975, South Korea signed the nonproliferation treaty and halted its nuclear weapons activity.

Throughout the 1980s, when it was ruled by a military junta with an egregious human rights record, Argentina had a covert nuclear weapons program. It built uranium production, enrichment, and reprocessing facilities, and it attempted to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles before abandoning its nuclear weapons program and ratifying the NPT in 1995.

So the question comes, is Iran willing to change its past behavior and abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon? It may well be, and it is the job of diplomacy to push for that change.

I believe there are positive signs that Iran is interested in such a change, and I would like to explain my reasons.

The election of Hassan Rouhani was a surprise to many long-time observers of Iran because he campaigned in support of repairing Iran's relationship with the West.

Since his inauguration he has tried to do exactly that. For the first time since the Iranian revolution, the leaders of our countries have been in direct communication with each other. Where once direct contact even between senior officials was rare, now Secretary of State John Kerry and Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman are in near constant contact with their Iranian counterparts. Those conversations produced the historic Geneva agreement which goes into effect in 6 days, on January 20.

Candidate Rouhani also promised to increase nuclear transparency, and he has delivered on that as well. Even before the Geneva interim agreement was reached, Iran slowed uranium enrichment and construction for the Arak heavy water reactor--maybe for technical reasons, maybe not, but it slowed. Iran has also reengaged with the IAEA to resolve questions surrounding its nuclear activities.

So what has been achieved in Geneva? The interim 6-month agreement reached between the P5+1 countries, the United States, China, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, freezes Iran's nuclear program in place while a comprehensive agreement is negotiated in the next 6 months. This agreement caps Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium at 5 percent. It stops the production of 20 percent enriched uranium. It requires the neutralization of Iran's stockpile of 20 percent uranium. It prevents Iran from installing additional centrifuges or operating its most advanced centrifuges. It prohibits it from stockpiling excess centrifuges. It halts all significant work at the Arak heavy water reactor and prevents Iran from constructing a plutonium reprocessing facility.

Most importantly, the interim agreement imposes the most intrusive international inspection regime ever. International inspectors will independently verify whether Iran is complying with the interim agreement. For the first time, the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors will have uninterrupted access to Iran's enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, centrifuge production plants, centrifuge assembly facilities, and Iran's uranium mines and mills. Finally, Iran is required to declare all planned new nuclear facilities.

In exchange, the P5+1 negotiators offered sanctions relief limited to $7 billion, an aspect of the interim agreement that has been criticized and I wish to talk about it for a moment.

Here are the facts on that sanctions relief which, in my view, does not materially alter the biting sanctions which have devastated Iran's economy. The vast majority of sanctions relief comes in the form of Iranian repatriation of $4.2 billion of its own money. Iran will continue to lose $4 billion to $5 billion a month in lost oil revenue from existing sanctions. Iran will not have access to about $100 billion of its own reserves trapped by sanctions abroad.

For perspective, the total estimated sanctions relief is valued at approximately only 1 percent of the Iranian economy, hardly a significant amount.

I wish to take a moment to detail what is not in the interim agreement.

First, it does not grant Iran a right to enrich. The United States does not recognize such a right for the five nonnuclear weapons states that currently have enrichment programs, and we will make no exception for Iran. But Iran does have a right to peaceful nuclear energy if it fully abides by the terms of its safeguards agreement under the NPT.

Secondly, the agreement does not in any way unravel our core oil and financial sanctions. Others have argued the suspension of any sanctions against Iran will unravel the entire sanctions regime, and that is false. The Obama administration has taken action to ensure that does not happen.

Two days after the interim agreement was reached, the United States settled with a Swiss Oil Services Company over sanctions violations. The settlement was more than $250 million. It was the largest against a foreign firm outside of the banking industry.

On December 12, the administration announced the expansion of Iranian entities subject to sanctions. These entities either helped Tehran evade sanctions or provided support to Iran's nuclear program.

On January 7 of this year, the administration halted the transfer of two Boeing airplane engines from Turkey to Iran. Through these actions, the Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that the United States will continue to enforce our existing sanctions against Iran.

Third, the agreement does not codify the violation of U.N. security resolutions. Critics have attacked the interim agreement for its failure to completely halt all of Iran's nuclear enrichment by noting that six U.N. Security Council Resolutions have called on Tehran to do so and it has not done so.

The purpose of the U.N. Resolutions was not to suspend nuclear enrichment indefinitely. Instead, these resolutions were designed to freeze Iran's nuclear activities until the IAEA could determine whether Iran's activities were for exclusively peaceful purposes.

