A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security or veterans benefits, or to increase the tax burden on low- and middle-income taxpayers.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I don't think it will take this long, but I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I come to the floor again to address climate change, particularly today the change that carbon pollution is wreaking in our oceans.

Water temperatures are increasing, sea level is rising, ocean water is growing more acidic, and powerful storms are becoming more frequent and more intense. It is time to wake up to the threat to our oceans and coasts posed by carbon pollution.

The rate at which carbon is now being dumped into the atmosphere and absorbed by our oceans is unprecedented. NOAA estimates almost 1 million tons of the carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere is absorbed into the oceans every hour--1 million tons every hour. We know with scientific certainty that carbon pollution causes the ocean to become more acidic. Indeed, we measure that carbon pollution has caused the global pH of the upper ocean to increase nearly 30 percent--by some measures nearly 40 percent--since preindustrial times.

In Rhode Island, the Ocean State, coastal activities define our heritage, our culture, and also our economy. Our coastal waters are spawning grounds, nurseries and shelters for fish and shellfish, which we enjoy and from which we profit. Our shores and coastal ponds are barriers that protect our coastal communities from ocean storms and that naturally improve water quality. Our oceans and coasts make coastal States such as ours who we are.

We will continue to take advantage of the ocean's bounty, as we should. We will trade, we will fish, and we will sail. We will dispose of waste, we will extract fuel and harness the wind. We will work our oceans. Navies and cruise ships, sailboats and supertankers will plow their surface. We cannot undo this part of our relationship with the sea. What we can change is what we do in return. If we use our best science and judgment to plan for the uses of our oceans, we will continue to reap the value they provide.

Carbon-driven changes to our planet will continue and will accelerate. The faster you are driving, the better your headlights need to be. Our headlights in this area are scientific research and planning. As we move ever faster into this uncharted territory, our headlights had better be working to preserve the valuable ecosystems upon which our communities and economies rely.

The National Ocean Policy, signed by President Obama in 2010, provides a commonsense framework for sensible research and planning and public-private cooperation, as we face the significant challenges bearing down on our oceans and coasts--on both our ecosystems and our industries.

Last week, the White House released the National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan, a blueprint for effective management of our oceans and the Great Lakes. It is not easy to balance the competing needs of commerce, conservation, culture, and recreation. More than 20 Federal agencies oversee our marine industries, governing everything from fisheries to oil and gas leasing. The implementation plan takes this on and moves us toward better and more collaborative management of ocean resources.

The implementation plan gathered the thoughts of a wide range of key stakeholders: maritime and energy industries, conservation and recreation interests, academic experts, and Federal, State, local, and tribal governments. The plan supports economic growth by streamlining permitting and approval processes, by improving mapping and ocean observing, and by providing greater access to data and information. The plan lays out specific actions and timelines to protect and restore coastal wetlands and reefs and to prevent economic losses and job losses due to degraded shores and degraded waters.

Our coasts need immediate attention, so the plan could not come too soon. It states:

Our nation lost nearly 60,000 acres of coastal wetlands

each year between 1998 and 2004. . . . Habitats are being

altered by invasive species that threaten native aquatic life

and cost billions of dollars per year in natural and

infrastructure damage.

The implementation process the administration is pursuing is all about local needs and concerns. So the National Ocean Policy establishes voluntary regional planning bodies. Local people can get together, layer together the relevant data, and promote greater and more responsible use of their region's ocean resources.

In New England, we have seen the value of this cooperative ocean planning. Rhode Island's Ocean Special Area Management Plan--a special area management plan is called a SAMP in the trade--has made ecosystem restoration and industry interests advance simultaneously. I recently spent time at the Northeast Regional Planning Body meeting in Rhode Island and I know our region is excited to move forward with a regional process.

So let's look at some of the practical results when you get the information and the affected people in the room together. In Rhode Island, the wind energy industry, with its vast potential for manufacturing and maintenance jobs, is rapidly developing wind farms off of our coasts. Thanks to the groundwork that was laid by the Rhode Island SAMP, wind developers moved fairly smoothly through the regulatory thicket and they have avoided interference with marine highways, critical fisheries, habitats, and naval training ranges.

There is actually quite a good report I commend to all my colleagues on the ocean SAMP published by the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan. It is a practitioner's guide, and it is a very effective document that shows how well this worked.

In this process, local people were listened to and they were heard. When the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced this wind energy area here off of the Rhode Island coast, there was an area named Coxes Ledge, and the fishermen were concerned. The floor of the ocean at Coxes Ledge made it particularly rich fishing grounds and they didn't want it interfered with by having that area put up for wind farm development. Sure enough, when the map came out, the curve of Coxes Ledge is going right through the middle of the wind farm area, protected for the fishermen. They were listened to and they were heard.

So much of this is simple common sense. In Massachusetts, the endangered North Atlantic right whale, a population of about 450 of them, feeds in the waters just off of Boston. The whale strikes between shipping and the

right whales were becoming a problem. And because the right whale is endangered, it was becoming a real risk for shipping going in and out of Boston Harbor. So they found data that showed where the whale strikes were likely to be and they mapped that data. When they mapped the data, they saw if they moved the shipping channel out of Boston Harbor up a little bit they could come through an area that was largely safe from whale strikes. The cost to the industry was somewhere between 9 and 22 minutes of extra transit time--virtually nothing--while the number of whale strikes has dropped significantly.

Here is another example from outside of Delaware. The green sort of neon-colored dots here track the signals coming off cargo ships going in and out of Delaware Bay. As you can see, there is a pretty solid track coming out of Delaware Bay right through here. When Delaware first proposed its wind energy areas, they proposed these light green blocks as wind energy areas. This one, as we can see here, was planned right on top of the main shipping channel heading southeast out of Delaware Bay.

Critics say these kinds of efforts to get the data and the people in the room together ``zone'' the ocean. That is just plain factually wrong. The policy brings together people who use our ocean. In this case, the case of Delaware Bay, simply putting everybody in the room allowed the wind energy areas to be modified to avoid the conflict. So the southeastern area comes out and the turbine areas are beside it and the problem has been solved. That is not zoning, that is what military officers would call situational awareness; what the military would call deconfliction. What it really is is common sense.

As Nancy Sutley, the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said:

With increasing demands on our ocean, we must improve how

we work together, share information, and plan smartly to grow

our economy, keep our ocean healthy and enjoy the highest

benefits from our ocean resources, now and in the future.

Our ocean and coastal economy is important. Shoreline counties in this country generate 41 percent of our gross domestic product. In 2010, 2.8 million jobs were supported by maritime economic activities; commercial ports supported 13 million jobs; energy and minerals production supported almost three-fourths of a million jobs. But all of this activity creates opportunities for conflict.

The National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan is a blueprint to resolve those wasteful conflicts, to ``deconflict'' intelligently, and to streamline efforts across the Federal Government to keep our oceans and our ocean economy thriving. And it lets each region go forward at its own pace.

Michael Keyworth, recent head of our Rhode Island Marine Trades Association, helped develop the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan, SAMP, said this:

The National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan will enable

regions like New England to move ahead with this smart ocean

planning by engaging people like me, who live and work on the

water every day, while not forcing planning on other regions

that do not currently want to engage in the process.

Climate change is upon us, and its effects will only accelerate as we continue to spew megatons of carbon into our atmosphere. Changes are occurring fast in the oceans. That fact makes it all the more important that Congress remain vigilant and that we put our full support behind the commonsense framework of the national ocean policy.

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

Mr. President, last month, the Senate approved a budget that included a blueprint for balanced and responsible deficit reduction. That budget was skillfully managed by our Budget Committee chairman, Senator Murray. It would complete the deficit reduction needed to stabilize our Nation's finances with a mix of smart spending cuts and revenue from closing wasteful tax loopholes. Top economists agree we need about $4 trillion of deficit reduction to make our finances sustainable, and our budget gets us there. Together with the deficit reduction enacted last Congress, the Senate budget would reduce the deficit by $4.3 trillion through a nearly 2-to-1 mix of spending cuts and revenue.

House Republicans took a very different approach with their budget, making only cuts--drastic cuts--to education, law enforcement, medical research, and even ending Medicare as we know it for future retirees. The House budget derives its deficit reduction from cuts that primarily hurt low-income and middle-class Americans, while refusing to touch a single tax giveaway to wealthy and well-connected special interests. Senate Democrats took a middle course; House Republicans produced an extremist tea party wish list.

In his own budget plan, President Obama included some smart provisions such as investments in infrastructure and the Buffett rule for tax fairness. I respect the President's outreach to a compromise with Republicans, but I cannot support the cuts to Social Security benefits in his plan. It is simply wrong to place the burden of deficit reduction on seniors and the disabled. Social Security--one of the fundamental pillars of the American middle class--has not contributed and will not contribute to our deficits. Social Security is fully funded by its participants through payroll taxes and cannot by law add to the deficit.

Under current payroll tax levels, Social Security will have the funds to pay 100 percent of benefits until 2033. It is true we do need to make some adjustments to ensure that full benefits can be paid beyond that date, but that task has nothing to do with deficit reduction. Even if Congress did nothing before 2033, the projected shortfall would force automatic benefit cuts, not deficit spending.

I do look forward to working with Senators of both parties to ensure that Social Security remains fully solvent for generations to come, but that discussion does not belong in the unrelated debate on our Nation's budget deficits.

The Social Security cuts the President has proposed are not just in the wrong discussion, they are wrong themselves. To reflect inflation, Social Security recipients each year get cost-of-living adjustments, what we call COLAs. The President's proposal changes the formula used to make that determination, shifting to something called the chained Consumer Price Index or chained CPI. It sounds innocuous, but make no mistake, it is a benefit cut cloaked in technical jargon.

The argument for a chained CPI is that it is a more accurate measure of inflation--that it takes into account real-world decisions consumers make to modify their buying habits as prices fluctuate. As the price of apples goes up, we buy more bananas, so the overall effect on our budget is moderated. The result is lower annual cost-of-living adjustments--about 0.3 percent each year. But let's take a look at how seniors fare under the existing COLA structure.

In 2010 and 2011, seniors received no cost-of-living adjustment whatsoever--0.0 percent in 2010, 0.0 percent in 2011. But according to the existing consumer price formula used by government accountants, prices didn't rise enough to justify COLAs. That is what the COLA formula says. But in real life, what did it look like?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seniors saw food prices rise 1.5 percent in 2010, medical costs increase 3.3 percent, and they saw their gas and home heating oil go up by more than 13 percent each, and the COLA covered zero percent.

