Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the cost of the Federal Government shutdown, including a cost we don't talk about-- the opportunity cost. The fact is we are paying a huge price for what we are not doing here in Washington while so much of our time and energies are spent on this totally unnecessary shutdown.

Americans are rightly looking at Congress and saying: What are you guys doing? Why are you hurting people? Why are you hurting families? Why are you impeding our economic recovery? They are also asking: Why aren't you working on what we send you there to do--on creating jobs, on improving our educational system, on addressing our Nation's long- term fiscal sustainability?

Last weekend, I came to the floor to talk about the effect of this shutdown on individual Minnesotans. I receive e-mails from people who are hurting. Let me read from a few. I will not read them in full because of time.

Charlotte from Duluth writes:

Senator Franken: Veterans' benefits are important to me,

and I want to tell you my story. I have three children and my

spouse who currently attends college, we just got into the

hud-vash program.

The HUD-VASH program is a program that provides housing assistance and support services for homeless veterans and their families.

Charlotte continues:

We thought it was a miracle to not be homeless. Now we are

facing the same thing, no check, no schooling. My family will

be homeless without food, clothes, a vehicle if this

government shutdown is not resolved. I am praying for a

miracle in this situation; my son is turning 1 year old next

month, I don't want to remember his first birthday with us

losing everything we have worked so hard for. My daughter

just started head-start. She loves it, but it is the last

thing on my mind now. I am thinking, how will I get her to

school? How will I provide a home for her to live in? What is

she going to eat? This is not a joke. I have never been one

to take a hand out from anyone. These are things I have

earned; and are now being taken away from me because someone

in Washington

wants to prove a point. What point is everyone trying to

make? That you have the power to do this?

Timothy from Bloomington writes:

My daughter is a single mother who cannot afford her home.

She has wisely decided to sell the house. She has persevered

and now has a sale pending. She is in a financial crisis and

needs this sale to go through or she will risk falling into

foreclosure. And now the government shutdown is threatening

to prevent the sale from going through because a branch of

the IRS that prints income tax transcripts is closed. At the

very least the situation will cost my daughter more than

$1,000 if she has to continue making payments, at worst she

may fall into foreclosure.

Last weekend, I also talked about the way the shutdown threatens to deprive our seniors of vital nutrition programs, such as Meals-on- Wheels. Here is what Millie Hernesman from Hibbing, MN, told the Hibbing Daily Tribune about Meals-on-Wheels:

I'd hate to see it disappear. It offers a variety of

important meals that cover every facet--from protein to

fiber--and it comes right to my door. I like it a lot.

Sandra, a Head Start director in southern Minnesota, wrote me about Head Start. She writes:

Dear Senator Franken, Thank you for your ongoing support

for Head Start. If the federal budget is not settled by

November 1st, the HS programming in Olmsted and Freeborn

Counties will have to shut down. Our federal grant is from

11/1-10/31. As the HS Director, I know the devastating impact

this would have on our families and staff.

Now let me talk a little about Head Start. Because of the sequester, we have seen children in Minnesota lose slots in Head Start. If this shutdown continues through the end of October, programs serving about 2,500 children could be affected by the lack of Head Start funding.

You know, kids are only 3 years old once. They are only 4 years old once. The learning experiences they would be missing at that age because their Head Start Program is shuttered due to this shutdown or that they are missing now because their program has already been shuttered because of the sequester can never be replaced. We are just hurting our communities and our Nation when those little children lose that opportunity.

We know from study after study that a quality early childhood education such as Head Start returns between $7 and $16 for every $1 invested. Why? Because a child who has had a quality early childhood education is less likely to be referred to special ed, is less likely to be left back a grade, and has better health outcomes. Quality early childhood programs can help reduce the rates of adolescent pregnancy. Kids who have had a quality early childhood education are more likely to graduate high school, more likely to go to college, more likely to graduate from college, more likely to have a good job and pay taxes, and they are less likely to go to prison.

If we really cared about our Nation's long-term fiscal sustainability, we would be investing more in Head Start, not less. And we have been investing less because of the sequester and are now because of the shutdown. So that is just an example of the entirely counterproductive nature of this shutdown and the tremendous price we are paying for it.

But I rise today also to talk about the price we are paying for what we are not doing here in Congress, for the unmet needs which we are not turning our attention to because of the time we are wasting with this shutdown and the threat of default on our debt.

We have a skills gap in Minnesota. What is a skills gap? Well, recent studies have shown that between one-third and one-half of manufacturers in my State have at least one job they cannot fill because they can't find a worker with the right skills to fill that job. This is a nationwide phenomenon and it is not just manufacturers, it is information technology, health care, and other businesses that have jobs sitting there waiting for skilled workers to fill them. There are more than 3 million jobs in this country that could be filled today if there were workers who had the right skills--more than 3 million jobs today.

The thing is, we know how to train people for these jobs. We know it because we have done it. We have done it in Minnesota and we have done it elsewhere in this country. I have seen partnerships in my State between businesses and community and technical colleges that have been wildly successful.

Take, for example, Hennepin Technical College in Hennepin County. A number of manufacturers needed workers skilled in precision machine tooling. They worked with Hennepin Technical College to create a curriculum, and they then donated machines for the students to work on. At a roundtable at HTC I learned they had graduated over 300 students from the program and 93 percent of those graduates had permanent jobs.

One of the manufacturers at the roundtable was Erick Ajax, CEO of EJ Ajax and Sons. It is a metal stamping and sheet metal fabrication company in Fridley, MN, that was founded by Erick's grandfather in 1945. I love what Erick has done with his company and how he has worked with HTC--Hennepin Technical College--and the University of Minnesota to train his workforce and provide them with good high-tech jobs and pays for them to continue their education.

Erick gave me an example of one of his workers that I find so exciting--not because it is extraordinary but because it is something we can duplicate over and over in this country. He hired a guy who had completed a certification program at a community and technical college. The guy was really good at his job, so Erick sent him back to continue his education and get his associate's degree. The guy continued to work for Erick, continued to be a star, and a few years later Erick paid him to go to the University of Minnesota to get his bachelor's degree, and he got it. Now the guy is head of quality control for EJ Ajax, an incredibly high-skilled job at an advanced manufacturing company.

Now, understand, this guy graduated from college with no debt--zero debt--and with a great job. This brings me to what I want to be working on here.

A number of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle know how enthusiastic I am about incentivizing partnerships between businesses and community and technical colleges to fill the skills gap. As I said, I have seen many successful models in my State.

I have seen it at Alexandria Technical and Community College in Alexandria, MN, which is sometimes referred to as the Silicon Valley of packaging machines. I have seen it at South Central Community and Technical College in Mankato, MN, where about 8 to 10 manufacturers, who had helped fund and had given machines to the school's Right Skills Now Program, sat with me and told me that between them they had about 50 job openings they could fill that instant.

In the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, of which I am a member, we had a hearing a couple of years ago on workforce boards that had successfully responded to the great recession and created jobs in the face of it. We had four workforce boards testify from four different States: Virginia, Wisconsin, California, and Washington. Every model had been essentially the same: A business--manufacturing, IT, health care--had worked with a community and technical college to train unemployed workers for jobs they needed to fill. These are public-private partnerships. The businesses have skin in the game.

Where do we come in here in Congress? Well, I have gone around Minnesota to community and technical colleges and talked to businesses, and I have talked to national experts in our State and around the country, and the fact is we aren't doing this fast enough. Sometimes these partnerships could do a lot more, train a lot more people with some extra funding--maybe to buy a very expensive machine or to hire an instructor with very specialized skills.

What I am proposing is a competitive grant program. Businesses and community colleges would apply for grants based on how many jobs their partnership would create, what the value of those jobs would be to those hired and to the community, and how much skin the businesses have in the game.

Let me tell you why I think we have to do this, just in terms of global competitiveness. Manufacturing is moving back to the United States. That is because of a number of factors. Manufacturing these days is a lot more capital intensive because of the investments in machine and technology. So labor as a piece of the pie has gotten smaller, but

skilled labor as a piece of the labor pie has grown. It is a much bigger piece. That is why, if we are going to be competitive with the rest of the world, we need skilled labor. Filling the skills gap is a national imperative.