This is an important point. The interim agreement achieves what the six U.N. Security Council Resolutions could not. It freezes Iran's nuclear progress while a comprehensive, verifiable agreement is being negotiated over the next 6 months.

The interim agreement was only possible because a strong international sanctions regime has worked to convince rank-and-file Iranians, candidly, that enough is enough.

According to the State Department, as a result of the sanctions, Iran's crude oil exports have plummeted from approximately 2.5 million barrels per day in 2011 to around 1 million barrels per day in recent months. This decline

alone costs Iran $3 billion to $5 billion per month in lost revenue.

In total, 23 nations who import Iranian oil have eliminated or significantly reduced purchases from Iran. In fact, Iran currently has only six customers for its oil: China, India, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

In the last year, Iran's gross domestic product shrunk by 5.8 percent. Its GDP shrunk in 1 year by 5.8 percent, while inflation is estimated to be 50 percent or more.

Prices for food and consumer goods are doubling and tripling on an annual basis, and estimates put unemployment as high as 35 percent while underemployment is pervasive.

This is why Iran says enough is enough. The sanctions are biting and they are biting deeply, and there is no need to put additional sanctions on the table at this time.

This body may soon consider the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act; that is, a bill to do exactly the opposite, to impose additional sanctions against Iran, do it now, and hold it in abeyance.

Before casting a vote, Senators should ask themselves what would happen if the bill passes and a promised veto by the President is not sustained. I would like to give my view.

I sincerely believe the P5+1 negotiations with Iran would end and, with it, the best opportunity in more than 30 years to make a major change in Iranian behavior--a change that could not only open all kinds of economic opportunities for the Iranian people, but help change the course of a nation. Its destiny in fact could be changed.

Passing additional sanctions now would only play into the hands of those in Iran who are most eager to see diplomacy fail. Iranian conservatives, hardliners, will attack President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif for seeking a nuclear compromise.

They will argue that Iran exchanged a freeze of its nuclear program for additional and harsh punitive sanctions. Think about that. They will say that Iran did not achieve anything with this agreement. All we got were more sanctions.

Second, if the United States cannot honor an interim agreement negotiated in Geneva by Russia, China, France, Germany, the UK and ourselves--we are not alone in this--it will never lift sanctions after a final agreement is reached.

Above all, they will argue that the United States is not interested in nuclear diplomacy--we are interested in regime change.

The bottom line: If this body passes S. 1881, diplomatic negotiations will collapse, and there will be no final agreement.

Some might want that result, but I do not.

Iran's nuclear program would once again be unrestrained, and the only remaining option to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon would be military action. I do not want that unless it is absolutely necessary.

To date, the prospect of just considering this bill has prompted Iranian legislators to consider retaliation. There is talk that the legislative branch, called the Majles, may move to increase nuclear enrichment far beyond the 5-percent limit in the interim agreement and much closer to, if not achieving, weapons-grade uranium.

So the authors of additional sanctions in this body and Iranian hardliners in the other body would actually combine to blow up the diplomatic effort of 6 major powers.

The bill's sponsors have argued that sanctions would strengthen the United State's hand in negotiations. They argue that sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. They contend that additional sanctions would force Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

I could not disagree more.

Let me give the views of a few other people who are knowledgeable in the arena: Dr. Paul Pillar, a former U.S. intelligence official and current professor at Georgetown University recently argued:

It is the prospect of having U.S.-led sanctions removed

that will convince Iran to accept severe restrictions on its

nuclear program. Threatening Iran with additional sanctions

now--after it has agreed to the interim agreement and an

interim agreement is about to go into effect--will not

convince Tehran to complete a final agreement.

I couldn't agree more.

If this bill would help our negotiators, as its authors contend, they would say so.

I believe this bill is an egregious imposition on the Executive's authority to conduct foreign affairs. In fact, our Secretary of State has formally asked this Congress to give our negotiators and our experts the time and space to do their jobs, including no new sanctions.

What does this body say, sitting here? We are not going to do that? This is a Secretary of State who is of this body, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who has been absolutely prodigious in his efforts to get this interim agreement, has gotten it, and we are going to run the risk that it is going to break apart during the next 6 months when a final agreement might well be negotiated?

If the Senate imposes its will, if we override the President's veto, and it blows up this very fragile process, some would say: Too bad, what a tragedy.

We know what the Iranian reaction will be. The Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, who I happen to have known for a substantial period of time, has clearly stated what the result will be in five words, and it is this: ``The entire deal is dead.''

That is his direct quote. Why wouldn't we take him at his word? So far he has been good to his word.