The next year, 2011, these costs increased again. Food prices jumped 4.5 percent, medical care jumped 3.5 percent, gasoline jumped 9.9 percent, and fuel oil jumped 14.3 percent, and again the COLA for seniors was zero.

So 2010 and 2011 add together; they are not included in one another. So food and beverage is a total of 6 percent, plus, allowing for compounding, 6.8 percent for medical care, 23.7 percent for gasoline, and 27.8 percent for

fuel oil--all with a COLA of zero percent.

The numbers show what Rhode Island seniors know: The problem with the Social Security COLA is that it is too low, that it doesn't meet the real costs seniors experience in real life.

Why does this happen? The existing cost-of-living formula considers prices across the whole economy, including products seniors are not so likely to buy, such as flat-screen TVs and smart phones and sporting equipment. Their prices may have fallen, but seniors don't benefit much from those lower prices.

The problem is that the current system fails to account for seniors' true costs in these areas. So my position is that we should move on to a more accurate formula for seniors, one that focuses on food, medicine and heating oil and gas and the other things seniors actually buy. I have been proud to support legislation to change the Social Security COLA formula to one that is geared more toward seniors, and I will continue to fight for the adoption of that new formula.

Chained CPI takes us in the opposite direction. It assumes consumers will alter the types of goods they buy as prices rise. But seniors on fixed incomes have little ability to shift their buying habits away from these basic expenses, things such as food, medical care, gasoline, and fuel oil. It is hard to shift away from those. The lower COLAs that chained CPI would produce will only cut into seniors' already tight budgets, and force seniors to bear the burden of reducing deficits that Social Security had no part in creating. A 0.3-percent reduction each year might sound small, but over time the power of compound interest makes those benefit cuts significant.

For people currently nearing retirement, these cuts would amount to annual benefit reductions of $658 by the time they reach age 75, $1,147 by the time they reach age 85, and $1,622 by the time they reach age 95. That same power of compounding makes these cuts even larger for future generations of seniors. Perhaps $658 or $1,1622 doesn't sound like much money to some folks around here, but to a senior in Rhode Island living on Social Security, that is real money.

After getting no COLA for 2 years in a row, Bethany, a senior from Smithfield, RI, wrote to me:

My health is not the best and it's not easy trying to

survive on my Social Security and the increasing prices of

gas, food, etc. and co-pays for medical. . . . The COLA

calculation for Social Security doesn't work. We need an

increase yearly to stay even with rising premiums and

everyday expenses. Please continue to fight for Social

Security and Medicare.

Deanne from Coventry, RI, wrote to me in February:

I am 68 years old and retired. I cannot work even part time

because of severe Arthritis. My son lives with me who is

permanently disabled due to an accident when he was 9 years

old. He is now 44 years old. We just make ends meet with

Social Security as we have no other income. We wear sweat

shirts and pants to bed and coats in the house during the

winter because we can't pay the high prices of oil. If Social

Security gets cut, I don't know how we will make it. I have

worked all my adult life until the last two years. I NEED my

Social Security. . . . In the face of ever-increasing prices

for health care, home heating, prescription drugs and grocery

bills, asking seniors to give up more and more of their

Social Security benefit as they age when every dollar counts

is just plain wrong.

These are real-life experiences of people who are the kind of folks chained CPI would affect. Yes, we need to make additional sacrifices to complete the job of deficit reduction; no, those burdens should not fall on our elderly and disabled constituents. Our deficits come from unnecessary Bush-era tax cuts that virtually exclusively benefited the wealthy, they come from a decade of wars we didn't pay for, and they come from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They have nothing to do with Social Security, so don't take it out on the seniors.

As the Senate budget shows, we can complete the task of stabilizing our Nation's finances in smart ways, in fair ways, in balanced ways, in ways that don't put the burden on those who can least afford it.

When I ran for this office, I pledged to the people of Rhode Island that I would oppose cuts to Social Security, and I will keep that promise.

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

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

Would the Senator yield?

I know the Senator from Mississippi was on Active Duty in the Air Force for several years and has stayed in contact with many members of the military not just as a result of his service on the Armed Services Committee but because he is very keenly interested in the welfare of the men and women in our military.

If I am hearing the Senator from Mississippi correctly on this particular issue, what he is saying is that an E-7 who served in Iraq, served in Afghanistan, conceivably served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe even was awarded major meritorious recognition, is now going to have the promise that was made to him about his retirement reduced retroactively. Do I understand that correctly?

Mr. President, again if I may inquire of the Senator, you, as I say, have been very close to any number of military personnel through the years you have served in this body as well as your service in the Mississippi Legislature. Just by virtue of the fact of practicing law in Tupelo, MS, what is the opinion of the Senator from Mississippi as to the morale influence a provision such as this is going to have on our men and women in the military, not just those who are retired but Active-Duty military today?

The Senator also mentioned the reduction in Federal retirement pay--and we have to figure out ways to save money. We all know and understand that. There is a change in the pension for Federal retirees, but it is all prospective going forward.

I am very sympathetic, even though I never served on Active-Duty in the military as you did. But this is very strange. It is very difficult to understand why we would penalize the men and women who have worn or do wear the uniform of the United States versus a very similar provision for the men and women who serve the Government of the United States in a very honorable way, but we are treating them very differently, it seems like almost discriminatorily.

I thank the Senator from Mississippi for giving me an opportunity to speak for a minute. I wish to get to some anecdotes, but first it has been nearly 4 years since the Democrats in the Senate and the House forced the passage of the President's signature law, the Affordable Care Act or what is commonly known as ObamaCare.

It is a title the President has embraced during the promising times and distanced himself from during the very difficult times we are going through now. It has been kind of an interesting dynamic to watch.

Instead of working in a bipartisan fashion to enact a health care law that would bring more competition into the private insurance market through market-based solutions, President Obama and the Democrats structured a deal behind closed doors across this hall that we are looking at on the west side of the Capitol. They structured that deal without any Republican input, giving the Federal Government more control over Americans' health care decisions.

The Senator from Mississippi and I were here on the floor, and we both fought tooth and nail to stop the passage of ObamaCare.

On Christmas Eve, 2009, we came to the floor of the Senate and voted against what I think is the worst piece of legislation that has passed in the Congress in the 19 years the Senator and I have been in Congress. I have been saying for years that ObamaCare caused more problems than it solved, and with the passage of every single day, that is being shown as the painful truth.

Although the White House has stood behind this terrible piece of legislation, some of my colleagues across the aisle have brought into question now the ability of it to stand on its own two feet.

Who can blame them. This has become a major political issue, not only expensive, but it is a political issue. The law continues to be marked by red flags. We have heard a few of the Democrats go as far to say even that it is a train wreck, and they are exactly right.

We have heard from the American people as well. They are rightfully upset that they have been repeatedly lied to and misled about this law by the President of the United States. The

American people don't deserve a law filled with broken promises marked by disaster after disaster. The law is fundamentally broken and Americans deserve better.

I noticed yesterday, in a hearing, the Secretary of HHS reported that nearly 365,000 individuals have selected plans from the State and Federal marketplaces, a number that is far below the administration's goal. I think their goal--and the Senator may correct me--is 7 million by the end of March.

I notice also that the State of Oregon has spent $300 million setting up their exchange. As of this morning there were 40 people, 40 citizens of Oregon had signed up. The fact is that this law is not working. It is becoming more and more expensive every day. As we talked about in 2009, when we were debating this bill, it is going to be the largest mandatory expenditure that the U.S. taxpayer has ever seen.

The Senator is correct. I have a whole book of anecdotes and I wish to mention some.

First, Linda of Douglasville wrote to me about her dropped coverage. She said:

We lost our Gold plan. All of our costs will go up next

year considerably. It is harder and harder for us to really

retire!

My husband, who is 71, still has to work part time to pay

for our rising costs.

Linda, from Hampton, GA, also writes:

In 1997 I retired from Motorola, Inc. after having a career

there for almost 30 years. One of my benefits was a retiree

secondary insurance plan, after Medicare, that provided

coverage for medical and prescriptions; my monthly premium

for that coverage was $127.

Effective January 1, 2013 Motorola withdrew their insurance

coverage for retirees.

Under ObamaCare they simply could not afford it. I could go on and on. I know the Senator from Mississippi has some other anecdotes that he would like to mention, and I will engage on some others on my side shortly.

The American people want affordable health insurance. The title of the law even centers on the word ``affordable.'' I am not sure how anybody could possibly argue that ObamaCare is affordable when the letters I am receiving from constituents over and over every single day, time and again, reference a significant increase in their total health care costs. Virtually 100 percent of the letters we are getting indicate that not only are the monthly premiums going up, but the deductible is going up, their copays are going up, and it is simply going to be more out-of-pocket expense than either actively working individuals or retired individuals ever thought they would have to pay for health care.

Terra from Columbus writes to explain what is happening to her children.

I carry medical insurance for my two adult children because

they cannot afford it on their own.

Let us remember, ObamaCare covers children up to 26 years of age.

Being one that has always had medical insurance and knowing

the value of it if something bad happens, I have also made

sure that they both had some type of coverage when they

became adults. The sad part is I have gotten a letter on both

and now their insurance will be canceled because I as their

parent can no longer afford to pay it for them either. We

received a letter which shows where their old policy covers

everything and I mean everything, but because of ObamaCare's

requirements to carry everything, a new policy will cost us

twice as much each month. With me being unemployed and my

husband the only one working we have no choice but to drop

their coverage.

Wynell, from Roswell, GA, wrote:

My private coverage was superb. But now, my insurance

premiums are going from $319 a month to $769 a month and not

only that, my copay is increasing from $5 to $20 for my

primary care visits and $5 to $50 for specialist visits. I

will be responsible for $500 per day out-of-pocket cost if I

am hospitalized (before my hospital costs were included) and

I will also have to pay for any tests (before all my tests

were included). And apparently, subsidies do not apply to me.

Loretta, from Canton, GA, writes:

I received a letter from my insurance company dated

September 25, 2013. I had until November 15 to choose to

remain with my current coverage until December 2014. My rate

increased by 16 percent. According to the letter, the

Affordable Care Act premium will increase by 139 percent. My

former plan did not include maternity. I'm 60 years old. I

don't need maternity. My new plan will include maternity. My

old plan was great for preventive care. I paid nothing for

immunizations including tetanus and flu shots. I paid a $30

copay for a doctor visit. My prescriptions have been very

reasonable. The new plan requires a network of doctors and

hospitals. The premiums were between 150 percent and 200

percent above what I'm paying now. I did not enroll but have

received numerous e-mails reminding me to enroll. So far, I'm

hoping I can keep my premium at the 16 percent increase for

2014. Otherwise, I will not have health insurance. I can't

afford the new premium.