I go to high schools, junior high schools, and middle schools with manufacturers all the time. I let the manufacturer describe what the work is like at their factory. It is not dark, dirty, and dangerous, as people think it is, or as it used to be. It involves advanced technical skills, critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork. These jobs, good, skilled, well-paying jobs, are available with the education you can get at a 2-year community and technical college.

One of the concerns I hear is that people often think of a 2-year education as a ceiling, and I understand that. But a 2-year education doesn't have to be a ceiling. That is not how they think of it in some European countries. They think of a 2-year education as a platform. And if you think about it, with the pace of technological advancement accelerating as it is now, and no doubt will continue, the idea that you will have the same job in the workplace for the 40 or 50 years of your working life is kind of ridiculous, especially in any field involving technology.

So it makes perfect sense to go to a 2-year community technical college and get an education that trains you in the kind of skills that will get you a good-paying job. Then, as Erick Ajax does with his employees, the business you work for can send you back to school and pay for it, often while you continue to work and draw a good paycheck.

We just came through a big debate in Congress about student debt. Think about getting a job after 2 years or even after a credentialed degree and then having your continuing education paid for by your employer. Think about that as a piece of an evolving approach to the issue of college affordability.

Jobs, economic growth, global competitiveness, college affordability, how we think about education, aren't these the things we should be spending our time on in the Senate, in Congress? That is why I came here. That is what I get excited about. That is what I get excited about working on. Let's end the shutdown. Let's commit to not defaulting on our debt. Then let's discuss how we strengthen our economic recovery. Let's talk about which investments we make that are smart and will lead to economic growth and which ones have outlived their usefulness.

Every day the government stays shut down, every day we wake up under the threat of default, every day we spend focused on something that isn't working together to create jobs and rebuild the middle class is, in my mind, a tragedy. It is an insult to all the people who are struggling and it is a huge missed opportunity for our country. This nonsense would be ugly enough even if we didn't have work to do, but we do. We have so much work to do. It is time for Congress to stop creating problems and start solving them again.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about reopening the government. We are now 5 days into a government shutdown that should never have happened. Minnesotans do not want a government shutdown. They want us to do our jobs, not refight the same old political battles over and over. With each day of the shutdown I hear more and more reports about how it is affecting Minnesotans, as I am sure the Presiding Officer hears about how it is affecting the people of Maine.

Minnesotans seeking basic government services are being turned away. Hundreds of people go to the Minneapolis Social Security office each day to get Social Security cards. But on the first day of the shutdown, according to the Minneapolis StarTribune, those Minnesotans--some of whom took time off from work and drove long distances--arrived to find the card center closed.

Minnesota's small businesses are also feeling the impact. Small businesses in Minnesota receive an average of $1.8 million in loans every day under the Small Business Administration's Guaranteed Loan Programs in 2012. With the government shut down, these programs will no longer take new applications and our businesses have to put their plans on hold.

It is not just businesses that are facing problems getting access to loans. Minnesota is home to a lot of great, smaller financial institutions. We have the second most community banks in the country. It is the home of a lot of credit unions, and I talk with them regularly. Earlier this week, I met with folks from some Minnesota credit unions, and they explained to me that as a result of the shutdown, they are having problems approving mortgages because the Social Security Administration can't verify Social Security numbers. That is not just bad for those Minnesotans who are trying to buy or sell a home, it is also bad for the economy.

This week my office heard from one of those Minnesotans who is in the process of buying a home. Jesse is using a USDA Rural Development loan. His banker now has all of the documentation compiled and ready to be submitted to Rural Development for approval, but they are shut down. Jesse was originally supposed to close on October 11, next Friday, and the sellers were scheduled to close on another property right after closing on the property they are selling to Jesse.

Jesse and his family are now living with his in-laws, and they have all of their possessions in storage. He doesn't know whether he will be able to close on his new home--all because some people thought it was a good idea to insist on shutting down the government to repeal the health care law, which isn't going to happen and never was going to happen.

Jesse is really frustrated and disappointed. He felt compelled to let me know how this is affecting him and other people. He asked me to do whatever I could possibly do to end this shutdown quickly.

The shutdown is also affecting other Minnesotans who depend on vital programs, such as Federal nutrition programs. An estimated 125,000 Minnesota mothers and mothers-to-be depend on the Women, Infants, and Children Program, or WIC, so they can buy healthy food for their families. With the shutdown no new Federal funds are available to support WIC. That puts the program in Minnesota, and the women and children it serves, at risk. Hopefully, we can avoid any terrible consequences by getting the government up and running as quickly as possible.

But in some other States, such as Utah--according to Forbes--they have already stopped accepting new participants.

In a shutdown the Administration for Community Living in the Department of Health and Human Services can't fund senior nutrition programs such as Meals On Wheels. Seniors who rely on Meals On Wheels face uncertainty. If the shutdown goes on, State and local agencies will not be able to replace Federal funding and that will result in an outright inability to access the program. That is why I will be donating my salary during the shutdown to Second Harvest Heartland. It is a great hunger relief organization which works throughout Minnesota to help people who need to get food.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's farmers cannot get the resources they need. Susan Magadenz, a constituent of mine from Eden Valley, MN, works at the USDA Farm Service Agency. She wrote me to say:

This shutdown has cut off services to thousands of American

farmers. They cannot get grain checks released and are

missing access to funds they require to carry out their

operation.

The shutdown is hitting Minnesotans in many other ways as well. The shutdown means that the National Institutes of Health is not awarding any new funds or making payments on recently awarded grants. The Mayo Clinic receives 40 percent of its research funding from NIH grants. By the way, this is one of the many reasons we are going to have to address the sequester. This sequester has hit vital NIH funding really hard, even though this is an agency that some people seem not to have noticed until the shutdown.

Speaking of the effects of the shutdown compounding the damage from the sequester, tribal schools are being hit even harder because they get a substantial part of their funding from the Federal Government in what is called Impact Aid. Impact Aid is Federal money that goes to school districts where Federal property or Federal activities significantly reduce the local tax base. The biggest recipients are the schools on military bases and on Indian reservations. We have 11 tribes in Minnesota, and some of them get about one-third of their school funding from the Federal Government.

I am on the Indian Affairs Committee, and I can tell you that the sequestration has been hitting them even harder than it has been hitting other people. These are some of the most vulnerable kids in the country. Their afterschool programs are being canceled because of the sequester. And

now, on top of that, Impact Aid is at even greater risk because of the shutdown. That is not right. It is just wrong.

Some veterans services, through the Department of Veterans Affairs, are already being curtailed, and if the shutdown goes on for very much longer, VA will not be able to process benefit claims and payments, aggravating the claims backlog we have been working so hard to address.

These are just some of the effects the shutdown is having on Minnesotans. People are suffering. Minnesotans who have written and called my office want Congress to get things done, do our work, and not shut down government. More than a week ago, I voted--with the Presiding Officer and a majority of my colleagues in the Senate--to pass the bill to keep the government open and prevent the damage that a shutdown does to our country and to our economy.

The House could take up that bill and pass it in a matter of hours, and it would reopen the government immediately. It has been widely reported that enough Republicans and Democrats support that bill for it to pass in the House if Speaker Boehner would only put it up for a vote in the House. That is all he needs to do. Let the full House vote on the continuing resolution. But the House hasn't done that.

Instead, a faction of the Republicans in the House has decided that rehashing old political fights and political brinkmanship are more important than getting back to the job we were sent here to do, which is putting Americans back to work, improving education, and strengthening our economic recovery.

Earlier this week I was asked what I would be working on if there were no shutdown. I would be working to pass my Community College to Career Fund Act. This legislation is aimed at closing what is called the skills gap. What is a skills gap? Recent studies in Minnesota show that about one-third to one-half of all manufacturers in our State have jobs they need filled, but they can't fill them because they don't have people with the skills to fill them. There are more than 3 million of those jobs across the country that are going unfilled because of the lack of workers with the right skills. My bill would help those companies that have open positions. It would help workers find jobs, and it would help our country be more competitive globally. It would address college affordability. It is the kind of thing we need to be doing.

I have seen partnerships between businesses and community colleges in Minnesota that work--at Hennepin Technical College in Hennepin County, for example. A group of manufacturers worked with the school, Hennepin Technical College, and created a curriculum where students could get credentials. I went to a roundtable there and they told me they had put over 300 students through this course and 93 percent of them had permanent jobs.