The ambassador of our staunchest ally, the UK, warned this body not to pass more sanctions. Sir Peter Westmacott recently wrote:

Further sanctions now would only hurt negotiations and risk

eroding international support for the sanctions that have

brought us this far. The time for additional measures will

come if Iran reneges on the deal or negotiations fail. Now is

not that time.

I deeply believe that a vote for this legislation will cause negotiations to collapse. The United States, not Iran, then becomes the party that risks fracturing the international coalition that has enabled our sanctions to succeed in the first place.

It says to the UK, China, Russia, France, and Germany that our country cannot be trusted to stand behind our diplomatic commitments. That is a very big statement.

Our allies will question whether their compliance with sanctions and the economic sacrifices they have made are for naught.

Should these negotiations fall apart, the choices are few and the most likely result, in my view, is the eventual and inevitable use of military force.

So I ask this body, Is that the choice we want to make? In 6 days the tentative agreement will go into place. We want to pass this? We don't even want to wait and see what happens?

We don't even want to wait and see what the IAEA finds when they are in there 24-7, 365 days a year?

I think what we ought to do is concentrate on Iranian compliance with the interim agreement.

On January 20, 2014, this agreement comes into effect, 6 days from now, and over the next 6 months the international community will be able to verify whether or not Iran is keeping its commitments to freeze its nuclear progress.

If Iran fails to abide by the terms of the interim agreement, or if a final agreement cannot be negotiated, Congress can immediately consider additional sanctions.

I deeply believe that additional sanctions should only be considered once our diplomatic track has been given the opportunity to forge a final, comprehensive, and binding agreement.

This is what is most distressing. If we had not reached an agreement, with the cooperation and leadership of the big powers of this world, that would be one thing. The fact is we have reached agreement and that action is just about to take place, and we are going to jaundice it, we are going to hurt it, and we are likely to collapse it by passing additional sanctions now which a President of the United States will veto with the aim of overriding that veto.

How does that make any kind of common sense? It defies logic, it threatens instant reverse, and it ends what has been unprecedented diplomacy. Do we want to take that on our shoulders? Candidly, in my view, it is a march toward war.

As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I know the challenges Iran poses to U.S. interests around the world.

I see the majority leader is on the floor.

Would the majority leader like me to cease for a moment?

As I said, as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I know the challenges Iran poses to the U.S. interests around the world. Its patronage of the terrorist group Hezbollah, its support for Syria's Bashar Assad through the Revolutionary Guard Corps are two of the most troubling.

I would hope that as a followthrough of diplomacy we might be able to quell some of these activities.

Let me acknowledge Israel's real, well-founded concerns that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten its very existence. I don't disagree with that. I agree with it, but they are not there yet.

While I recognize and share Israel's concern, we cannot let Israel determine when and where the United States goes to war. By stating that the United States should provide military support to Israel in a formal resolution should it attack Iran, I fear that is how this bill is going to be interpreted.

Let me conclude. The interim agreement with Iran is strong, it is tough, and it is realistic. It represents the first significant opportunity to change a three-decade course in Iran and an opening to improve one of our most poisonous bilateral relationships. It could open the door to a new future which not only considers Israel's national security, but protects our own.

To preserve diplomacy, I strongly oppose the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor this morning to talk about another very important bill. There was an hour exchange about unemployment, which is extremely important for the Nation. I think people got to hear arguments on both sides. They can continue to try to process that.

I came to the floor this morning to talk about another very important piece of legislation that we do have very deep and very genuine bipartisan support for; that is, the flood insurance provision, the Homeowner Affordability Act, which will correct some of the more egregious provisions of a bill that passed a year-and-a-half ago called Biggert-Waters.

The bill, Biggert-Waters, that was passed, named for the two Members of the House who led that effort, was well intentioned. In fact, I have had many wonderful conversations with Maxine Waters, the absolutely distinguished Congresswoman from California whose name is carried on that bill.

She had wonderful intentions because California, like Louisiana, depends on a program to work that is sustainable and affordable, but she even recognized and has been so gracious with her time to come to Louisiana to say we intended for this to fix the problem, but I admit we made it worse; the way FEMA has interpreted some of the things we have done has made it worse and the fact that the Federal Government continues, despite our efforts, to recognize levees people have built. So she has agreed to help lead our effort to reform a bill she and Congresswoman Judy Biggert passed a year-and-a-half ago.

I wish to start by commending the leadership. In the House, the effort is being led by Congresswoman Waters and Congressman Grimm. There are chairs of standing committees, working with them as we speak, to figure out how to move forward in the House.