Kevin, from Roswell, GA, wrote:

We are a family of four. We have and want a catastrophic-

only high deductible health plan with low monthly premiums

and full coverage once we hit our deductible. We like our

plan.

This is very typical of a lot of families who were promised by the President, if you like your plan, you can keep it.

We were paying $500 a month until July of this year. I had

bladder cancer in November of 2012 which was successfully

removed and I require no follow up treatment, just biannual

checkups, so I expected an increase in my premium this year.

In fact, our premium did go up to $560 a month in July. On

November 1, I got the letter telling us our premium was now

going to $902 a month, a 60 percent increase. After three

separate calls, I got the

information that the $902 a month change was ``Option B,''

which is an ObamaCare-compliant plan which covers abortion,

birth control and maternity care. Since we could not have

children, we adopted two kids, so that coverage is 100

percent completely unnecessary for us. ``Option A'' we came

to find out a few weeks later, was the option to keep our

plan with an increase to $617 a month. This plan will be

canceled on December 31, 2014, at which point we will be

forced to get an ObamaCare-compliant plan costing much more

and covering things we will never, ever need.

Now, I am sure the Senator from Mississippi has received dozens and dozens of these letters, just as we have in my office. Knowing the State of Mississippi has a lot of rural areas, as my State does--in fact, I live in a rural area--there is a huge discrepancy created by ObamaCare between insurance premiums in rural America versus insurance premiums in more urban areas. Many of these premiums and deductibles are so high that it defeats the purpose of having health insurance.

This really does hit close to home for me because I truly live in a rural part of our State. In two of the regions in Southwest Georgia designated by ObamaCare, there is only one insurer--one insurance company--that is offering coverage, and the premiums in that corner of our State are much higher than in the rest of our State. It is the poorest part of our State.

In region one, which includes Albany, GA, the least expensive silver plan for a 21-year-old healthy Georgian is $360 a month. That is the highest rate in the State. In region 15, which is also in that part of our State, the same plan is $330 a month.

You have to remember these are people who are paying zero today because they aren't covered. They are either going to have to pay a fine or they are going to have to take that coverage.

In metro Atlanta the cheapest silver plan for a 21-year-old is $179.20 a month, matching the rate in regions in northeast as well as northwest Georgia, which are more populated. That is half the rate of an individual in southwest Georgia where the average median income is the lowest of any part of our state.

So needless to say, households in rural southwest Georgia often do not have the same income as those in the northwest and northeast part of the State, yet they are being stuck with the highest premiums.

I could go on and on about these anecdotes and about the serious economic consequences ObamaCare is going to cause for individuals in my State, but I want to turn it back over to the Senator from Mississippi for some additional comments.

The Senator is exactly right. Obviously, we both spent an awful lot of time on the floor of the Senate debating this. As we talked about, we were here voting on Christmas Eve of 2009 against this bill when it passed with 60 Democratic votes. No Republican in the Senate voted for the bill. No Republican in the House of Representatives voted for the bill. It passed with all Democratic votes.

If the Senator will recall that famous quote by the then-Speaker of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she said: What we have to do is pass this bill and then we will figure out what is in it.

Well, guess what. What we are talking about here is just one of the myriad of consequences the American people are now finding out is in that bill, and they have every right in the world to chastise everybody who voted for that bill who didn't read it, because these are the real out-of-pocket consequences to hard-working, taxpaying Americans that were never talked about on the floor of this Senate or the floor of the House.

The Senator from Mississippi mentioned the way this came about and the comments of the majority leader that I can't believe he really believes. It is hard for me to believe he thinks this is working. He is not a fool.

I also listened to the debate, as we talked about earlier, on the floor leading up to the vote on Christmas Eve 2009. I listened to the debate last night and today by some of our colleagues. I thought our colleague from Nebraska, Senator Johanns, made a very profound statement.

We are fortunate to serve, in my opinion, in the greatest legislative body in the world. The Senator and I spent a number of years in the House, and that is a great institution also. They are both unusual from a constitutional legislative standpoint. But in the Senate there are certain rights of the minority that you don't have in the House.

The American people know and understand what has happened here; that is, 2 weeks ago the Democrats in the Senate broke the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate, and they did so in a very arbitrary and almost mean-spirited way that basically ignored the arguments of the minority. The minority in the Senate has always had rights--up until this rule change a couple weeks ago.

The Senator from Nebraska said today that when we were debating on this floor during the late fall leading up to the vote in December 2009, that because the Democrats had 60 votes, they looked to the minority on our side of the aisle and they said: We don't care what you say. His direct quote was, ``Sit down and shut up.'' And the Senator felt a very eerie feeling taking place 2 weeks ago during the debate on this floor, where the Democrats broke the rule to change the rule, and they looked on this side of the aisle and said: We don't care what the Parliamentarian says. We don't care what the rules of the Senate have been for decades and decades. We are going to change those rules, and you all can sit down and shut up.

I thought what Senator Johanns said was pretty significant, and he was right on track.

I will mention one other major concern I have with this bill that I am sure my friend from Mississippi has also heard, and that has to do with the safety of personal information relative to this new health care system. ObamaCare opens the door to fraud and identity theft like we have never seen in a public program. When individuals visit the exchange and apply for health insurance coverage, they have to provide sensitive personal data, such as Social Security numbers and income and tax return information. This information is then stored in a Federal data service hub. The proper security safeguards for that Federal data hub and other components of the Web site have not been put in place. Despite repeated warnings about this, the administration insisted on moving forward.

If the rollout of healthcare.gov is an indication of what is to follow, then I agree with Americans who have serious reservations about the security of their personal information when applying for health insurance coverage through the exchanges.

The Presiding Officer and I sit on the Intelligence Committee together, and we hear during our daily briefings about cyber attacks taking place against the U.S. Federal Government, against private entities in the United States, as well as against individuals inside the United States.

I can only imagine, with all the problems we have seen with getting up and simply having this Web site of healthcare.gov running, that some 15-year-old sitting in his garage somewhere in America--or maybe Beijing or Teheran--looking to have some fun could hack into the computer system and retrieve all the personal information of any individual they wanted to, including their Social Security number.

The Senator is exactly right. And we obviously know what that would lead to. Those hackers attacking America today are getting proprietary information as well as financial remuneration, unfortunately, in too many instances. And to open your personal information book to the Federal Government is something that rightfully, in my mind, has the American people upset, and it is a provision in this health care plan that certainly is not popular. As Nancy Pelosi said, let's pass it, and then we will read it and figure it out. But here we go again. It is another provision in there nobody knew anything about. We had no debate, as the Senator from Mississippi referred to earlier about another issue of the floor of the Senate, regarding having to provide personal information.

I will close my comments with two additional anecdotes that really strike at what Middle America is all about and what suffering and economic pain Middle America is going through right now as a result of ObamaCare.

Michael from Dunwoody, GA, wrote in and said:

I had a really great policy for $277 a month. The premiums

were paid by my Flexplan from my employer and the excess my

employer paid to my flex each month kept my balance

increasing. I now have about $35,000 accrued.

My provider cancelled that plan and my Flex now offers a

lesser plan. The premiums went to $550 a month. I actually

joined AMAC and used their service to find a plan from a

different provider. I must now pay the premiums out of my own

pocket as President Obama won't allow me to use my own money

from my flex plan to pay these premiums.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I thank the Senators from Illinois and Wyoming for their comments. Basically, the Senator from Illinois has said the bill is ready to be amended. It is here for that purpose. We encourage our colleagues to bring amendments if they have them.

We could have started the amendments on Monday if the opponents had agreed to that. But we were forced, through Senate procedure, to go through Monday and Tuesday and most of today in order to deal with the filibuster. But we are about to be ready to vote on amendments.

It was unfortunate; some people have said in a misleading way that this taxes the Internet. Of course, it does not. There is a Federal law against taxing the Internet. The Senator from Arkansas attempted to extend that ban on taxing the Internet for 10 years and one of the opponents to our legislation blocked that. He blocked even having a vote on that. That is unfortunate.

It is ironic that the Senator from Montana would object to the fact that this is an 11-page bill. I don't want to relitigate some of the other bills we have passed around here, but there was a big hue and cry when Senators got a 2,700-page bill that dealt with health care and it was complicated and hard to read. We have gone in a different direction. We have an 11-page bill that is the result of work that has gone on

since 2001 by the Senator from Wyoming, that was introduced in 2011 in substantially this form, on which there was a full hearing in the Commerce Committee in 2012 and a partial hearing in the Finance Committee in 2012. It has been introduced with exactly these 11 pages since February of this year. So everybody can read it. It is not complicated. It is plain and simple. It is about States rights. I think it is good that we have an uncomplicated 11-page bill we all can read and we have had plenty of time to read it.

Of course, we would have preferred to have it reported by the Finance Committee, but they would not report it. So the only choice we had was to bring it to the floor. Now it is open for amendment so I hope we will do that.

The only other point is it was said there is no benefit to an out-of- State seller from, say, selling into Tennessee, if someone from Wyoming is selling into Tennessee. Of course there is a benefit. We are buying that business's goods. All we want to be able to do is to have the right to say: Mr. Wyoming, if you want to sell into Tennessee, you are going to play by the same rules the Tennessee businesses have to play by. That is all we want to do. The equal protection clause of the Constitution guarantees we cannot do anything worse to you. But if you want to sell to us, you do what we do.

We think that is fair and we think that not allowing States to consider that is forcing States to play ``Mother May I'' with Members of Congress about matters which should be within their own sovereign jurisdiction and keeping States from doing what they think is fair.

I thank Senators Durbin and Enzi for their leadership.

Mr. President, I have enjoyed the discussion on the Marketplace Fairness Act. It is nice to have a good debate and I am looking forward to voting on amendments that are here.

I wish to address two or three points that have been made during the debate. The first is about what we call here regular order. What we mean by that is that the bill was introduced, it goes to a committee, and the committee reports it to the floor, and we bring it up on the floor, and we have a debate and then we vote on it. We want to see more of that around here.

Well, the problem with this bill is that the Finance Committee would not act on it. Let's be straightforward about it. This bill has been around a long time. The Finance Committee chairman is the only one who can schedule a hearing and cause it to be acted on. He did not want to do that, despite the fact that we asked him to do it. So as a result, the majority leader used a procedure that brings the bill to the floor.

To underscore that, let me ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a timeline for the Marketplace Fairness Act. It details the steps we have taken since 2001.