The manufacturers who are involved in this partnership had skin in the game. They gave Hennepin Tech machines and helped design the curriculum. Now they have people filling the jobs that need to be filled. I have seen this model work throughout Minnesota, and I have seen it work throughout our country.

However, we still have a skills gap. That is why my bill would create a competitive grant program to incentivize partnerships between businesses and community colleges. This isn't just manufacturers; it is in health care, it is in IT. It would incentivize businesses and community colleges to create programs targeted at getting workers the skills they need to fill these jobs.

This is what I want to be working on. This is what the Presiding Officer wants to be working on for the people of Maine. This is the kind of thing Americans sent us to do. Americans want us to learn from strategies that are succeeding in our States--in Minnesota and in Maine--and then work together to make our country more prosperous and stronger. What else are we supposed to do? That is why they sent us.

I recognize we have political differences we have to work through, but brinkmanship and crises can't be the rule; they should be the exception. After the debt ceiling crisis in 2011, Standard & Poor's downgraded our Nation's credit rating and they cited the dysfunction in Congress as a main reason. After that, people thought--I thought and I believe most people in this country thought--OK. We have learned our lesson. We are not going to govern by crisis and brinkmanship.

In fact, this year, in March, the Senate passed a budget through the regular process, through regular order. The House passed a budget--a different budget, but that is the way it works--and then we are supposed to get together for a conference. We have sought for months to have a conference with the House to resolve the differences in regular order. But we were blocked by the same Senators who thought it was a good idea to shut down the government and to defund the Affordable Care Act. The House has simply refused to go to conference; instead, they waited for the government shutdown and then sought to go to conference on a 2\1/2\-month continuing resolution that would delay the health care law for 1 year.

That is irresponsible. Minnesotans and Americans want us to govern responsibly.

Brenda Gregorich from Duluth wrote me on Wednesday about her husband, a disabled veteran whose disability benefit is now further delayed due to the shutdown. She says:

We would rather do without, than have you give in to

delaying the Affordable Care Act. Please stand strong and do

not let anyone change or delay this. We will sit tight

without income while you work towards this.

Overwhelmingly, Americans do not want us to shut down the government to stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Earlier this week, Minnesota's health care exchange opened and, according to Minnesota Public Radio, received approximately 100,000 Web hits on its first day--the second highest number of hits in any State. Believe me, we are not the second largest State.

So the shutdown is not actually stopping the implementation of the health care law; instead, the shutdown is threatening to do serious damage to our economy.

Today, jobless claims are close to a 5-year low. The second quarter of 2013 marked nine consecutive quarters of economic growth. The private sector has created 7.5 million jobs over the last 42 months. There are more people on private, nonfarm payrolls than at any time since September of 2008.

But the shutdown is putting our still fragile economic recovery in jeopardy. Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi testified before the Senate a few weeks ago that a shutdown lasting just a few days would cost the economy approximately 0.2 percent of GDP, and a longer shutdown could cost it as much as 1.4 percent. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called on Congress to keep the government open stating:

It is not in the best interest of the U.S. business

community or the American people to risk even a brief

government shutdown that might trigger disruptive

consequences or raise new policy uncertainties washing over

the U.S. economy.

This shutdown is painful for our constituents and it is damaging the economy. Everyone should understand this is costing the government money. Some people may think at least if the government is shut down, we are saving money. But, actually, the very opposite is the case. Recently, in the New York Times, they had an editorial that detailed some of the reasons shutdowns end up being very expensive. A shutdown government cannot collect fines and fees, contractors build in the cost of the shutdown and the added probability of future shutdowns to how much they charge the government. Furloughing government workers means lost productivity. Lost economic output means lower tax revenue for Federal, State, and local governments.

This shutdown is unnecessary and it is irrational. Please, let's reopen the government and get back to the work the people elected us to do.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my staffer Ed Shelleby be allowed floor privileges.

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

Madam President, I wish to talk a little bit about health reform.

Soon over 1 million Minnesotans will have the opportunity to buy their health insurance on MNsure, Minnesota's health insurance marketplace. Minnesotans who buy their own insurance in the health insurance marketplace, including Franni and me, will have the opportunity to compare plans and choose the coverage that works best for their families.

Not only will MNsure make the options clearer and more accessible, but the health care reform law is also making sure that Minnesotans feel secure in their health care coverage. That is because insurers can no longer cap the amount of benefits you can get over the course of your lifetime, they can't drop you if you get sick, and they cannot discriminate against you based on a preexisting condition.

There is a lot in the health care reform law that a lot of Americans don't even know about yet. For example, I championed a couple of key provisions that are improving the quality and the value of health care coverage that we all rely on. I authored a provision requiring health insurers to provide a good value for your premium dollars, and I helped to establish a national fund for health care prevention.

Why is this especially important right now? Because the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the budget that also defunds the health care reform law. So before we decide on that measure, I wish to make sure we remember what is in this important law.

First, we are requiring insurance companies to give their customers good value for their premium dollars. One thing many Americans don't know is that millions of Americans are getting rebates from their health insurance companies when those companies don't provide that value. I wrote the provision that does this. It has the catchy name ``medical loss ratio,'' which is sometimes called the slightly more catchy 80/20 rule. Because of my medical loss ratio provision, which is based on a Minnesota State law, health insurance companies must spend at least 80 percent of their premiums on actual health care--not on administrative costs, not on marketing, not on profits, not on CEO salaries. If insurance companies don't meet the 80 percent for individual and small group markets or the 85 percent for large group policies, then the insurance company has to rebate the difference.

The fact is my provision is working. Last year, nearly 13 million Americans benefited from checks from their insurers, and this year about 8\1/2\ million Americans benefited from rebates that were sent out in July of this year. That is a good thing--fewer people getting rebates. This year is a good thing because that means insurers were saving you money on the front end instead of rebating you the money on the back end.

That is part of why health care costs have risen in the last 3 years at a slower rate than at any time in the last 50 years. Is that entirely due to the Affordable Care Act? No. But in contrast with what is being put out here and there, we are not seeing the cost of health care spike. In fact, the opposite is true.

I will say it again: Health care costs have gone up less--have risen at a slower rate--in the last 3 years than at any other time in the last 50 years. The bottom line is that my provision is making insurance companies more efficient at helping keep health care costs in check for people, and I am very proud of that.

People also don't know how much we did to improve access to preventive health care in health care reform. Anyone who has ever gotten a flu shot knows an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Along with former Republican Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, I fought to get the National Diabetes Prevention Program included in the health care reform law, and it exemplifies the benefit of this kind of reform to our health care system.

This program, which was piloted in St. Paul, MN, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, involves structured nutrition classes and exercise at community-based organizations such as the YMCA. It has been shown to reduce the likelihood that someone with prediabetes will be diagnosed with full-blown type 2 diabetes by nearly 60 percent. That is pretty good.

The program doesn't just make people healthier, it also saves everyone money. The Diabetes Prevention Program costs about $400 per participant, as compared to treating type 2 diabetes which costs more than $7,000 every single year. That is why United Health, the largest private insurer in the country--that also happens to be headquartered in Minnesota--is already providing the program to its beneficiaries. In fact, the CEO of United Health told me that for every $1 they invest in the Diabetes Prevention Program, they save $4 on health care costs later on.

This homegrown program is funded out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which is another program in the health care reform law that is designed to invest in evidence-based health care prevention in communities across the country. In Minnesota, the Prevention and Public Health Fund has supported tobacco cessation programs, it has helped to prevent infectious diseases, and it has expanded our desperately needed primary care workforce. Preventing disease while saving money-- preventing disease while saving money--is smart reform.

We did a lot of other things in the health care law too. I worked with several of my colleagues to develop a value index which will change the way Medicare pays physicians to take into account the quality of the care the doctor provides--reward quality instead of quantity.

My home State of Minnesota is the leader in delivering high-value health care at a relatively low cost. Yet, traditionally, we have been woefully underreimbursed for it. For example, Texas gets reimbursed almost 50 percent more, on average, per Medicare patient than Minnesota.

This isn't about pitting Minnesota against Texas or Florida. It is about rewarding those States to become more like Minnesota. Imagine if we brought Medicare expenditures down by 30 percent around the country. It would bring enormous benefits not just to Minnesota but across the country because it will bring down the cost of health care delivery nationwide.