But in the Senate we have been working so well together. Despite all of the commotion and adversarial positions on other issues, we put together a very excellent coalition of about 200 organizations. I am going to read those names in just a minute--200 organizations that have been working with us to fashion a reform bill that meets these objectives.

The Presiding Officer has spoken on the floor of the Senate now at least a half dozen times that I have listened to her speak on the floor, so she knows all this that I am going to say because she said it even better than I can. But the provisions that are in our reform bill for flood insurance meet important goals. First of all, it is affordable to the middle-class people who are required to have it. That is the most important thing about flood insurance, that it be affordable to the people required to have it.

Yes, there are some very wealthy families who live in mansions on beaches that are required to have it. They will have no problem paying a substantial premium. But there are millions of middle-class families--many of them in Louisiana--who do not live anywhere near the water and they most certainly do not live in mansions on the beach. They live in middle-class, blue-collar, working neighborhoods far from lakes, a distance from rivers, and nowhere near the ocean. They have found themselves caught up in paying premiums they cannot afford.

If we do not fix this, the premiums coming into the program will be less and less. People will be defaulting on homes. Banks, communities will take a downward economic spiral and the program itself will collapse.

We cannot have this program collapse. So even though our critics--and this has been in the newspapers--are saying we are trying to saddle taxpayers with a huge debt, nothing could be further from the truth. We are trying to save taxpayers from a big bailout by reforming a program that needs to be reformed and fixed so middle-class people can afford it, banks can operate well with it, homebuilders can build homes with it, realtors can sell the homes with the program, which they are not able to do now. Everyone can get back to work, anxiety can be reduced and give us some time to figure out how to reach those two important goals: so the taxpayers do not have to bail us out and homeowners and businesses can afford it. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so.

Happily, Senator Menendez and Senator Isakson, two veteran leaders of the Senate, have put a very good bill together. We are ready to vote. We are ready to vote. We could vote, actually, right now if we could just get a few matters worked out.

I would like to talk about what those few matters are publicly so people can start working them out because I think the more things that are transparent around here the better off we all are and things that are done in secret are usually problematic.

Let me say to the many people following this that the base bill is still basically in the order that everyone understands it to be. It is printed. It has been visible, public, for weeks now. That bill that is the basic essence of the compromises worked out by Senator Menendez and Senator Isakson and, I might say, with Senator Merkley's extraordinary leadership as a subcommittee chair, that is the base bill. There are amendments that Senators want to offer. Happily they are all related to flood.

To my knowledge--and Senator Isakson has worked through this, as I have, and Senator Menendez--there is a Hagan provision about escrow requirements that we think we should vote on. We are not sure how that vote will turn out, but we are happy to vote on it. There is a Blunt amendment the National Association of Home Builders has suggested we have an amendment on. We could vote on that as well. There is a Crapo amendment that is in the works. Some of these amendments have been filed and have language. Some of them are just in theory form. There is a Crapo amendment that would adjust the rate increases in the underlying bill. We could vote on that. There is a Reed amendment, Senator Reed of Rhode Island. This would require FEMA to conduct a study on the viability of offering community-based flood insurance policies. My notes say there is broad support for that.

There is a Coburn amendment, which is an alternative to the NARAB. That amendment will probably not receive the votes required, but we are happy to talk about his amendment and have him offer it. There is a Merkley amendment that will subject NFIB policyholders to force-placed insurance policies if they let their policies lapse--it is a technical amendment--and also a Rubio-Nelson amendment that is being discussed.

Those are the only amendments we know about. If there is anybody else who has an amendment on flood who would like to offer it or have it considered, the next couple of hours would be the last opportunity to get those amendments in. I know everybody is busy. I cleared my calendar. I had meeting. I cleared my calendar to do this today because it is very important that we not just get so busy with other things that we leave this place and not get this done. We are working transparently, openly, so there are no games to be played by either side.

Again, I wish to repeat, there is a Hagan amendment pending--not pending but that we know of--a Rubio-Nelson, a Reed of Rhode Island, a Coburn, a Merkley, a Blunt, and then Toomey, who was just on the floor, the Senator from Pennsylvania, has indicated he wants to offer a substitute to what we are proposing.

I am not the manager of this bill so it is not my authority to make these definitive statements. Senator Menendez and Senator Isakson will ultimately decide the strategy. But as far as I understand, because we have all been working very hard together to move this bill to final passage--as far as I understand, these are the only amendments people would like to offer and there does not seem to be any objection to offering them.