To summarize some of these steps, this began in the 107th Congress in 2001. Now Senator Enzi started even before that, I think, with Senator Dorgan. They introduced the Internet Tax Moratorium and Equity Act in 2000 and 2001. Then in 2003, the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Act was introduced by Senator Enzi. That is 10 years ago.

Then again in 2005 and 2006 Senator Enzi and Senator Dorgan. Then again in 2007 and 2008, Senator Enzi. In the 111th Congress no bill was introduced. But now we are getting to a little more recent history. Last Congress, 2011 and 2012, Senator Durbin introduced the Main Street Fairness Act. Senator Enzi joined him in that. It was referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

So for all of that time, the Finance Committee has had an opportunity to work on this legislation in the way

they thought it should be. There were hearings in the Senate Commerce Committee in August of 2012 on essentially the same 11-page bill that has been introduced here today and that we are acting on.

There was a partial hearing in the Senate Finance Committee during that year. But that was all. Then, in this year, in February, on Valentine's Day, Senator Enzi introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act we are debating here, this 11-page bill. There was a letter from 16 Senators, Republicans and Democrats, asking the Finance Committee to hold a hearing and to deal with it. But it has not.

I respect the decision of the chairman to be opposed to the bill and not to hold a hearing and not to report the bill to the floor. But if he does that, then I would suggest he should respect the right of the majority leader to bring the bill to the floor and allow the Senate to debate it.

As far as the regular order goes, a week should be long enough to consider this bill, which has been in one form or another around since 2001. We could have begun debating amendments on Monday. That is when the bill came to the floor. But the opponents filibustered it. This was not a Republican or a Democratic filibuster, it was both sides, from opponents. And what that deprived us of was an opportunity to vote and debate amendments on Monday and Tuesday.

Then we had another vote. So we have now had three votes, one during the budget session, one on cloture on the motion to proceed, and then one on the motion to proceed itself. We have gotten 74, 75 votes each time. It is a majority of the Democratic Senators, it is a majority of the Republican Senators. This does not happen all the time, that we have such strong majorities on each side of the aisle, saying in three successive votes of 74 and 75 votes: We favor an important piece of legislation.

I would hope the better course would be to come to some agreement that we can take the amendments we have here from Democrats and from Republicans, bring them up, table them, vote on them, debate them, and act on this and bring this to a conclusion this week.

Then there is substantial support in the House of Representatives for this. The bill could then go to the House. The House could do whatever the House wishes. There could be a conference and we could get a result. Every attempt has been made by the sponsors of this legislation since 2001 to bring this through the regular order, which means take it through the committee. The opponents of the idea have chosen first in the Finance Committee to not allow there to be a markup of the bill, and then on the floor to not allow us to debate amendments.

For example, some people say this legislation taxes the Internet. Of course, that is 100 percent wrong, because there is a Federal law banning State taxation of the Internet. Senator Pryor of Arkansas sought to extend that ban for 10 more years today. The opponents of the bill objected even to a vote on taxing the Internet. This is very disappointing. That is the information about the timeline I wanted to put in.

Here is some more information that I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point.

These are letters from Senators to the leaders of the Finance Committee. The first letter is dated January 31, 2012, last year, at the beginning of the year. It was from five Democrats and five Republicans who introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act. It asks for a hearing, asks for the committee to act. That is the first letter.

The next letter came this year, on February 14, from 16 Senators, both parties, to the Finance Committee, asking the Finance Committee to act on the Marketplace Fairness Act.

Then there is a letter to the leaders of the Finance Committee from the National Governors Association, signed by the Democratic Governor of Washington and the Republican Governor of Tennessee, asking the Finance Committee, on behalf of the States, to consider this legislation and act on it. The Finance Committee elected not to do that.

This information will be part of the Record.

Finally, there is also a letter dated April 22 of this year from the National Governors Association urging Senators Reid and McConnell to pass this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Now, finally, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the names of the Governors and former Governors who support this legislation.

I do that with a little bit of obvious bias as a former Governor. I think it is important that the country know what the Governors think, because the legislation we are talking about today is a States rights bill. It is an 11-page bill. It is a very simple, straightforward bill. It simply says that Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, New Jersey, any State, has the right to decide for itself whether it wants to collect taxes that are already owed from some of the people who owe the taxes or all of the people who owe the taxes. That is it. That is it. That is all it does.

The Governors who supported it are the Governor of Alabama, Virginia, New Jersey, South Carolina, Nevada, Iowa, South Dakota, Maine, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Governor Otter of Idaho, Arizona, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Hawaii.

I just read a bunch of Republican Governors. Now I am into the Democrats: Kentucky, Hawaii, Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, Missouri, Massachusetts, Illinois and West Virginia. The former Governors include Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, and the former Democratic Governor of Washington.

Here we have a bill on the floor that we have voted on three times already that has a majority of the Democratic Senators and a majority of the Republican Senators, and 75 votes three times--74 one time, 75 twice. The bill also has the support of a long list of Republican Governors--actually more Republican than Democratic Governors. Yet we have got some people in Washington who say, we do not trust the States to make these decisions. I wonder if these people have ever read the Constitution of the United States? I wonder if they know what the 10th Amendment says? This was a very important part of the creation of this country.

Sovereign States had reserved to them their powers. They didn't expect to come to Washington and play ``Mother May I'' to a bunch of Senators and Congressmen who fly here on airplanes and think they are smarter than they were when they left Nashville, Memphis or wherever their hometown is. The purpose of this bill is to leave within the States the responsibility for making decisions.

Some people up here think they know best. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Tennessee doesn't have an income tax. I would like for every State not to have an income tax, but I am not going to impose that from Washington just because I am a Senator.

Tennessee has a right-to-work law. I would like for every State to have a right-to-work law, but I am not going to impose that from Washington. States have the right to be right, States have the right to be wrong, and Washington has no business telling sovereign States what its tax structure ought to be. Washington certainly has no business standing in the way of States stopping discrimination against taxpayers and businesses because that is exactly what we are doing if we don't act.

We are perpetuating discrimination. Most conservatives I know don't like picking and choosing between winners and losers.

They don't like treating one taxpayer one way and one in a similar situation another way, one business one way and another one another way. That is exactly what we are doing if we don't act.

We are discriminating against the shoestore in Wyoming, against the boot store in Nashville, and against the small store in Maryville, TN. We are saying collect the tax when you sell something, but if your competitor from outside your State sells it, he or she does not have to. That is discrimination.

That is why the leading conservatives such as the chairman of the American Conservative Union, William Buckley, before he died; and Art Laffer, the economist who helped President Reagan develop his ideas; and the Governors such as Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Bill Haslam, that is why these conservatives say they support the bill.

We are not even deciding whether States will collect taxes from out- of-State sellers. We are just saying States have the right to do it. Of course they have the right to do it.

That is why I am including this list of Governors. I think it is part of our job as Senators to respect the sovereign States from where we come, to respect the rights of the States to not think that just because we are in Washington we know better. Most Tennesseans don't like that.

I know when I was Governor nothing used to make me madder than a bunch of legislators coming up with some bright idea in Washington, passing it, turning it into a law, holding a press conference, taking the credit for it, and then sending the bill to me. The next thing you know they would be home making a speech at the Lincoln Day Dinner or Jefferson Day Dinner, if they were a Democrat, about local control. Well, it is about local control.

The idea that people in Washington would say we don't trust the States to make decisions about how to spend money, look at our record. We are running up trillion-dollar deficits every year, borrowing 26 cents out of every $1 we spend.

I come from a State that has no State debt on roads. It has to balance the budget every year. It has a AAA bond rating. I would trust Governor Haslam, Lieutenant Governor Ramsey, the Speaker of the House, and the Republican legislature a lot more than I do the Senate and Congress to make decisions about tax dollars.

I think I know pretty well what they will do if they have power to do it. I suspect they will say they are not going to pick and choose winners and losers. I know they are going to say that because the Governor and Lieutenant Governor told me. I expect what they will say is this will bring in more revenue so we will lower our tax rate because we will start collecting money from all the people who owe it instead of some of the people who owe it.

It is correct that some Governors have already said that. We were told today that in Ohio they have already said if this bill passes, they will collect money from everybody who owes it and then they will lower their income taxes.

Art Laffer said in his column in the Wall Street Journal: That is precisely what we ought to do to stimulate growth. He said: If we are going to have a tax, the best tax, said Mr. Laffer, is a tax that covers the largest number of people at the lowest possible rate.

If that is the case, what we are perpetuating within action is the worst kind of tax, which is the tax that States are allowed to tax a smaller range of people at a higher rate. This permits them to tax all the people who are in a similarly situated place at a lower rate, if that is what they choose to do.

The arrogance of those in Washington who would say they don't trust the States to make those decisions, they need to go back to seventh grade, read the U.S. Constitution and learn a little American history about where this country came from.

I am very proud of this Senate for, on this important issue led by Senator Durbin and Senator Enzi, coming up with 75 and 74 votes 3 consecutive times to say we believe in a two-word principle on this 11- page bill, States rights or 10th Amendment, that we will recognize the power of States to make their own decisions.

If we don't act, all these claims about what happened to the 9,600 jurisdictions will come true. Some Governor--I know I would do it if I were still there--the Senate didn't act on this, the Congress didn't act, I would go right back to the Supreme Court. I would bet that 20 years after the Quill case that Senator Heitkamp brought, back before there was an Internet, when the Court then said that requiring out-of- State sellers to collect the tax was burdensome, they would look at the Internet.

Those Justices know they can find out the weather in their hometowns by putting in the ZIP Code and putting in the name of the town. They know that an out-of-State seller could figure out the sales tax from the ZIP Code of the buyer. They know that.

I will predict that they would hold it is not an undue burden, and then all

the out-of-State sellers really would have 9,600 jurisdictions to deal with. We are simplifying, and we are creating something that will work. We are following a process that is well tried. There are a great many out-of-State catalog sellers and online sellers that today do exactly what the instate sellers do. They collect the sales tax. They do it through the ZIP Code over the Internet. We are saying everybody should do that except those who sell less than $1 million a year. They don't have to do anything under this law.

According to many economists, that takes 99 percent of the online sellers out of the effect of this bill. We have tried to bring this through regular order. We are down here trying right now. We have received substantial support. There have been hearings. There has been a lot of work in the House, and there is broad support from the Governors. I am hopeful we will move forward tomorrow, finish this legislation, send it to the House, and take a step toward recognizing the Constitutional framework of our country by honoring the sovereign States rights to make decisions for themselves and stopping this attitude of requiring Governors and legislators to come to Washington and play ``Mother May I'' with responsibilities that ought to be clearly the responsibility of States.