I am working very hard to make sure health care reform works for Minnesota. The implementation of any major reform is going to be a challenge, but I don't think Minnesotans or Americans want us to keep looking backward. They want us to move forward and to implement the law as best we can. They do not want the House of Representatives to waste precious time and vote to repeal the law--for the 42nd time.

The fact is, if the law is repealed, a lot of things Americans like will be taken away from them. Americans don't want seniors' prescription drugs to go back up. They do not want children with preexisting conditions to be kicked off their health plans. Those are just a couple of things that would happen if the law were repealed.

Last year, more than 54,000 seniors in Minnesota got a 50-percent discount on their covered brand-name prescription drugs when they hit the doughnut hole in Medicare Part D. This discount resulted in an average savings of $644 per person and a total savings of more than $34 million in Minnesota alone and we are not done. By 2020, the doughnut hole will be closed completely. But the closing of the doughnut hole would go away if we repealed the health care reform law.

Thanks to a provision that allows young adults up to the age of 26 to stay on their parents' health insurance, 35,000 young people in Minnesota and more than 3 million young people nationally were able to keep their health care coverage. Those young people would be kicked off of their coverage if we repealed the health care law.

Health care reform also ended insurance companies setting lifetime limits on the amount of care an individual can receive. So if you or a loved one gets sick, you can never be told by your health insurer: That is it, no more coverage for you. Go ahead and file for bankruptcy. Guess what. If Congress repealed the health care reform law, that would go away too.

I am not saying the law is perfect. But if there are problems, the American people want us to work together to fix them, not refight old fights. That is what I hope to do--move forward by implementing the law, making any changes we need to make along the way.

Millions of Americans across the country are already experiencing the benefits of this law. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the implementation of the important provisions I have outlined.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss a problem I have spoken about many times over the past 3 years, beginning with debate on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill. That bill, which Congress passed in July 2010, contained a provision I authored with my Republican colleague Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Our provision gave the Securities and Exchange Commission the authority to issue rules to address the conflicts of interest inherent in the credit rating industry--conflicts of interest which contributed mightily to our recent financial collapse and which have continued to plague that industry through today.

I am speaking about this issue again because even though the conflicts continue to put our economy at risk, the SEC still has not proposed meaningful reforms. The SEC has studied the issue, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has studied the issue, and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has studied the issue. Now it is time to move forward and take action on the issue.

Let me start off by briefly reminding everyone what this conflict of interest is about and why it is important. In the years leading up to 2008 financial collapse the credit rating agencies were enjoying massive profits and booming business. There is nothing inherently wrong with massive profits and booming business, but there was one fundamental problem: Booming business was coming at the expense of accurate credit ratings, which is supposed to be the entire reason for the existence of the credit rating agencies.

Credit rating agencies were and still are paid to issue ratings directly by the big Wall Street banks issuing the paper and requesting the ratings. If a rating agency--let's say Moody's--does not provide the triple-A rating the bank wants, the bank can then just take its business over to Fitch or S&P. That is called ratings shopping, and it continues to this day. The opportunity for ratings shopping creates an incentive for the credit raters to give out those triple-A ratings even when they are not warranted, and that is exactly what happened with the subprime mortgage-backed securities that played such a crucial role in the financial crisis--and it happened over and over. It became ingrained in the culture of the industry.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Levin, took a close look at the big three rating agencies, examined millions of pages of documents, and released an extensive report detailing the internal communications at Moody's, S&P, and Fitch. Among the many troubling e-mails, there is one in particular from an S&P official that sums up the prevailing attitude quite nicely: ``Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters.''

With all the risky bets in the financial sector--and bets on those bets--our financial sector indeed became a house of cards. But without the conduct of the credit raters, the house of cards would have been just one card tall.

Two years after that e-mail was written, that house of cards did not just falter, it collapsed. Because that house of cards had grown several stories high, when it collapsed it brought down the entire American economy with it. The financial meltdown cost Americans $3.4 trillion in retirement savings. It triggered the worst crisis since the Great Depression with its massive business failures and mass foreclosures and job losses and the explosion of our national debt.

The crisis profoundly affected the everyday lives of millions of Americans in so many negative ways, including in Minnesota. People lost their homes, their jobs, their retirement savings, and their health insurance.

I have previously shared on the floor the story of my constituent Dave Berg from Eden Prairie, MN. He testified at a field hearing I had in May of 2010 and told his story about having to start over--finding a new job and rebuilding his retirement savings--at 57 years of age. His reflections on his experience in the recession mirror those of millions of other Americans.

He said:

The downturn of the economy, caused in part by the abuses

on Wall Street, led to the loss of my retirement security.

Reforming the way Wall Street operates is important to me

personally, because I have a lot of saving yet to do--and I

simply cannot afford another Wall Street meltdown. I need to

have confidence in the markets--and I need to know there is

accountability to those who caused a financial crisis.

It is hard to overestimate the extent to which the credit rating agencies contributed to the financial crisis in which millions like Dave Berg lost their jobs, their homes, and far too many Minnesotans had their hopes for the future dashed.

These Americans are not necessarily seeking retribution from Wall Street. They just need to be assured it will not happen again. They know there is a problem and the problem needs to be fixed.

We do not need further proof of that, but we get it in the February complaint filed by Department of Justice against S&P in which DOJ alleges--as it stated when it filed the complaint--that the credit rating agency ``falsely represented that its ratings were objective, independent, and uninfluenced by S&P's relationships with investment banks when, in actuality, S&P's desire for increased revenue and market share led it to favor the interest of these banks over investors.''

The complaint highlights the patently problematic way the credit rating agencies habitually did business. One e-mail obtained in that investigation from a high-level S&P official reads:

We are meeting with your group this week to discuss

adjusting criteria for rating CDO's of real estate assets . .

. because of the ongoing threat of losing deals.

CDOs--collateralized debt obligations--are one of those derivatives, or bets, that added stories to the house of cards. This official had apparently become so comfortable with the culture of conflicts of interest that he appeared to have no reservations about putting it in writing.

In fact, a while ago, S&P asked the judge in the case to throw out the Justice Department lawsuit against them by pointing to a previous decision made by a U.S. district court judge in an earlier securities fraud case against them. That earlier suit against the S&P had been filed by shareholders who said they had bought their shares believing that S&P's ratings were independent and objective--as the S&P had

long declared. But the judge in the earlier case dismissed the shareholders' suit, finding that the S&P's statements that their ratings were independent and objective were ``mere puffery.'' In other words, no one could take S&P's statements about their ratings objectivity and independence seriously. It was just puffery and advertising that no one could believe.

Very recently, S&P tried to use--in the Department of Justice's case against them in their filing--the earlier ``puffery'' ruling to try to get the Justice Department suit thrown out against them. So S&P's legal argument was that no one could reasonably think that they had a reputation for producing independent and credible ratings.

Thankfully, earlier this month, the judge in the DOJ suit ruled that the DOJ suit could go forward and said last week he found S&P's puffery defense to be ``deeply and unavoidably troubling.''

S&P's rationale should strike us all as deeply and unavoidably troubling because their legal defense--this is S&P's legal defense-- said no one could possibly rely on their ratings. But their job is to provide independent, objective, and accurate ratings. Millions of Americans lost their jobs because S&P didn't do its job. S&P didn't do their one job. They have one job and that is to provide accurate ratings. They didn't do their one job. They have no other job.

I am glad the Department of Justice is pursuing this case, but DOJ's action is not enough. It is backward-looking and addresses past harms. My concern is that the conduct continues to this day.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 more minutes.

Mr. President, I am glad the DOJ is going forward in pursuing this case, but as I said it is not enough. It is backward- looking and addresses past harms. My concern is that the conduct continues to this day. The credit raters are still influenced by the relationships with the banks because that is who pays them. It is a clear conflict of interest, and we need to prioritize actions that will prevent another meltdown in the future.

The Dodd-Frank provision I wrote with Senator Wicker, if implemented in full, would root out the conflicts of interest from the issuer pays model. The amendment we offered and the Senate passed directed the SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, to create an independent self- regulatory organization that would select which agency--one with the adequate capacity and expertise--would provide the initial credit rating of each structured financial product.

The assignments would not be based just on the agency's capacity and expertise but also, after time, on its track record. Our approach would incentivize and reward excellence. The current pay-for-play model--with its inherent conflict of interest--would be replaced by a pay-for performance model. This improved market finally allows smaller rating agencies to break the Big Three's oligopoly.