In addition, if people want 51 votes or if they want 60 votes, we are very open to that as well. We could pass the bill with 51 votes, we could pass the bill with 60 votes, so we are open. That is the game that is played here. You say we want 60, no, we want 51 or 51 and 60-- we can take it in any arithmetic anyone wants to give us. You want 51 votes, we can deliver them. You want 60 votes, we can deliver 60 votes because we have done the homework on this bill, working with coalitions, working with homeowners and businesses from South Dakota and North Dakota to New Jersey and New York, Mississippi, Louisiana, California, and Oregon. There is no disagreement.

Well, there is some disagreement, but there is not enough disagreement to overcome the great coalition which was put together, which was evidenced by an extraordinary press conference a couple of days ago, where almost 20 Senators showed up, or they were represented by their staffs, saying we are ready to go. My message on the floor--I don't know how many more minutes I have.

I would like another 5; I ask unanimous consent.

What was evidenced earlier--and the coalition knows this--there is broad consensus. There are a few Senators who want to vote against this bill. There are a few Senators who want to offer amendments. Fine. Let the record show these amendments could be offered--these amendments, germane to this bill and any that would come to us in the next hour or so that are germane to this bill, we can take these amendments and have a 51-vote, a 60-vote requirement, and final passage on 51 or 60. Let's just get this done.

There should be no confusion at all. I am glad no one on the opposite side is here debating me on this. That is a good sign for us that there truly is only one side to this story and this is the side.

I am trying to be as fair as I can. I have named the people who have amendments, to our knowledge. We, the Democrats, have said we have no

objection to them offering those amendments. If they want 51 or 60 votes, just let us know. I feel confident that our coalition can hold against any amendments that would try to gut this bill.

We will let people know what those amendments are and who has offered them because we think this is absolutely right for the country, for the States we represent, and for the taxpayer. Give us a little time to work together to figure out how to strengthen the National Flood Insurance Program without bankrupting 5 million families. If we don't stop this train that has already left the station--we have to stop it, reverse it, and put it back in the train barn because it is going down the track pretty fast. This is not a good place to be.

As I said, we probably should have never passed this bill, but it was put in a conference committee report that was unamendable and some provisions of it were indecipherable at the time. That is a little strong of a word, but they were not well understood. It wasn't that it was indecipherable; it was not well understood. After the bill was read and implemented, people thought, oh, my gosh, what have we done? This is not going to work. And they were right.

I am going to stay on the floor this morning. If anyone on the Republican side wants to come down and disagree and challenge what I have presented, please do so because I want this to be a very open process. There is nothing for us to hide from, and that is what a democracy is about.

There are some people who want to vote against our bill. Fine. Go ahead and vote against it. We have the votes to pass it. As I said, we have 60 votes. We may even have more than 60 votes. If we don't have the votes, all I can say is we tried our level best and we don't have the votes to correct it. I don't think that is the case.

I am not going to allow the smoke and confusion and all the hot air around here to confuse the coalition that has worked too hard, and they need to hear my voice very clearly, which is why I am here. There is clarity. There is no opposition on the Democratic side to this bill. We are waiting for a few clarifications from the Republican side. We hope to get those clarifications. The only Democrats who have amendments that I know of are Senator Hagan, Senator Reed from Rhode Island, and Senator Merkley. We have no objection on the Democratic side for this bill and there are only three Members who have amendments, and we are happy to have a vote on those amendments. They are not controversial. Somebody might have a problem with them and might vote no. Fine, but they don't gut the bill. There is no problem with the bill.

We are waiting on the Republican side for clarity. Again, I know how busy everyone is. I know the Senator from Pennsylvania is working very hard. He was just here speaking about unemployment insurance, and I know that is a very important issue to the people he represents, and to Louisiana. If he could get a little time to work on the amendment that we think he wants to offer on flood whenever he can, we are happy to have his amendment, and we will vote on it.

Senators Isakson and Menendez will decide when and how and what the number is--51 or 60. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter. If his intention is to gut the bill, the bill will not be gutted. If his intention is to strengthen the bill, then that is a definite possibility. People are desperate to get an answer from Congress now. We should have done this 4 months ago before these rate increases. Escrow accounts are being collected. Some people were paying $500 a year and now they are paying $5,000. According to the Biggert-Waters law, the banks have to get that $5,000 and put it in the bank now to pay that insurance. That is a real hardship on people. We need to stop that and figure this out.

Madam President, I ask for 1 additional minute. I think I have extended my time already.

We have delayed this fix too long, and we need to go ahead and take care of it. I am going to stay on the floor this morning. I will periodically bring everyone up to date.