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

Mr. President, I also agree we should not invade Canada. I live right near there. It would be terrible.

What we are hearing and what we have heard now for a number of months is a discussion about deficit reduction, about how we proceed and how we address the fact that this country has a $16.6 trillion national debt. That is a serious issue.

I think as we contemplate how we address this issue, we have to put it into a broader context as to what is going on in the United States. What is the best way forward in terms of deficit reduction at a time when the United States has by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. In other words, we cannot talk about how we proceed with deficit reduction, we cannot say it is OK to cut Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or nutrition programs when the middle class of this country is disappearing, poverty is extremely high, while at the same time the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. Any serious discussion about deficit reduction has to include those issues.

Let me bore you for a moment with some interesting statistics. This, in fact, came out just yesterday from the Pew Research Center. What they said is that all the new wealth generated in this country from 2009 to 2011 went to the top 7 percent of the American households. All the new wealth went to the top 7 percent of American households, while the bottom 93 percent of Americans saw a net reduction in their wealth.

The Pew Research Center found that from 2009 to 2011, the mean net worth of American households in the top 7 percent rose by 28 percent, while the mean net worth of the bottom 93 percent of American households went down by 4 percent; in other words, the people on top are doing very well, everybody else is not doing well.

Over this same time period, the top 7 percent of American households saw their wealth increase by a combined $5.6 trillion--the top 7 percent, $5.7 trillion in wealth increase; the bottom 93 percent saw a wealth decline of $600 billion. That is what the Pew Research Center reported just yesterday.

Today, when we talk about distribution of wealth and income, the wealthiest 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America. Four hundred people have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. Today, one family, the Walton family-- owners of Walmart--own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people; one family has more wealth than the bottom 40 percent.

Today--and this is truly a remarkable fact which of course we do not talk about too much--the top 1 percent of Americans own 38 percent of all financial wealth. Let's guess what the bottom 60 percent of the American people own. The top 1 percent own 38 percent of the wealth. The bottom 60 percent own 2.3 percent of the wealth in America. That is a rather remarkable and disturbing fact.

Today, as Warren Buffett has pointed out, the 400 richest Americans are now worth a recordbreaking $1.7 trillion, more than five times what we were worth just two decades ago. Meanwhile, according to a June 2012 study from the Federal Reserve, median net worth for middle-class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. That is the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle- class family.

That is distribution of wealth. That is incredibly unequal, incredibly unfair, and getting worse and worse. That is something we might want to keep in mind when we talk about how we do deficit reduction.

Then when we talk about distribution of income, what we earned last year, that is even worse than distribution of wealth, as bad as that is. If you can believe it, the last study we have seen on this subject--this is quite amazing--showed that from 2009 to 2011, all the new income created during that time period went to the top 1 percent while the bottom 99 percent actually saw a decline in their income. All the new income created in that time period, 2009 to 2011, went to the top 1 percent. Real unemployment today is not 7.6 percent, it is 13.8 percent if we count those people who have given up looking for work and those people who are working part-time. The youth unemployment rate is just horrendous, and it is even higher than the general average.

Very interestingly, a new poll came out by Gallup that was done just a few days ago--April 17, 2013. I find the results of that poll very remarkable. This poll deals with an issue that very few people in Congress are even prepared to talk about, let alone act upon.

Here is what the poll from April 17, 2013--this week--said: About 6 in 10 Americans--about 60 percent--believe money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people in the United States, while only one-third of Americans think the current distribution is fair.

So when my friends want to cut programs for the middle class and give tax

breaks to the rich, they should understand that about 60 percent of the American people already believe that we have an unfair distribution of wealth in America. What is even more interesting, according to this Gallup poll from a few days ago--and they do this poll every year--is that a recordbreaking 52 percent of the American people believe ``that our government,'' i.e, the Congress, ``should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.'' Again, that is 52 percent of the American people who believe that.

How many Members of the Congress get up and come close to reflecting what a majority of the American people want? The American people know that the middle class is collapsing. They know poverty is unacceptably high. They know the wealthy and large corporations are doing extraordinarily well, and they want us to do something about it. But around here, forget doing something about it. We cannot even talk about what the American people want us to do.

The American people are frustrated with Congress for a whole lot of reasons, and certainly at the top of the list is how we are ignoring the economic reality facing the middle class of this country and the growing wealth and income inequality. They want us to do something about it, and I think it is high time we did.

So instead of cutting programs for the middle class, they are giving more tax breaks for those people who don't need it. Maybe we should do what the American people want and ask the wealthy and large corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes and protect working families.

Interestingly enough, we hear from the wealthiest people in this country and from their organizations. What we hear from them is not: Hey, we are doing really well. We know this country has a whole lot of problems, and we are prepared to pitch in; we are prepared to help out with deficit reduction. By the way, for those who are on Wall Street, remember that it was the American people who bailed out Wall Street. Instead of hearing how they are prepared to reciprocate now in America's time of need, unfortunately what we are hearing is quite the contrary.

Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and this is what he said on November 19, 2012, to CBS:

You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower

people's expectations--the entitlements and what people think

that they're going to get, because they're not going to get

it.

Blankfein and his friends at the Business Roundtable recently came out with a report. Now, the Business Roundtable is the organization representing the CEOs of the largest corporations. All of them make millions of dollars a year in salary or benefits. All of them have very generous retirement benefits. Some of them are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

These people, the Business Roundtable, which consists of Wall Street and other large corporations that are doing phenomenally well, came forward and said to Congress: You should raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare to 70 and cut Social Security COLAs by adopting the so-called chained CPI. The wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well, Wall Street gets bailed out by working families all over this country, and then these guys come back to Congress and say: Raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to 70 years of age.

Needless to say, my views are a little bit different than Mr. Blankfein's or the Business Roundtable. I believe the way to do deficit reduction is not by punishing people who are already hurting and struggling to keep their heads above water. We don't punish the sick, the kids, the elderly, or disabled veterans. We need to ask those people who are doing very well to start paying their fair share of taxes.

Now I will talk about what I think we should be doing and why we should be doing it. In 1952, 32 percent of all of the revenue generated in this country came from large corporations--about one-third of all the revenue. Today just 9 percent of Federal revenue comes from corporate America. In 2011, corporations paid just 12 percent of their profits in taxes. That is the lowest percentage since 1972.

In 2005--the last figures we have--one out of four corporations paid no Federal income taxes at all even though they collected over $1 trillion in revenue during that 1-year period.

In 2011, corporate revenue as a percentage of GDP was just 1.2 percent lower than any other major country in the OECD, including Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, and many other countries. Each and every year corporations and the wealthy are avoiding more than $100 billion in U.S. taxes by sheltering their incomes in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and other offshore tax havens.

So the point is: How do we do deficit reduction? Do we say to an elderly woman in the State of Vermont who is trying get by on $14,000 or $15,000 a year that we are going to cut her Social Security?

Do we say to a disabled vet: Thank you for your service and your sacrifice for this country, we are sorry you lost your legs, but we are going to have to cut your benefits?

Do we say to a struggling low-income family trying to survive on one or another nutrition program: Sorry, but you may have to go hungry and not get dinner on Wednesday?

Do we say to working people who have lost their jobs: We are going to have to cut your unemployment compensation which will make it almost impossible for your family to survive?

Is that our approach or do we go to corporate America, which is enjoying recordbreaking profits?

One out of four corporations pays nothing in taxes. Do we say to them: You know what, it is time you helped us with deficit reduction.

I hear a lot of my Republican friends and the President talking about how we need tax reform, but we are going to do it deficit neutral. No, I beg to differ. We do need tax reform. We do need to end the absurdity of losing huge amounts of money because of the tax havens in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda and elsewhere, but we also have to raise revenue when we do tax reform. It is not simply lowering tax rates.

I will give some examples about how absurd the current situation is and why--before we cut Social Security and before we attack programs that the middle class and working families of this country depend upon--we have to end these absurd loopholes corporate America is enjoying.

I have just a few examples. Bank of America is one of the financial institutions that was bailed out by the American people when their recklessness and greed almost resulted in the collapse of our financial system. In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, which, of course, has a zero percent tax rate to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Bank of America set up 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands. In 2010, not only did Bank of America pay nothing in Federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. Bank of America paid nothing in taxes.

In 2010, JPMorgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. They avoided paying $4.9 billion.

Goldman Sachs is one of the largest institutions in the country. In 2010, Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries and offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes.

Citigroup, which is another financial institution that was bailed out by the taxpayers of this country, has paid no Federal income taxes for the last 5 years. That is not bad. Many people who are out there watching this are saying: That is pretty good. How did they avoid paying income taxes when they are one of the largest corporations in America for a 5-year period? That is pretty good.

During the last 5 years General Electric made $81 billion in profit, which is not too shabby. Not only has General Electric avoided paying Federal income taxes during these years, it received a tax rebate of $3 billion from the IRS. GE has at least 14 offshore subsidiaries in Bermuda, Singapore, and Luxembourg for the purpose of avoiding U.S. income taxes.

Does anyone still want to know why the American people are cynical about what is going on in Washington? Does anyone want to know why the Congress of the United States has an extremely low level of support or favorability? It is because the American people know they are getting ripped off. They are

working 50 or 60 hours a week, and they are paying their taxes. General Electric makes $81 billion, and over the last 5 years they have paid nothing in taxes. Does anybody vaguely think that is fair?

We have some people who say: We want to do tax reform, but we want to make it revenue neutral. We don't want any new income in order to help us with deficit reduction. Let's cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, but, no, we cannot get new revenue from large corporations.

During the last 5 years Verizon made over $48 billion in profits. Not only has Verizon avoided paying Federal income taxes during those years, it received a $535 million rebate from the IRS--not too bad.

From 2008 through 2010, not only did Honeywell avoid paying Federal income taxes, it received a $34 million tax refund from the IRS.

Merck is a pharmaceutical company. In 2009 not only did Merck pay no Federal income taxes, it received a $55 million tax refund from the IRS. On and on it goes: Corning, Boeing, Microsoft, Caterpillar, Cisco, Dow Chemical. I have example after example of large profitable corporations where CEOs make millions and millions of dollars, and they say to the American people: We support cuts in programs for you--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it--but don't ask us to pay more in taxes.

This Senate has a decision to make: Do we occasionally--I am not asking for much--stand up to the lobbyists, campaign contributors, and big money interests and ask the large corporations and the wealthy who are doing phenomenally well to help us with deficit reduction or do we continue to stick it to the working families and the middle class of this country? That is the challenge and the issue we face. I hope we have the courage to do the right thing.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today along with my colleague from Vermont to introduce a concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that the so-called chained CPI should not be used for the purpose of calculating Social Security benefits or benefits for disabled veterans.