The oligopoly is clear. The SEC estimates that as of December 31, 2011, approximately 91 percent of the credit ratings for structured finance products were issued by the three largest credit rating agencies--Fitch, Moody's, and S&P--each of which was implicated in the PSI investigation. The other five agencies doing structured finance make up the remaining 9 percent.

The current oligopoly does not incentivize accuracy. However, if we move to a system based on merit, the smaller credit rating agencies would be better able to participate and serve as a check against inflated ratings, thereby helping to prevent another meltdown.

In our proposed model, the independent board would be comprised mainly of investor types--managers of university endowments and pension funds--who have the greatest stake in the reliability of credit ratings, as well as representatives from the credit rating agencies, the banking industries, and academics who have studied this issue.

Our amendment passed the Senate with a large majority, including 11 Republican votes. This is not a progressive or conservative idea, it is a commonsense idea.

The final version of Dodd-Frank modified the amendment and, to be frank, put more decisionmaking authority in the hands of the SEC as to how to respond to the problem of conflicts of interest in the credit rating agency industry. The final version directed the SEC to study the proposals that Senator Wicker and I made, along with other alternatives, and then decide how to act.

The SEC released its study in December. The study acknowledged the conflicts of interest in the credit rating industry and reviewed our proposal and many of the alternatives. They laid out the pros and cons of each proposal without reaching a definitive conclusion on which route to pursue.

The study also proposed holding a roundtable discussion to further examine reform opportunities. This SEC convened this roundtable on May 14, and both Senator Wicker and I had the opportunity to present opening remarks. Bloomberg News had a good article on the roundtable on March 14, including several key quotes that I am going to use in my remarks. The roundtable provided a rigorous examination of our proposal and of the alternatives.

One executive who was from a smaller rating agency endorsed the concept of a rotating assignment system to help break up the current oligopoly. Jules Kroll, the CEO of Kroll Bonding Credit Agency, said of the Big Three: ``They're selling themselves out, just as they did before.''

The Big Three were also represented at the roundtable. An S&P representative argued against meaningful reform by suggesting that ``a government assignment system could create uncertainty, could slow down markets, and disrupt capital flows at a time when we could least afford it.'' He didn't mention puffery. Unsurprisingly, I disagree with his characterization and would indeed suggest that what we can least afford is to maintain the status quo.

An alternative proposal, the continuation of the 17g-5 proposal, was met with more than a little skepticism. The 17g-5 Program seeks to encourage unpaid, unsolicited ratings by requiring the sharing of data on which ratings are based. The theory is, unsolicited ratings will keep paid ratings honest. Joseph Petro of Morningstar Credit Ratings said using the unsolicited rating program ``is not the best use of resources as we're trying to build out our ratings platform.'' SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes made a strong point when he noted that negative, unsolicited ratings by a firm ``may not be the best way to get business in an issuer-pays setting.'' By the time the report was written, the 17g-5 Program had produced only one or two ratings.

I have said all along that I believe the proposal of Senator Wicker and myself is a good one and the right one, and I continue to believe that more and more as I have thought about it and looked at it in the years now since we originally wrote the legislation. But I have also said I am open to any other meaningful proposals, and I will support any proposal the SEC recommends that addresses the conflicts of interest in a meaningful way. But the Roundtable made very clear once again that reform is necessary and that the status quo is inadequate to protect American investors, workers, and homeowners in the years ahead.

Dealbreaker.com, a satirical blog that covers Wall Street, ran a post on the day of the SEC Roundtable with this title: ``The SEC Will Keep Talking About Credit Rating Agencies Until Everyone Stops Paying Attention.'' That is one approach Wall Street regulators can choose to take and it would be completely unacceptable. To do that would be to fail the American people. Senator Wicker and I have worked with the SEC continuously over the past 3 years, and I will continue to pursue this issue until the SEC fulfills its directive to address the conflicts of interest in the credit rating industry. I am obligated to my constituents and to the American public to make sure that satirical headline does not become reality.

I look forward to working with the SEC on the next steps toward a proposed rule on credit rating reform.

I yield the floor, and I note the presence of both of my esteemed colleagues

from Hawaii, including the one presiding, and Senator Hirono, who is about, I believe, to ask for the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about legislation that I am introducing called the Community College to Career Fund Act. This legislation is aimed at closing what is called the skills gap--the gap between the skills that businesses need to fill open positions, and the skills that workers have. Closing the skills gap will mean more Americans get jobs and businesses get the workforce they need. It is key to the future prosperity and economic competitiveness of our Nation.

When I travel around Minnesota and talk to employers, the single biggest thing they tell me they need is a workforce capable of handling the jobs of the 21st century. Finding qualified employees is particularly a problem for our manufacturers. Recent surveys in Minnesota show that \1/3\ to \1/2\ of manufacturers have job openings that they can't fill. They want to hire people, but they can't, because they can't find employees with the skills they need.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to be far too high. With so many Americans still looking for jobs, and employers seeking to fill open positions, this is a problem that we have to solve.

Minnesota and many other States are working to address this problem by bringing businesses and community colleges together. There is a lot we can learn from these efforts, and my legislation supports and builds on what has been working in Minnesota.

Take, for example, Hennepin Technical College in Minnesota. Local manufacturers have joined with Hennepin Tech to form the M-Powered Program, which trains students in manufacturing skills so they can fill open jobs. When I met with them recently, they told me that 93 percent of the program's nearly 300 graduates have permanent jobs. That is a program that's working.

In Alexandria, MN, businesses and community colleges have been working together for years and offer another powerful example of success. Douglas County is like the Silicon Valley of packaging machines, and businesses there work with Alexandria Technical and Community College, which is ranked one of the best in the country. The manufacturers have donated machinery to train the students so that they can gain the skills needed for jobs at those businesses. When they graduate, students get snapped up by one of the companies. In fact, at the height of the recession in 2009-2010, Douglas County's unemployment rate was a good 3 points lower than the rest of the State.

There is the Right Skills Now program, which is a partnership between the Manufacturing Institute, ACT, the National Institute of Metalworking Skills and the President's Job council. This program started as a pilot program in Minnesota, and has since expanded to Nevada and Michigan. I visited the program at South Central College in Faribault, MN, and held a roundtable with participating businesses. I asked each of them how many jobs they were ready to hire for, and between them, there were 40 or 50 jobs that needed to be filled. There were only 17 students in the first term that this program was offered, and the numbers are obviously in those students' favor to find a job.

There are many other examples of this approach working in Minnesota, as well as across the country. It is happening in Rochester, Brainerd, and Duluth, Minnesota. The Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee of the HELP Committee held a hearing last year where we heard about four great examples of these partnerships from all over the country. This approach is putting Americans back to work and helping businesses grow nationwide, and we need to support those efforts.

That is exactly what my bill would do. It would create a Community College to Career Fund, which would offer competitive grants for partnerships between businesses and community colleges aimed at closing the skills gap. The partnerships would compete by demonstrating how they would fill in-demand jobs.

This bill rewards what works, giving flexibility for the partnerships to determine the strategy that best fits their needs, including apprenticeships, paid internships, partnerships with high schools, or updating training equipment. My bill also leverages private investments, rewarding those partnerships that bring outside resources to the table.

I hear all the time from businesses that are desperate to hire people, if only they could find the right talent. This is a tremendous opportunity to get Americans back to work by helping them get the skills that they need. The Community College to Career Fund Act would seize that opportunity, allow our businesses to grow and expand, and position our workforce, and our country, for prosperity into the future. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about legislation that I am introducing called the Community College to Career Fund Act. This legislation is aimed at closing what is called the skills gap--the gap between the skills that businesses need to fill open positions, and the skills that workers have. Closing the skills gap will mean more Americans get jobs and businesses get the workforce they need. It is key to the future prosperity and economic competitiveness of our Nation.

When I travel around Minnesota and talk to employers, the single biggest thing they tell me they need is a workforce capable of handling the jobs of the 21st century. Finding qualified employees is particularly a problem for our manufacturers. Recent surveys in Minnesota show that \1/3\ to \1/2\ of manufacturers have job openings that they can't fill. They want to hire people, but they can't, because they can't find employees with the skills they need.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to be far too high. With so many Americans still looking for jobs, and employers seeking to fill open positions, this is a problem that we have to solve.