I will close by reminding people what we are talking about. These are the new flood maps in the United States. The purple shows where it is in effect, green shows the proposed areas, and yellow shows the new flood map. There is not a State that is exempt from what I am speaking about. The amazing thing is to see this cluster in Pennsylvania, New York, and in Ohio. Everyone thinks about this as a Texas, Florida, or Louisiana issue. But when we see the inland States being affected by flood maps--States that have never been issued before are being issued without good data because FEMA doesn't have the science, technology, or resources to do this correctly yet. The affordability study has not even been done, and they didn't do it even though the last bill asked them to do it.

We need to put this train back in the station. It is not ready for prime time. We need to bring it out in a way that, yes, rates may have to rise. No one is opposed to that. But rates have to rise in a way that people can afford them and can be notified.

From our standpoint, Louisiana would like levees to be recognized. Since we spent billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money building them, we would like them to be recognized. If you are behind a levee, you don't have to pay $15,000 a year because you already paid for the levee. You don't pay twice. Taxpayers should not have to pay three times. They are happy to pay their fair share. Most everybody I know is happy to pay their fair share. But under Biggert-Waters, it is not fair, it is not shared. It has to be not completely pushed back but it has to be delayed, which is what our bill does.

I will stay on the floor, and if someone comes to the floor, that is fine. I will talk about this. It is important to get this done. I am an appropriator. I am chair of Homeland Security. This is a big, important bill for our country. This bill is almost as important--don't get me wrong, it is not as important as the whole Appropriations bill, but there are 5 million people who are getting ready to lose their home or business, and it is really important to them. It is important for us since there doesn't seem to be any real objection to work hard to get it done.

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

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum call be equally divided between the Republicans and the Democrats.

Madam President, may I say, before the Senator from Georgia leaves, how appreciative this coalition is of his leadership. He has been literally--I am not making this up--extraordinary in his time and effort to work through the final amendment process because this process has been going on for over a year.

We just did not start talking about this last week. He has given over a year of his time, and as the chief cosponsor he has been phenomenal. I think he would agree with me--if he doesn't, then we could respectfully disagree--that it is time now for the Members that have been hearing about this and have been told about this for weeks, weeks and months, to get their amendments to Senator Isakson so that we can make some decisions about how many amendments we can have. We could have four. We could have six. We could have ten. We can have a 51-vote threshold. We are ready. The Democratic side has, for the most part, cleared the amendments we know about.

So the Senator is terrific. I thank him for coming. I do not intend to ask unanimous consent at this point. The leaders are still working together, Senator McConnell and Senator Reid.

I know the Senator from Georgia is trying to work through this. Would that be a generally good description of where we are?

I am aware that we are not quite there yet. But I am also aware that the clock is ticking, that it is Wednesday, that we may be out of here on Saturday, and we need to pass an appropriations bill. This is something that also deserves a tremendous amount of attention.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time in quorum calls be equally divided.

I think it is wonderful to hear the Republican Senator Mr. Moran talk about job creation. It is really music to my ears, especially when he talks about addressing the importance of immigration, which clearly needs to be addressed and is clearly a job- creation issue. That is why I have been hoping Speaker Boehner would take up the Senate's immigration bill, which is comprehensive; and, as President Obama said, if you can't do that, bring up a series of bills and let's get moving.

Believe me, I have seen every report there is, and Senator Moran is right--immigration reform is necessary for us. It is an economic issue. It would be an economic boon to our country in terms of jobs and GDP.

I also think it very important that we not turn our backs on an American value we have had in this country since the 1950s in which Republicans and Democrats in the Congress and Republicans and Democrats in the White House have agreed that when there is a great recession and people are out of work, they need to have unemployment compensation, which is an insurance program to keep them from falling apart. This is an American value.

We talk about bipartisanship, but sometimes we just can't seem to get there. I have looked back, and since the 1950s, two-thirds of the time we passed an extension of unemployment compensation--many times to help people the Chair has worked so hard to represent, the mine workers and others who were hit with hard times, we did so in a bipartisan way--and two-thirds of the time with no pay-for. Since 1958, two-thirds of the time we extended it with no pay-for.

Under George W. Bush we extended unemployment compensation--the extended unemployment compensation paid for by the Federal Government-- three times with no pay-for because it was an emergency. And we did it even though in those days deficits were raging.

Here we have cut the deficit in half, and we don't like that. We want to cut it more. I want to see it balanced. But

we surely should do what we just tried to do, which is to extend unemployment compensation for a long period of time with a pay-for-- that is what we tried to do--or for a short period of time without a pay-for and help people keep their lives together.