As we work to reduce the deficit in a balanced and responsible manner, many have discussed changing the measure of inflation used to calculate the cost-of-living allowances to a measure of inflation called the chained CPI.

Now, some claim that the chained CPI is a more accurate measure of inflation because it takes into account the fact that consumers may change their spending behavior and substitute items with lower priced increases for items with higher priced increases. As a result of this feature, the chained CPI results in a lower measure of inflation.

All of this may seem very technical, but the impact of requiring Social Security or veterans disability COLAS--cost-of-living adjustments--to be based on the chained CPI is anything but technical. It will have real and negative impacts on our seniors and those who become disabled as a result of service in the Armed Forces. In fact, the most adversely impacted would be the oldest and the poorest. I do not think anything could be more unfair or inappropriate or unnecessary.

As this first chart shows, the chained CPI is a real cut in Social Security benefits. According to Social Security Works, this policy would reduce annual Social Security benefits for the average worker at age 75 by $658 a year, by age 85 by $1,147 a year, and by age 95 by $1,622 a year. Over on this side of the chart we see the cumulative cut; in other words, what would happen over the years. From age 65 to 75 people would lose about $4,600, by age 85 they would lose $13,900, and by age 95 they would lose $28,000.

I think a couple things this chart shows is that people are penalized for living longer--the longer they live, the more they are penalized.

Now, one might say: Well, $658 a year by the time you are age 75, that does not sound like a lot. Yes, not to some of us, not to us with our incomes. Look at the kind of retirement programs we have. If you are in the upper quintile, of course, that does not seem like much. But, again, if we look at a second chart I have, we will see who really kind of gets hurt, and it is the poorer you are.

Let's put it this way: Let's say you are 65, and your total income is less than $12,554 a year. That puts you below the poverty line. The total amount of your income that comes from Social Security is 84.3 percent. Well, you might think, if you are making less than that, wouldn't all your money come from Social Security? Well, the answer is yes, but--and I question people about this--if you are making that little amount of money, and you are over 65, you are probably working at some part-time job. Maybe you are baby-sitting, maybe you are cleaning houses, maybe you are a greeter at a store. You are probably doing something to add to your income, but it would only amount to about 16 percent. Most of it comes from Social Security.

We can see from this chart, even after you get up to $20,000 a year, it is about the same. About 84 percent of your money comes from Social Security. So if you take a cut in Social Security, and you are lower income, that is where you get whacked the most.

Of course, when you get up here to the fifth quintile, you are making more than $57,957 a year. Only 17 percent of your income comes from Social Security. So you say, well, if you took $600-some a year from that, yes, you can probably afford it. But even if you look at up to $57,000 a year in the fourth quintile, almost half--43.5 percent--of your total income comes from Social Security. So even if you are making $30,000, $35,000 a year, after age 65 half of your income comes from Social Security.

So, again, when you start making these kinds of cuts in the chained CPI, you might say: Well, it is only $658 a year. For someone in the lower quintiles, that is like a month's worth of food, perhaps 6 weeks' worth of food. Tell me that does not have an effect. Of course it has an effect.

If you are in the upper income, you probably do not have that much to worry about. That is why the pernicious effect of chained CPI is that the longer you live, the more you are penalized; and the lower your income, the bigger whack you are taking out of your total income. So, again, as people get older, they are more likely to have depleted all their sources of retirement income, assuming they have any to begin with.

So a couple of facts I think are pertinent: First, today only one in five Americans has a defined benefit pension that will last until the day they die--one in five. When I first came to Congress it was one in two. One out of every two Americans had a defined

benefit pension that would last them until the day they died. Now it is one in five, and it is getting less all the time.

Second--and this startles a lot of people--50 percent of the American populace have less than $10,000 in savings--less than $10,000. One out of every two Americans has less than $10,000 in savings. Well, you can see, if you have that when you retire, that is going to be gone pretty soon, so then you are going to rely, again, strictly on Social Security.

So when you put those two facts together--four out of five have no pension, and half have less than $10,000 in savings--then you see that soon after you retire, the only thing you have left is Social Security.

So it is already hard enough now for millions of people hoping to retire, but then you put chained CPI in there, and you really are hitting the oldest and the poorest.

So, again, I know people are saying: Well, we have to do something to save Social Security for those in the future. Well, I agree with that. That is why whenever I see an honest assessment of Social Security for the future, an honest assessment that says Social Security cannot continue to exist as it is, well, I agree with that--as it is. But then there are two approaches. Do you whack the benefits or do you increase the revenues that come into Social Security?

Two different approaches. You do not have to cut the benefits. In fact, I would say that by talking about chained CPI, the signal you are sending to the younger generation is: Well, maybe when you get there we will whack it some more.

A lot of young people are saying, I do not know if Social Security is going to be there for me when I get that age. When they hear people talking about chained CPI and cutting this, they are right to be worried whether we are going to keep our promise to this next generation that we will have a Social Security system they can rely on and count on.

So what is to be done? Well, last year I introduced legislation that would basically extend the life of the Social Security trust fund to 2050 and give a $65-a-month increase to every Social Security recipient, and yet extend the life of it for over 18 more years.

How do we do that? Very simply. We raise the wage cap for people who pay into Social Security from $113,000 a year, which it is now. Over 10 years we raise it and do away with it after 10 years.

There is another approach too. The National Academy of Social Insurance, NASI, did a poll earlier this year. They asked: Would you be willing to go from 6.2 percent paying into Social Security to 7.2 percent, a 1-percent increase over 20 years, if that would help secure Social Security? Seventy percent of Republicans and Democrats said yes. Over 20 years, a 1-percent increase, that is nothing.

But if you were to take that and raise the wage cap, you could increase Social Security payments by $65 a month and secure Social Security for up to 75 years. It seems to me if you want to send a message to the young people about the sanctity and stability of Social Security, you would say that rather than we are going to cut, we are going to have this so-called chained CPI.

As I said, I know it sounds technical. But it is not technical at all. I once likened chained CPI to an anchor chain. If you are standing on the boat and the anchor chain gets around your ankle and someone throws the anchor overboard, where are you going? You are going down. That is what chained CPI does. The older you get, the more you get hit on. The poorer you are, the more you get hit.

So, again, this idea that we have got to somehow cut benefits, have this chained CPI in order to save Social Security is wrong. It is wrong. There are other ways of doing it that would be widely, broadly supported by the American people. Go out and ask any group, ask any group of seniors, do you think we ought to raise the wage cap so someone who is making $500,000 a year pays in at the same rate as someone who is making $50,000 a year? Well, of course. That is not the case now. You make $50,000 a year, you pay into Social Security on every dime you make. If you make $500,000 a year, you are only paying in on the first about 20 cents of every dollar you make. After that you do not pay into Social Security.

I think the average American would say, that is not fair. What is good for someone making $100,000 a year ought to be the same for someone making $1 million a year. So there are other ways of securing Social Security. This chained CPI sends the wrong message to young people. It exacerbates the concern young people have, is Social Security going to be there when I retire?

I always tell them: Do you believe the U.S. Government will exist when you retire? They say: Well, yes. I say: If that is the case, Social Security will be there, because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government.

What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to cut that full faith and credit, and tell the young people, it will be there but we may take cuts here and there may be cuts there? What is a young person to think? Am I going to have what I think I am going to be able to have and count on Social Security?

This is a trust. My friend from Vermont is always talking about this is a trust fund. It is a trust. It does not add to the deficit. Think about the word trust. Social Security trust fund. You have got to be able to trust it. Young people need to be able to trust it, that it will be there for them. The best way to undermine that is to go to this chained CPI.

With that, I yield to my good friend who knows this issue better than just about anybody I know and who has fought so hard on behalf of Social Security and keeping that trust fund and keeping the trust in Social Security.

I yield the floor to Senator Sanders.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

First of all, I thank my colleague from Vermont for being a strong voice on this issue and on so many issues that affect the elderly and especially our veterans. The Senator is the chair of that committee.

I am always curious as to why it is that so many of the dark suits here in Washington are always after Social Security. I don't say there is some ill spirit there, although I will say I think the Senator might agree that there are some who would like to privatize Social Security. We know that. They have said that in the past--or partially privatize it.

It seems to me that so many people who get involved in this think it is just a little nick.

I saw a cartoon of a barber cutting somebody's hair. They had this huge ball of hair, and they were snipping just a couple of little hairs off and saying: That is all we are doing with chained CPI.

They think it is such a small thing. It always occurred to me that those people making the decisions, the dark suits, those are all people who probably have good pensions, good retirement systems. They are never going to want for anything. Yet somehow they just think, well, $658 bucks--that is not a big deal, up to 75. But, as the Senator pointed out, $658 in 1 year to someone whose income is $15,000--that could be a month's worth of food, 6 weeks' worth of food.

That is a big whack. I would ask the Senator, again, if he has any thoughts----

On why is it that we can't listen to people and come up with another approach on this rather than this chained CPI?

I have a couple of thoughts. I would say to my friend from Vermont, to those who say it is unconstitutional to do those things, I wonder if they ever read the preamble to the Constitution, which is, by the way, part of the Constitution of the United States?

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more

perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic

Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the

general Welfare.

That is part of the Constitution of the United States.

How we do that obviously can vary from time to time, generation to generation, but the idea that we are here to promote the general welfare as a Federal Government is clearly in the Constitution of the United States.

Secondly, the Senator pointed out the idea that Social Security--that this is really a trust fund. People pay into it, and they take out. Now, it has had its problems.

But I ask the Senator, if unemployment today were down to less than 5 percent--say, 4 percent--what would the Social Security trust fund look like?

So the 2033 date--if we make no changes, they say Social Security will pay 100 percent out up until 2033. But if, in fact, we reduce unemployment to less than 5 percent, the Trust Fund will be able to pay full benefits for a longer period of time.

There is one last thing I would say. The Senator mentioned that we have a deficit. We do. We have to address it. We all agree with that. The Senator pointed out that the offshore haven businesses are not paying their fair share of taxes.

I would like to ask Senator Sanders one other question. Isn't it a fact--well, the estimates vary; $1 trillion is not stretching the truth--to say that the war in Iraq cost us somewhere close to $1 trillion?

I don't know, but I have seen estimates up to $1 trillion for Iraq only. That was all borrowed money, so that has to be paid back.

So are we going to make the elderly, the poor, the students, and the veterans pay for that?