Minnesota and many other States are working to address this problem by bringing businesses and community colleges together. There is a lot we can learn from these efforts, and my legislation supports and builds on what has been working in Minnesota.

Take, for example, Hennepin Technical College in Minnesota. Local manufacturers have joined with Hennepin Tech to form the M-Powered Program, which trains students in manufacturing skills so they can fill open jobs. When I met with them recently, they told me that 93 percent of the program's nearly 300 graduates have permanent jobs. That is a program that's working.

In Alexandria, MN, businesses and community colleges have been working together for years and offer another powerful example of success. Douglas County is like the Silicon Valley of packaging machines, and businesses there work with Alexandria Technical and Community College, which is ranked one of the best in the country. The manufacturers have donated machinery to train the students so that they can gain the skills needed for jobs at those businesses. When they graduate, students get snapped up by one of the companies. In fact, at the height of the recession in 2009-2010, Douglas County's unemployment rate was a good 3 points lower than the rest of the State.

There is the Right Skills Now program, which is a partnership between the Manufacturing Institute, ACT, the National Institute of Metalworking Skills and the President's Job council. This program started as a pilot program in Minnesota, and has since expanded to Nevada and Michigan. I visited the program at South Central College in Faribault, MN, and held a roundtable with participating businesses. I asked each of them how many jobs they were ready to hire for, and between them, there were 40 or 50 jobs that needed to be filled. There were only 17 students in the first term that this program was offered, and the numbers are obviously in those students' favor to find a job.

There are many other examples of this approach working in Minnesota, as well as across the country. It is happening in Rochester, Brainerd, and Duluth, Minnesota. The Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee of the HELP Committee held a hearing last year where we heard about four great examples of these partnerships from all over the country. This approach is putting Americans back to work and helping businesses grow nationwide, and we need to support those efforts.

That is exactly what my bill would do. It would create a Community College to Career Fund, which would offer competitive grants for partnerships between businesses and community colleges aimed at closing the skills gap. The partnerships would compete by demonstrating how they would fill in-demand jobs.

This bill rewards what works, giving flexibility for the partnerships to determine the strategy that best fits their needs, including apprenticeships, paid internships, partnerships with high schools, or updating training equipment. My bill also leverages private investments, rewarding those partnerships that bring outside resources to the table.

I hear all the time from businesses that are desperate to hire people, if only they could find the right talent. This is a tremendous opportunity to get Americans back to work by helping them get the skills that they need. The Community College to Career Fund Act would seize that opportunity, allow our businesses to grow and expand, and position our workforce, and our country, for prosperity into the future. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the immigration reform bill that we are going to vote on soon. I want to bring a Minnesota perspective to this debate. I want to talk about how this bill will help Minnesota businesses and agriculture while also helping and protecting Minnesota workers. I also want to talk about how this bill will help Minnesota families and communities.

Minnesota was admitted to the Union in 1858. For the first 30 years after Minnesota's founding, no fewer than one-third of Minnesotans were immigrants born abroad. Our State did not suffer from that--it thrived. Our fields were first tilled by Swedish immigrants. Their crops filled 2 million acres. Our iron mines in the north depended on Finnish labor. Norwegians were critical to our logging industry, while the Danes, who came to Minnesota after the Civil War, made our State a leader in dairy farming.

Today, immigrants are about 7 percent of Minnesota's population. Most of them come from Asia, and Latin America, and Africa, rather than Europe. But the contributions of immigrants to Minnesota's economy and to our communities are no less important.

I am going to vote for this bill because of what it will do for Minnesota's economy. This is clearest when it comes to Minnesota's agricultural industry, particularly our dairy farms. Minnesota is the Nation's sixth largest dairy producer. Five percent of our nation's cows are in our State.

But for years, I have been meeting with dairy farmers and they told me they can't get the workforce they need. They can't find enough American workers--and the Nation's agricultural guestworker program is open only to seasonal workers. Unfortunately, you can't milk cows seasonally. If you did, they would just get cranky, the cows.

For years, I have been calling for an immigration bill to fix this problem by opening our guestworker program to dairy farmers. This bill does just that.

This bill will not just help agriculture. A lot of industry in Minnesota is in the high tech and medical sectors--companies like 3M and Medtronic. Unfortunately, our visa system works against these companies because, while the University of Minnesota is minting new Ph.D.'s in STEM fields, our system sends many of our top foreign graduates right back to their home countries.

Thanks to the work of my fellow Minnesota senator, Senator Klobuchar, this bill will make it easier for Minnesota companies to recruit and

hire top minds, regardless of where they come from.

I am also proud that this bill includes two amendments that I wrote that will protect small businesses.

A major component of this bill is to create a mandatory electronic employment verification system called E-Verify. But small businesses in Minnesota were initially concerned about how E-Verify would affect them.

My first amendment creates a special office within the Department of Homeland Security whose sole job will be to give workers and small businesses quick, in-person assistance if E-Verify does not work the way it should. My other amendment will keep pressure on DHS to lower E- Verify error rates that, in the past, have caused major headaches for small businesses and employees alike.

While this bill will help our businesses, it also has solid protections for American workers.

In negotiations, the AFL-CIO demanded that before an American employer can hire a foreign guestworker, that employer has to aggressively advertise for and recruit American workers. If a business breaks these rules, it can get kicked out of the guestworker program. If the protections in this bill prove insufficient, I will fight to improve them. But for now, I think protections negotiated by the AFL- CIO are adequate for moving forward.

So this bill will protect workers today. But it will also help them for decades down the line by bolstering our Nation's safety net. Our changing demographics have put a strain on our Social Security system. More young workers paying into the Social Security system will help ease that, and that is precisely what this bill will provide: Census figures show that 48 percent of immigrants in the U.S. are between the ages of 20 to 44; for native-born workers, that figure is about 31 percent.

Finally, this bill will help our economy by helping our Nation's bottom line. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, immigration reform will decrease our deficit by $175 billion over the next decade, and an additional $700 billion over the following decade. That's $875 billion dollars--close to a trillion dollars in deficit reduction.

This bill will be a boon to Minnesota's economy, and to our Nation's economy too. But this bill is not just about economics. It is also about our values. It is about living up to the promise engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send

these, the homeless, the tempest-tost [sic] to me. I lift my

lamp beside the golden door.

Minnesota played a special part in that promise. For decades, Minnesota has welcomed more refugees and asylees than almost any other State.

We have welcomed the Hmong and Somalis and so many others because it is the right thing to do. In the same way, a big part of this bill is about doing the right thing and helping the least of our brothers and sisters.

Last October I traveled to Northfield, MN, where I visited a program for Latino high school students called the ``TORCH'' program--that stands for Tackling Obstacles and Raising College Hopes. This is an amazing program that has more than doubled the high school graduation rate for Latino students.

During my visit I met many undocumented students who were brought here by their parents as young children--and who were thus undocumented through no fault of their own.

For years, these kids watched their classmates apply to college and plan for their careers, but they knew that was not for them--because they could not work legally or serve in our military.

Then, last June, the President took executive action to protect these kids from deportations and let them work legally. Their teachers told me what an enormous difference it made for these kids. For the first time, they could see they had a future--they could go to college or join the military. And that was just because an executive order that did not have the force of a statute.

With this bill, thanks to the inclusion of the DREAM Act, authored by Senator Durbin, their hope for the future will be a certainty. Good for those kids. And you know what, good for us, because those kids are going to work wonders.

I am especially proud of a bill I wrote that also helps children and that is included in the larger bill we are debating, and that is the HELP Separated Children Act.

My bill was inspired by what happened in Worthington, MN in December 2006, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out enforcement actions in 6 States and arrested hundreds of unauthorized immigrants. Tragically, those raids also left many children--most of them citizens--without their parents and with no way to find them. One 2nd grader in Worthington came home from school to find his 2-year-old brother alone and his parents gone. For the next week, he cared for his brother while his grandmother drove from Texas to meet them.

Over the past 2 years, more than 200,000 parents of citizen children were deported. These children are often abandoned at home or at school and can go for months without speaking with or visiting their parents. My HELP Separated Children Act will lay down basic humanitarian protections for children in immigration enforcement. It will make sure that parents and children can stay in contact, and will make sure that parents can participate in court proceedings relating to their children.