We have had this American value since the 1950s. Yet, for the first time I can tell, we had one party--with the exception of one person-- vote lockstep against extending unemployment compensation to hard- working Americans who are looking for work every week, every day. And I have their stories, which I am going to put in the Record. They have turned their backs on 1.5 million Americans--in my State, 250,000 people.

Now, here is the thing--and I don't like to come and make these speeches, but the facts speak for themselves. Leader Reid, the majority leader, just offered a very important deal in broad daylight to the Republicans. And I am going to make a parliamentary inquiry, if I might, Mr. President.

Here it is. Is it true that Majority Leader Reid offered the Republicans five related amendments to the unemployment compensation bill, those amendments to be of their own choosing? Is that correct?

Is it further true that he offered Democrats five related amendments of their own choosing?

Is it further correct that he also said each side could offer an additional five amendments as side-by-sides, if they wanted to, of their own choosing? Is that correct?

Is it also true that he offered time agreements of 1 hour per amendment and then to be followed by passage of the bill?

OK. The reason I wanted to put this in the record in a simple way is because sometimes when we have the back-and-forth and the ``I object'' and ``reserving the right to object,'' people lose track of exactly what happened.

We offered the Republicans everything they said they wanted. They wanted amendments. They were offered amendments of their own choosing. Up to 20 amendments could have been voted on under the agreement. They said they wanted pay-fors. We gave them a pay-for that actually came out of Paul Ryan's budget, a structural change that would have paid for 10\1/2\ months of unemployment benefits. The Republicans just can't say yes. They demanded amendments. We gave them amendments. They demanded pay-fors. We gave them pay-fors.

I believe something else is going on, and I have to say what I think is going on. They do not want to extend unemployment compensation to the long-term unemployed. That is a dramatic change that is occurring in the culture of this country, in the compassion of this country, in the consensus in this country, in the values of this country. We are talking about 1.5 million Americans--250,000 Californians. I am frankly stunned.

I know Senator Mikulski is here, and I so much want to hear from her, so I will skip some of the other history about how it has been over the years and how we have done this where we have come together, Republicans and Democrats. We have extended unemployment compensation benefits more times under Republican Presidents than under Democratic Presidents, and Democrats didn't stand there and say: Gee, there is a Republican in the White House. Maybe this will help him look good or maybe this will add two-tenths of 1 percent to the GDP. Maybe we better say no.

No. We said yes because we are a party that believes people need to keep hearth and home together.

The long-term unemployment rate is twice as high as it was at any other time when these extended benefits were allowed to expire. There are almost three unemployed people for every job opening nationwide.

I am going to close with a few little stories from my constituents because one has to hear the voices of people. In this Senate, we should be representing the middle class and the working poor of this country. We should be fighting for them because, guess what, everyone else benefits. The billionaires and millionaires are doing fine. They do better when we have a strong middle class.

The Presiding Officer is a fighter for economic justice, and I know this statistic is something the Senator has probably used many times. But the fact is that 450 families are worth more than 150 million Americans. I can guarantee you, those 450 families are just fine and their children and their grandchildren and their children's children's children. And good for them. Fine. But what about the people who are now cut off at the knees because they are not getting $300 a week to live? Here is one of them. One woman wrote to me:

I am 58 years old and am receiving unemployment benefits

for the first time in my life. I am currently receiving my

first federal extension.

Which, by the way, she has now been cut off from.

I was laid off because the non-profit I was working for

lost a major portion of its state funding.

Getting unemployment benefits is not preventing me from

looking for work. In fact, people getting extended

unemployment benefits are required to prove that they're

looking for work. I spend hours every week filling out

applications and posting my resume without results.

And then she says to me:

Tell me, how am I, and thousands like me supposed to pay

rent and eat? I agree that Washington should ``focus on job

creation'' but that should be in addition to, not instead of,

extending benefits. I beg you, please extend unemployment

benefits.

Then there is Kaitlyn Smith of Twentynine Palms. She lost her benefit when the Federal extension expired. A Marine Corps veteran and the mother of two, Smith says: Work is hard to come by. They can't move because her husband, a vet of the Afghanistan-Iraq wars, must remain near the combat center until he is discharged in July.

Listen to this:

I have to keep the house at 55 degrees even though I have

two little girls, ages 2\1/2\ and 1\1/2\.

That is what she told the L.A. Times in December.

How do my Republican friends--except for the one who voted with us at the end of the day--look themselves in the mirror and think about this courageous woman whose family put their life on the line for the country and who is freezing in their home, because they are playing parliamentary games on process?

Last, Cindy Snow of Beaumont:

Why are they using us as pawns? They're playing games with

people's lives.

Referring to politicians in Washington. That appeared in Bloomberg News.