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I compliment the senior Senator from Oregon who has come to this floor and very clearly laid out what is felt in the heart of Oregonians across our State, and that is this bill tells Oregonians they have to be the collection agents for folks from 45 other States and hundreds of local jurisdictions. This is not just an expense mandate, it is an offensive intrusion into the rights of the citizens of our State.

In that regard, I want to just engage in a few questions and thoughts with my colleague from Oregon and try to highlight some of the concerns and issues we have.

I ask through the Chair the senior Senator from Oregon: As he reads this bill, does he see in it any compensation for the time and effort that the businesses in Oregon will have to spend collecting the tax for hundreds of jurisdictions across this country?

The Senator makes a great point. If States have not voluntarily entered into compacts where they get to collect their own sales tax for other States where it is a mutually beneficial relationship, then it is very strange to have to be compelled--even those 45 States that have sales tax obviously were not so excited about forming such a structure. They also seem determined to pull into this involuntary structure States that find the sales tax abhorrent. If they find a tax abhorrent--and just a little bit of background there. I believe our State has voted nine times on a sales tax. Largely the vote has been on heavy majorities defeating it. Many of those votes are 70 to 30.

Some of those reasons for that is because it is an extremely regressive tax. Another reason is that it is an expensive tax to collect; therefore, it is much less efficient and much more government waste.

Now we have all these Senators who are champions of government waste not only forcing an extension of their own State's wasteful tax system, but imposing it upon the small businesses of Oregon. Then we come to a whole series of concerns that any small business is going to have in this situation.

A small business is told they must participate, and basically anything beyond a single-person shop is pulled into this bill. Then they are subjected to--I think it is over 800 tax jurisdictions--having to call them and say: We are not sure you gave us the right amount.

Is there anything in this bill that says those hundreds of tax jurisdictions out there cannot call and basically challenge whether they have the right amount of money?

Mr. President, I think about the small businesses that would be subject to so many jurisdictions that they now have a tax relationship with and the responsibility to collect for and the possibility of having to basically call them and say: Well, you didn't do it right; you didn't use the right amount or the right software or this or that.

I can't imagine any small business wanting to be exposed to, as my colleague pointed out, 9,000--and even if it is consolidated into 800, that is still a lot of people to deal with. If we have to deal with five or six, that is overwhelming. But then the question becomes whether those States have the power to audit the Oregon small businesses as collectors of a tax, just as they might audit any other group that was collecting sales tax for their State.

Well, I appreciate the Senator expanding on that.

On page 6 of this bill, there is a line that starts out very promising: ``Relieve remote sellers and certified software providers from liability to the State or locality for incorrect collection and remittance . . . '' Well, that sounds OK. That sounds as though you are not subject to an audit. But then it goes on to say, only from basically an error in the software provided by the State. In other words, if a mistake is made, a business owner is subject to all of the same things as if their efforts were inside the State of New York, and that means subject to the State organizations inside the government of New York, that means audits, that means fees. It could include court actions.

So we are talking about, as the Senator put it, 9,000 jurisdictions that now can make life completely unmanageable. It would only take 2 or 3 to make it unmanageable, but 9,000 can make it unmanageable for a small business in Oregon.

Now, my colleague from Illinois has said it is OK for small business because we put in an exemption for selling $1 million online. That is no kind of an exemption at all. Let me explain. Let's say a small business is selling $1 million online and they have a 5-percent margin. That means they are making $50,000 a year. After they basically recognize that a person is working for themselves--they have no benefits separate from that--that is a very modest, middle income. That is one person. So this has an exemption for only a business of one--a modestly successful business of one--which means every other business in the State that is engaged online is subject to this provision.

So while others may feel comfortable telling their home State small businesses--and this would include those in the 45 sales tax States-- that they are subject to audits and fees and court action from 9,000 other entities, I am certainly not comfortable telling the small businesses of Oregon they are going to be facing this type of incredible bureaucracy created by some of the folks who come to the floor and say they are all about small business.

Now, they want small businesses to be audited and fee'd and asked to turn up in some other State for a hearing. That is an outrageous attack on small business, not to mention our States that do not have a sales tax. It is an outrageous overplay attacking States rights.

I thank my senior Senator for his championing and his leadership and his longtime defense of the Internet as a place of fair transactions for small businesses and large, as a tax-free zone. I hope this Chamber is not engaging in a course that is going to change that dramatically, as it seems so intent on doing at this moment.

I am very struck by the correct point my colleague made about foreign companies. Here we have a company in Canada that is not subject to this bill. We have a company in Mexico that is not subject to this bill. For that matter, we have a company in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world not subject to this bill. So when American businesses say we should maintain a level playing field to keep business in America, allow us to play on a level playing field, they are certainly hoping we won't pass something such as this that gives such an enormous advantage to other nations.

I must say that constituents have been weighing in on this issue. I don't think it would surprise anyone to know that they don't like it. Ninety-eight percent are writing in to us to say: We don't like it. We don't like the idea of other States auditing our businesses. We don't like being asked to be a tax collection agency for another State.

Oregon is not asking anyone else to do that unless they have a State- to-State compact, which is exactly the way this could have been done and should have been done but hasn't been done because the States couldn't agree, even though they were sales tax States. That tells us quite a lot.

They don't like the idea of being subject to bureaucrats or the potential for legal action where they might have to travel to another State, and they don't like the idea that there is absolutely no compensation for the enormous imposition this bill places on the small businesses of Oregon. That is quite a lot not to like. So, of course, it is 98 percent against this bill.

I thought I would read one such letter:

Please do not support the Marketplace Fairness Act. It is

not fair to businesses like mine that other States could tax

my Oregon-based company. The voters of Oregon have

continually voted down sales taxes as a method of collecting

revenue within our State. It should not be imposed on us by

other States. If these States have problems with their

collection, they should figure it out with the help of their

local populace . . .

My company is an Internet retailer and we are able to

compete and create jobs on a level playing field.

The dynamics of this fight will have consequences for mid-

sized retailers like mine, especially companies based in

Oregon. Big retailers are fighting to limit our ability to

compete with them. Their goals are to have local footprints

and employees across the country in major metropolitan

markets. They should pay those local taxes and fees where

they are a burden. Companies like mine, that have not chosen

to be in that model, should not.

Please continue to support the Internet's free market.

Please protect Oregon business and maybe even create some new

opportunities.

That is what we should be doing in the U.S. Senate--creating new opportunities for Oregon small businesses to succeed in this tough economy. That is what this business owner in Oregon believes, and I will repeat that sentence since the writer made that point: That is what we should be doing in the U.S. Senate--creating new opportunities for Oregon small businesses to succeed in this tough economy. But that is the opposite of what we are doing here. Maybe that is why Oregonians are overwhelmingly opposed to this bill.

I think it is clear that there are some ideas for which, if someone passionately believes in them, they are willing to try them out, they are willing to develop a pilot project before they impose it on the entire Nation.

Certainly out of the 45 States, since so many have come to the floor representing their States passionately, saying this should be done, why don't they have a pilot project among their States and demonstrate that this is not going to be a burden in which there are audits and fees and court appearances and phone calls from the some 9,600 jurisdictions my senior colleague has pointed out? Why don't they demonstrate that first before they decide to run an attack on the success of small businesses in the State of Oregon and, for that matter, across this Nation? How about that? That is a fair proposal. Run a pilot project.

If you love this idea so much, do it among yourselves and demonstrate it and bring the report back to this Chamber for further conversation. But the idea of coercing my citizens of the State of Oregon to do your work, with enormous imposition and uncertainty, when they are trying to succeed as small businesses--and when small businesses are the power of creating jobs in this country--that is wrong.

So for those who speak about the heavy hand of government, those who speak about the power of small businesses, those who speak about bureaucracy and imposition, then live your words in action and kill this vicious attack on small businesses across this Nation.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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

I would further ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, we have had a long-standing problem in the enforcement of immigration laws in the United States. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Napolitano, has regularly and sophisticatedly issued policy directives that have adversely impacted the ability of law enforcement officers to do the job that is required of them by law. It has caused quite a bit of a problem.

The ICE officers association, the union, voted a couple of years ago unanimously no confidence in John Morton, the Director of that agency. He should already have been removed, in my opinion. In addition, morale, according to a government survey in the ICE officers department, is one of the very lowest in the government.

I asked Secretary Napolitano in 2011 had she met with these officers and discussed the problems. The answer was no. I asked her Tuesday, yesterday, had she met with them. She said no.

I raised the point that these ICE officers are not complaining about pay, not complaining about working conditions, and not complaining about things that often enter into employment disputes. What they are saying is that the Secretary and Mr. Morton are denying them the right to follow the law of the United States, denying them the right to enforce the law they are required to enforce, and they charged that they are refused the right to carry out plain directives from the Congress that said under certain circumstances they shall commence, for example, removal proceedings against someone. The Secretary just says: No, we are not going to do that anymore.

Well, here is a very unusual development, I would suggest. I started out as a young Federal prosecutor in 1977, and I have never heard of this occurring. The ICE officers sued Secretary Napolitano and Mr. Morton, and they raised the suggestion they were placed in an untenable position where the law required them to do one thing and they were told by their superiors to do something contrary to law. The case was heard in Federal Court.

In the hearing yesterday, I raised this with the Secretary. And my friend, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, laughed. He said: Well, a lot of people file lawsuits, but it is another thing to win one of these lawsuits.

That is true. It is unusual to see some of these lawsuits that are filed actually reach a situation in which Federal officials are directed to do something. But it appears that is exactly what the Federal judge did yesterday. He said the Secretary doesn't have the ability to direct agents not to do what Congress has explicitly required them to do. They have a right to have certain policies and procedures--although those are pretty dangerous as it is because setting prosecutorial guidelines and procedures can create a circumstance in which effective law enforcement is neutered. But to go forward and actually dictate that mandated statutory requirements not be enforced, this Federal judge suggested, was not acceptable.

One ICE agent testified at the hearing that agents have witnessed large numbers of criminal aliens in jails telling each other how to evade immigration laws because word has gotten around that ICE agents are required to take their verbal claims at face value. If they say they have been here and came here as a child, that must be taken at face value, without verification, and ICE agents must then release them instead of putting them on a path to removal.

Another officer, Chris Crane, the president of the 7,600-member association, testified in court the administration's policies put officers in the untenable position of releasing illegal aliens from custody who have been identified as a result of their criminal behavior simply because word has gotten around they do not have to be deported if they claim to qualify for the President's administrative amnesty.

It is a remarkable development, that a Federal judge has concluded that law enforcement officers in America are being directed not to follow plain law.