My bill was co-sponsored by Senators Grassley, Coons, Cornyn, Hirono, Cruz, Feinstein, Leahy and Blumenthal. Of the 200 or so amendments that we debated in the Judiciary Committee, this was the only one that was passed on a unanimous 18 to 0 vote.

I am also proud that the bill includes amendments I proposed to help victims of domestic violence, as well as young children who are themselves involved in immigration proceedings.

We have a rare opportunity before us. We have a chance to vote on a bipartisan bill written by a bipartisan group and supported by both the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce. The bill will help our economy, secure our border, and give millions of undocumented people a tough but fair path to get right with the law. And on top of all of this, this bill will save the American people hundreds of billions of dollars. I am proud to support this bill, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Before I close, I want to take a moment to congratulate the members of the Gang of Eight--Senators Schumer, McCain, Durbin, Graham, Menendez, Rubio, Bennet and Flake. This bill is an example of the Senate at its best. It speaks not just to the ability of the Senators in the Gang--but also to their courage.

I would also like to recognize Chairman Leahy for managing this markup and this debate so expertly.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consented that my law clerk, Rachel Homer, be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of the debate on S. 744.

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

Madam President, I rise today to talk about college affordability and student loan interest rates. But before I do that, I would like to take a moment to comment on the historic decision this morning by the Supreme Court.

I have been married to my wife Franni for 37 years. It is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I have long believed that every loving couple should be seen as equal under the eyes of the law. So I have been fighting for years, along with others, to overturn the so- called Defense of Marriage Act. I am very happy today that the Court did so in part this morning.

Today all Minnesota couples will be treated equally under Federal law, and this will make a real difference for those families.

We still have work to do. I think Americans should have the freedom to marry the person of their choosing regardless of the State in which they live. So we still have work to do, but today is a happy day.

Student Loan Interest Rates

OK. Back to college affordability and student loan interest rates.

The interest rate on the Stafford subsidized loan is set to double on July 1. Along with a number of my colleagues, I am fighting to prevent that from happening and to reach an agreement to protect students and make college more affordable for them and for their families.

Not long ago I had a group of student leaders from MnSCU--the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities--come to my office in DC to discuss college affordability.

Now, remember, these are members of the student government of many of Minnesota's public colleges and universities. They are the student leaders. There were about 20.

I asked them: How many of you work while you are going to school, while you are in college?

Every one of them put up their hand.

I said: OK. How many of you work at least 20 hours a week?

Most of them.

How many of you work 30 hours a week while you are going to school?

More than I expected.

Then I asked them: How many of you work full time, work 40 hours a week while you are going to college?

A number of them raised their hand.

Mind you, these are the student leaders of these schools. So they also spend their time in student government. Working in college is not necessarily a bad thing. Some work can help students better manage their time, become more productive, and help pay for college. I worked during college. It was like 5 hours a week in our dorm kitchen.

Evidence shows that when a student starts to work more than 15 hours a week, it becomes harder for the student to maintain good grades at school and to graduate from school on time. Students are working more because college is becoming less and less affordable. They are still taking out more and more student loans and graduating with more and more debt.

Minnesota has the unfortunate distinction of being the State with the third highest average debt for students graduating from college, at over $30,000 a student. Whether those student Americans are attending community college or 4-year public or private colleges, it is increasingly difficult for them and their families to afford higher education.

Part of what has happened is that State support for higher education has gone down in recent years, shifting more of the burden onto students and their families. According to the latest report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers, public colleges experienced a 9-percent decrease in State funding per student from 2011 to 2012, including in Minnesota.

Minnesota public colleges saw a 27-percent decrease in State funding per student from 2007 to 2012. Meanwhile, and partially because of this, the University of Minnesota saw an increase of 65 percent in its average tuition and fees in constant dollars from 2002 to 2012. Our other public 4-year universities saw a 47-percent increase in average tuition and fees. Our public 2-year colleges saw a 39-percent increase in tuition and fees over the same time period.

After more than a decade of higher education spending cuts and tuition increases in Minnesota, things have started to turn around this year. The State legislature passed a bill that increased funding for higher education in Minnesota by $250 million, including a tuition freeze at the University of Minnesota and Minnesota's other public colleges and universities for 2 years. That is very good news. While this is a great victory for Minnesota's students and families, it certainly will not solve the college affordability problem in Minnesota.

As college has gotten more expensive, our Federal student aid system has not kept up. In 1975, Pell grants--long the cornerstone of our Federal financial aid system--a full Pell grant covered almost 80 percent of the cost of attending a public 4-year college, but now it pays for approximately 33 percent of the cost of a year at a public 4- year college.

As students have turned to student loans, more of them are ending up tens of thousands in debt. In Minnesota I have held several college- affordability roundtables and heard from a number of extraordinary students. One of them is Taylor Williams, who was a senior at the University of Minnesota in the spring. He grew up in a low-income family. Taylor was afraid of taking the advanced placement courses because he did not think he could afford the tests. The tests cost too much money. Fortunately, Taylor had a guidance counselor who found funding to help him pay for the tests, and his success in those AP tests helped him start college with 1 year's worth of credit. Taylor, when I talked to him, was also working 30 to 40 hours a week and receiving

community scholarships. Yet, in spite of all of this, he is graduating with student debt.

Because of stories like Taylor's, I recently introduced the Accelerated Learning Act, a bill to reauthorize an existing Federal program that provides funding to low-income students to help pay for AP and IB--International Baccalaureate--exams. This is a Federal program that has been around for over a decade and has helped students lower the cost of college. I am pleased that this legislation was included in the larger bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that we passed out of the HELP Committee earlier this month.

Taylor and countless other students at schools across Minnesota demonstrate tremendous perseverance and grit in getting a college education and cobbling together the resources to pay for it. They are working incredibly hard, and they are still taking on significant amounts of debt--debt that will stay with them for a good portion of their lives.

Paying for college should not have to be that hard. In many other countries it is not. In fact, in many other countries, students can go to college for free--for free--or pay extremely low tuition. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, countries where students pay zero tuition for their postsecondary education include the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, and Sweden. Other countries, such as France, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium have postsecondary systems where students have to pay tuition of less than $1,500 per year.

Because of this it is not a surprise that many of these countries are also surpassing the United States in higher education attainment. Not very long ago the United States ranked first in the world in the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a higher education. According to the latest data from the OECD, the United States is now 14th in that category. This is a trend we need to reverse if the United States is going to remain globally competitive. In an ideal world the United States would provide free or extremely low cost postsecondary education to its citizens, as so many other nations do. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen anytime soon. So we need to take smaller but important steps to help our students pay for college.

The interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans is going to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1 unless Congress takes action to prevent that from happening. This interest rate--this is an increase that would affect almost 200,000 students in Minnesota, who would end up paying about $1,000 more for each student loan they take out over the life of that loan. That is above what they are already paying.

At a time of record-low interest rates, it makes no sense to let the student loan interest rate double. We should prevent that from happening. Ultimately, we need a long-term fix so that interest rates do not become more unaffordable for students and their families. We also need to make sure that whatever action we take does not make the problem worse.

Several of my colleagues have proposed short-term fixes to this interest rate problem. I am proud to support efforts by Senators Jack Reed and Tom Harkin to freeze the interest rate at 3.5 percent while Congress works out a longer term solution. I am also a proud cosponsor of Senator Warren's legislation to tie the student loan interest rate to the rate at which the Federal Reserve lends money to banks. At a time when the Fed is lending money at an interest rate of .75 percent to banks, it makes no sense for students to borrow money from the government at a rate of 6.8 percent a year or even higher. Senator Warren has been an important voice in this debate in the Senate, making the student loan interest rate the focus of her first piece of legislation.

We need to get this done. Democratic leaders have been negotiating in good faith on this issue. If we need to pass a short-term extension of the current interest rate to give negotiators more time to produce a solution that works for students and their families, well then that is what we should do.

Fixing the student loan interest rate is far from the only issue we have to tackle to make college more affordable for students. I just reintroduced my bipartisan Understanding the True Cost of College Act to standardize financial aid award letters among universities so students can have clear and consistent information about the cost of their education. Students and their families and high school counselors need to have uniform financial aid letters so they can make real comparisons about all the costs before deciding where the student should go to college. That is what my bill makes possible.