Laura Walker, a 63-year-old paralegal, has been looking for

work since January, when she was laid off from a California

law firm. She counted on $450 a week in federal unemployment

benefits for help that have now run out.

``Not all of us have savings and a lot of us have to take

care of family because of what happened in the economy,''

said Walker, of Santa Clarita, who said she has applied for a

least three jobs a week and shares an apartment with her

unemployed son, his wife and two children. ``It's going to

put my family and me out on the streets.''

That is from the Bloomberg News of December 30, 2013

Cindy Snow, of Beaumont, CA, lost her job as a social

worker in April when the San Bernardino school system

terminated the child-care program where she worked. Her

husband, employed in the construction industry, has been

without a job since 2009. They have been relying on

assistance from the California Housing Finance Agency to

cover a $1,424-a-month payment on their home.

When she loses her unemployment benefits, she said, the

family will no longer qualify for the housing assistance.

``Why are they using us as pawns? They're playing games with

people's lives,'' Snow said, referring to politicians in

Washington.

This is also from Bloomberg News of December 30, 2013

Ethelyn Holmes, a software engineer who lives in Mission

Hills, is one of 18,720 San Diego County residents about to

lose the weekly payments. Holmes said her $450 weekly

unemployment payment goes to food, dental insurance and other

living necessities.

Holmes, in her 40s, said she's tried zealously to find

work. She's joined the Project Management Institute of San

Diego, volunteered, attended meetings, cold called and

written letters. Now, she said she'd like to find a

retraining program to help her become more marketable. ``. .

. I have not been sitting here watching soap operas,'' she

said. ``I would go to work tomorrow, or today. I really am

tired of this.''

That is from the San Diego Union-Tribune dated December 28, 2013.

Steven Swanson of Madera Ranchos, CA, worked for 33 years

in wholesale, mostly in beverage sales, before losing his job

in 2011. Since then, he estimates that he's submitted resumes

for more than 500 positions and in the last six months filled

out more than 200 job applications--all to no avail.

``I want a job, I want to work,'' said Swanson whose

daughter and son-in-law live with him and pay rent to help

him keep up the mortgage on the house he owns. ``As a

taxpayer, I paid into the system for a lot of years. For them

to just shut it off and say, `These people need to get weaned

off and get a job'--well, yeah, I need to get a job. But for

them to suggest that I just go get welfare or go get food

stamps--that's why I'm frustrated with the Republican Party.

They just don't get it.''

That is from the Fresno Bee of January 2, 2014.

In addition to helping people get by while they look for jobs, extending unemployment insurance will help the economy.

A new study by the Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that extending unemployment insurance will prevent the loss of 240,000 jobs in 2014, including 46,441 in California.

CBO has said that another year-long extension would add two-tenths of a percent to our GDP.

CBO has found that when unemployment is high, extending unemployment insurance is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow the economy and create jobs.

This will help us reduce our deficit in the long term. Already, our annual deficit has been cut in half. For 2009, when President Obama took office, it was $1.4 trillion. For 2013 it was $680 billion, and for 2014 the forecast is only $560 billion.

We are making progress, and extending unemployment benefits will help us grow our GDP and reduce our deficit even more.

So I say to my colleagues, the answer is obvious. Stop blocking this bill. It will save jobs, grow the economy, and provide help to our families while they get on their feet.

There are a lot of games played around here, and sometimes it is time to call the bluff of the people who are playing cruel games. Leader Reid called the bluff of my friends on the other side. He said: You want amendments? You got them. You want to pay for this extension? We have done it. What did they do? They walked away. And who is suffering? People like the people I just told you about, ordinary folks who want nothing more than to get a decent job, who are caught in a situation where we are recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. And this is what we give them, a bunch of gobbledygook about: I wanted more of my amendments so I can be proud and offer amendments.

There is a time and a place for filibusters, even though they do far too many. There is a time and a place to argue about process. This is not the time. This is not the place. This is wrong. I applaud Leader Reid for his leadership. I applaud Jack Reed for his leadership.

Before Senator Mikulski takes the microphone, I wish to thank her publicly. What a hard job she had to sit down and negotiate an appropriations bill, an omnibus bill which covers everything we do. It was so hard. But she did it in the right spirit of bipartisanship. So did her colleague, whom she dealt with and had to deal with, Congressman Rogers. As a result, we are going to do something good here and give stability to the American people.

Why can't that same spirit of cooperation take over when we have offered the Republicans everything they wanted in order to get them to vote for unemployment compensation? I am distressed about it, and we will keep fighting on this issue.

I yield the floor.