With regard to the proposed legislation produced by the Gang of 8 that is going to be brought up tomorrow in the Judiciary Committee. It has hardly been read yet, but we know that law greatly expands the discretion given to the Secretary of Homeland Security. In many different places it gives the Secretary the power to do that and waive some of what would appear to be plain policy goals of the act, at least according to the people who sponsored it.

This has far-reaching implications for the debate on the reform of immigration. The bill gives the Secretary an unprecedented amount of discretion and waiver authority. By some estimates, there are over 200 mentions in this nearly 900-page bill of giving more power to the Secretary. Five times in the bill it affirms the Secretary's ``unreviewable discretion'' to waive or alter provisions of the legislation as she sees fit. In fact, the bill essentially codifies the flawed policies that are now being challenged in this lawsuit. It gives statutory power to the Secretary to do what she has been doing.

Indeed, illegal immigrants apprehended after the new law goes into effect would not enter deportation proceedings. Instead, the Secretary ``shall provide the alien with a reasonable opportunity to file an application'' for provisional legal status provided the immigrant ``appears prima facie eligible, to the satisfaction of the Secretary.'' The bill emphasizes that it is not designed to ``require the Secretary to commence removal proceedings'' against any illegal immigrant.

We have a Secretary of Homeland Security who is issuing policies that require sworn law officers not to enforce actions specifically required by congressional law. A Federal judge just yesterday found that is not proper, and stated in effect the Secretary is not above the law, which I think most Americans would certainly agree with. Now we have a proposed new law that would give more authority to the Secretary to continue to waive policies in the future and would grant the Secretary additional discretion in many areas.

This is the problem, colleagues: Congress tells America we are going to give legal status--amnesty--immediately to some 11 million people who have entered the country illegally. By definition, that is to whom this applies. And we say: Trust us, we are going to have the toughest laws you have ever heard of in the future. Well, first, these laws aren't that tough. Secondly, it provides multiple waiver authorities to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and this Secretary has proven she is not willing to have the laws of this country enforced. She has even been sued by her own law enforcement officers, who have just won at least an initial victory in a lawsuit in Federal Court.

This is a dramatic example of the problems I have been hearing from Federal law officers. They need to be respected and affirmed in their duties. On a daily basis they are out confronting people who are in this country unlawfully and violating various laws. They are trying to remove them from the country, as we have always done--and as every country does when people violate their laws--and they have been undermined in that. Their morale has plummeted, and the Secretary hasn't even talked to them.

I will tell you who else hasn't talked to them--the people who wrote this bill. Chris Crane, the head of the association, wrote, called, publicly asked for the opportunity to participate in these discussions and at least tell them what the real world is like. But, no, they had the chamber of commerce, they had the agriculture people, they had certain union officials, they had La Raza. They have all been meeting and talking but not the people out there struggling every day trying to make sure we have a lawful system.

That is what the American people are asking for. The American people are not angry at people who want to come to America. We believe in immigration. We are going to see immigration continue. No one is suggesting that is going to end. But the American people are upset with their politicians and their government leaders who say one thing, promise one thing, and do the exact opposite. They have been promising for 30 years that we are going to have a lawful system of immigration. It hasn't occurred.

We passed a law to have 700 miles of fencing, and everybody applauded--some of them grudgingly. Yet only 30 miles of a double fencing, as required by law, has ever been built.

Twenty years ago there was a law mandating an effective entry-exit visa system. Some of the foreign terrorists came in on 9/11 under the visa system. Forty percent of the people here illegally, it now appears, come to this country through the visa system. It hasn't been fixed yet, but we continue to promise we will do it sometime. Even this bill, as I look at it, won't close the gaps in the entry-exit visa system. It will not fix that problem.

So I think the American people are pleading with Congress to do the right thing, to actually make sure we have a system that serves the national interest and is fair. No system is fair if people who do the right thing have to wait and wait and wait and people who do the wrong thing get rewarded. That is so obvious as to be unmistakable.

So I look forward to going forward with a discussion of what we can do to improve this system. We certainly need improvement. I certainly respect my colleagues who worked on it. I think their hearts are right. I know their hearts are right. We can do some good things. But I do believe the American people are right to be dubious. The American people are right to watch this very carefully, and they should not affirm another one of these situations in which a promise occurs, such as an immediate grant of legality, with a vague promise of enforcement in the future. This court case is dramatic proof that enforcement has not been happening.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, one of the best parts about this job is getting the chance to talk to Hoosiers here in Washington, back home in Indiana, and, on those special occasions, a chance to see our Hoosiers when they are serving our country overseas.

When I was visiting our servicemembers in Afghanistan in Khost Province in July 2009, I asked our Indiana National Guard members if there was one thing I could do for them, what would that be? I expected them to tell me about safety vests or about new trucks. They said, Joe, we have this handled here. What we need more than anything is a chance to have a job when we get home. We owe our servicemembers that opportunity.

From Hoosiers serving our Nation in Afghanistan and around the world to the communities of Vincennes and Madison and Plymouth and Gary, the message is the same everywhere. It is about jobs, and the chance to go to work and take care of your family. So how do we take the Hoosier commonsense approach, focus on jobs and create the conditions needed for our people and our businesses to succeed?

I propose an opportunity agenda. Government doesn't create jobs; businesses create jobs. So let's create the opportunities, help put the conditions in place for our businesses in Indiana and around the country to be able to create more jobs, put the programs in place for all of the American people to be ready to hit the ground running on day one. Because if we don't have a job, nothing else works. We can talk about health care, we can talk about climate change, we can talk about any other issue, but if we don't have the chance to go to work and earn a living and take care of our family, nothing else works.

That is why earlier this month I conducted a series of roundtable meetings in eight different Hoosier communities trying to get ideas from Hoosier businesses, community leaders, and educators, asking one simple question: How can we help our entrepreneurs, our small business owners, the men and women who go to work every day, how can we help them create more jobs? So in creating an opportunity agenda built on Hoosier common sense, I heard loudly and clearly: The place to start is with education and with training.

In every community I went to, I heard about the skills gap: jobs that are currently going unfilled--opportunities that are there for the taking but we have to have workers who have the skills our employers need. Getting a job is a two-way street. Both Hoosier companies and Hoosier workers have responsibilities. We can't expect a good job and good pay if we don't bring some skills to the table.

I heard from a welding trainer in Gary, IN, from an IT company in Noblesville, and from rural health care providers in Terre Haute, IN, and the message was the same, and it resonates across the board and across the State: Employers need more skilled workers. Good skills equal good jobs.

That is why I helped introduce the bipartisan AMERICA Works Act, which modifies Federal training programs to place a priority on those programs and those certifications demanded by today's businesses and today's industries.

The improvements in this bill are a benefit for both workers and employers. Workers would know the time they spend training is more likely to lead to a good job. For employers, they will be more likely to hire people they know have the training they need to be productive the moment they walk in the door.

We also have to make sure our businesses do not get overwhelmed by regulations. In Fort Wayne I heard about businesses dealing with too many regulations that don't make any sense for their particular industry. It is time to get rid of the bureaucratic mess and to keep what works. Regulations should be like the umpire on the field: Make sure everyone is playing by the rules, make sure the rules are common sense, and then stay in the background. Regulations should protect the health and safety of our families and our workers while not creating unnecessary burdens for our business owners.

Further, the regulatory system should give businesses the certainty they need to plan for the future and the ability to compete with anyone anywhere in the world.

We need to go all-in on American energy. This helps our businesses, helps our families, and helps national security. I was in Lawrenceburg, IN, a beautiful town right along the Ohio River. When I was there, I heard of one of the companies located there, a trucking company, that is trying to turn their fleet into a natural gas fleet. They are interested in making that transition, but the front-end costs are high and the infrastructure isn't in place yet. So developing American energy sources makes sense for American business, makes sense for our families, and makes sense for national security.

Let's keep more of our hard-earned dollars in Indiana--or in Wisconsin, the home State of the Presiding Officer--by investing in homegrown energy including solar, coal, wind, oil, natural gas, biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear.

We are blessed with an abundance of energy right here in America. It makes us stronger, creates jobs, reduces our debt, and gives us a chance to make our Nation safer.

I support projects such as the Keystone Pipeline because it creates jobs, puts people to work, and has significant bipartisan support. That is an example of a commonsense investment in domestic energy that both sides of the aisle can support.

These are just a few of the ideas I have gotten from people who are creating jobs, running businesses, meeting payroll, employing our neighbors, and growing our businesses all across Indiana.

There is a whole lot more wisdom in Washington, IN, than there is in Washington, DC. A big reason for this is because Hoosiers, as many Americans, are focused on just getting things done, working together. It is not about partisanship, and it is not about politics. In Indiana it is about common sense and trying to solve the problem. It is about an opportunity agenda that creates jobs for hard-working people and a good life for their families. That is what it is all about.

Here is what I am about: taking the best ideas from both parties, both sides of this Chamber, and getting things done--starting with jobs. As Hoosiers, we do not care if you are a Democrat; we do not care if you are a Republican; we care if you are ready to go to work on what matters most.

We make decisions based on what is best for our families. We take pride in making the checkbook balance and making tough choices necessary to make that possible. We expect the same from our government. Keep taxes low, cut waste, and do not throw more money at the problem. Just try to solve the problem.

Hoosiers are hard working. We do not want a free lunch; all we want is a fair shake. We believe respect is earned through the sweat and the hard work we put in every single day. We do not expect to receive anything we have not earned.

Hoosier common sense tells us that our families are all better off when we have stronger communities and more opportunities for businesses and workers. We take care of our brothers and sisters in need, not with a handout but by providing them with the opportunity to work hard and to build a better life.

We have a proud tradition of Senators from Indiana who have embodied these principles of Hoosier common sense: from Senator Lugar's decades of leadership in matters of commonsense foreign policy, his leadership in saving over 100,000 Hoosier auto jobs, and his constant efforts on behalf of Indiana's farmers, from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River; to Senator Birch Bayh's tireless efforts to expanding voting rights and equality for women through his efforts on title IX; to Senator and Vice President Dan Quayle's bipartisan efforts to pass job training legislation; to Senator Evan Bayh flexing his independence and his passion to get our fiscal house in order; and to my current colleague, Senator Dan Coats, in his efforts to keep our Nation safe.

The people of Indiana expect their leaders to put Hoosier common sense ahead of partisanship. We expect our Senators not to be the loudest people in the building but the hardest working people in the building, and in my case to make my job about making sure I am looking out for their jobs.

I am honored to be here in this Chamber working every day--not because I work for anybody here; I work for everyone back home. That is my mission, that is my job, and I am incredibly privileged to do that.

God bless Indiana. God bless the United States.

Madam President, I yield back.