I also stand ready to work with my colleagues to protect the Pell Grant Program and to support other programs that make college more affordable for students, such as the TRIO and Work-Study Programs.

We have a lot to do and a long way to go to make college more affordable for our students. Doing that will help more Americans find jobs to support their families, help more employers find qualified workers for their businesses, and help our economy prosper. This is one of the most critical issues we face as a Congress. Addressing the student loan interest rate is a solid first step we can take toward tackling this issue.

I yield the floor.

Are we in morning business?

Mr. President, I rise to talk about Medicare solvency. I know that to many people the words ``Medicare solvency,'' which is the ability of the Medicare program to meet its financial obligations, sounds like an invitation to a nice nap.

You and I pay into Medicare every month, and we need to know that the benefits we paid for will be there when we need them, and not just that. I need to know Medicare will be around to cover my daughter and my new grandson when they become eligible. That is what Medicare solvency is about.

A couple of weeks ago we got some good news. According to the annual report released by the Medicare board of trustees, Medicare will stay solvent for 2 years longer than previously estimated.

There are a lot of things that are contributing to Medicare solvency, but one big thing is health reform. In fact, Medicare will be solvent for a total of 9 years longer than before we passed health reform. Let me say that again. The life of Medicare is 9 years longer today than it was before we passed health reform.

HHS Secretary Sebelius said:

The Affordable Care Act has helped put Medicare on more

stable ground without eliminating a single benefit.

The point is that health reform is not just about making our health coverage more comprehensive, it is not just making sure when we get sick we can get the care we need, it is also making Medicare more efficient. It is extending the life of Medicare so that Medicare can keep supporting our parents and will be able to support our kids.

How exactly has health reform helped extend the solvency of Medicare? Well, to start with, it stopped Medicare from overpaying private insurers. As you might know, seniors can choose to get their Medicare benefits directly from the Medicare Program or get them through a private insurance program that gets paid by Medicare, which is called Medicare Advantage. Before we passed health reform, we were overpaying these private insurers by about 14 percent. So we reduced what Medicare pays these private insurance companies. In fact, over the next 10 years we are going to reduce these insurance payments by about 14 percent, which CBO scored in 2010 as saving Medicare $136 billion over 10 years.

I will note that we were told by some of our colleagues that if we did this, insurance companies were going to leave the market, that we weren't going to have Medicare Advantage anymore. Well, so far, enrollment in Medicare Advantage has gone up by 10 percent, and I am glad about that because Medicare Advantage serves an important purpose for millions of seniors across our country.

We are also adjusting reimbursements to hospitals downward. Why and how does that work for hospitals? When you insure 31 million people who previously didn't have insurance, hospitals are no longer on the line for uncompensated care when those 31 million people go into the emergency room. The hospitals aren't left holding the bag for all of those costs.

And we didn't just extend the life of Medicare by 9 years; while we were at it, we expanded benefits for Medicare beneficiaries. I go to a lot of senior centers and nursing homes in my home State of Minnesota, and I have to tell you, seniors are very happy about their new benefits. They are very happy about the new free preventive care they get--the wellness checkups and the colonoscopies and the mammograms. They know and we know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Do you know what else we are doing with that money? We are closing the prescription drug doughnut hole--the gap in coverage under Medicare where seniors have to pay the full costs of their prescription drugs in that gap. Seniors are very happy about that. For more than one-third of seniors, Social Security provides more than 90 percent of their income, and for one-quarter of elderly beneficiaries, Social Security is the sole source of their retirement income. So when Medicare stops covering the cost of their prescription drugs in the doughnut hole, that is serious, and sometimes these seniors have to decide between food and heat and medicine. Well, because we have been closing this doughnut hole, many don't have to make that impossible choice anymore.

When I was running for the Senate back in 2008, a nurse in Cambridge, MN, told me about a senior being hospitalized. She was being treated by the doctors and nurses so that she would be well enough to leave the hospital, and when she left the hospital, they would make sure to give her the prescriptions she needed.

After a few days, this nurse would call the pharmacy and ask: Has Mrs. Johnson come in and filled those prescriptions?

The pharmacist would say: No, she hasn't.

Why was that? Because she was in the doughnut hole. And guess what. In 10 days or in 2 weeks or whatever, Mrs. Johnson would end up back in the hospital because she couldn't afford her medicine. These readmissions cost our health care system a lot of money. But now, because we are closing the doughnut hole as part of the health care law, these seniors are able to get their medicine. This is improving their health, and it is saving us money.

So we have increased benefits and extended the life of Medicare, and that was done as part of health care reform.

Many of the provisions of the health care reform law will make our health care system more efficient and will lower costs in the long run. I wish to touch briefly on one I authored that is already keeping costs down for families in Minnesota and across our country. The provision of the health care reform law that I authored is based on a Minnesota law in a way. In 1993 Minnesota wrote a law that insurance companies had to report their medical loss ratio, and that is the piece I wrote into the law.

What is the medical loss ratio? Medical loss ratio is the percentage of premiums a health insurer receives that goes to actual health care-- to actual health care, not to administrative costs, not to marketing costs, not to profits, not to CEO salaries, but actual health care.

Starting in 1993 Minnesota health insurers had to submit to the commissioner of commerce--the Minnesota Department of Commerce--their medical loss ratio. They had to compute it and submit it. I took that and I put a little wrinkle into it. I wrote something called the 80-20 rule, which says that insurance companies have to spend at least 80 percent of their premiums on actual health care for small group policies and individual policies and 85 percent for large group policies, and if they do not meet that, the health insurer has to rebate the difference. Well, thanks to this provision of the law, last year more than 12 million Americans benefited from $1.1 billion in rebates from insurers that did not meet the 80-20 rule, including 123,000 consumers in Minnesota.

In a new report, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that premiums in the individual market would have been $1.9 billion higher last year if it weren't for the medical loss ratio rule and they would have been $856 million higher in 2011. That is more than $2.75

billion in savings over the last 2 years alone. Those savings are in addition to the rebates consumers received. They estimated that insurers would have raised their rates that much more--$2.75 billion more--if they hadn't had to meet the 80-20 rule. This is another important way the health reform law is keeping health care costs down. So the rule I wrote into the law has already saved Americans nearly $4 billion in health care costs.

In fact, after going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade, over each of the last 2 years health care costs have gone up less than 4 percent for the first time in 50 years. That is according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now, I am not saying we are done, not by any stretch of the imagination. We have more work to do. In fact, one big thing we could do would be to allow Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers on the price of their drugs. The VA does this, and they pay nearly 50 percent less for the top 10 drugs than Medicare does. I have a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical manufacturers, and I hope to work with my colleagues to bring this proposal to the floor.

At the end of the day, my job is about strengthening what works in our country and fixing what doesn't. Medicare works. It works for seniors across the Nation, it works for grandparents from Pipestone to Grand Marais, and I hope to work with my colleagues to protect Medicare benefits for our parents and grandparents, while strengthening the program for our children and grandchildren.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to associate myself with the wise words of my colleague from Missouri, whose State has experienced so much tragedy last year much like the devastation in Oklahoma. On behalf of the State of Minnesota, our hearts and thoughts are with the people of Oklahoma.

I would also like to thank Senator Blunt for cosponsoring an amendment in the farm bill which will make it easier for seniors and those with disabilities to receive groceries in their homes that is delivered by volunteers. They pay for it with their SNAP dollars.

I am grateful to the whole Senate for adopting the farm bill package by unanimous consent. I am very grateful for that.

I am very pleased the Senate has taken up the farm bill, and I hope we can pass this in the Senate and the House so our Nation's farmers have the certainty they need to provide food for the rest of us.

There are so many important pieces to this bill which will be great for Minnesota and Wisconsin. For example, it contains provisions to support beginning and young farmers to help them start farming operations. I think the average age of a farmer in Minnesota is about 58. We need young and beginning farmers.

The farm bill also contains important conservation measures so farmers can better protect their land. It also contains a comprehensive energy title--that I helped to write--in order to make our agriculture sector and our Nation more energy independent.

Above all, the farm bill provides a safety net for farmers, and that safety net is the centerpiece of this bill. The reason it is there is because agriculture is inherently risky. Just last year we witnessed a historic drought which devastated the Nation's corn and soybean crops and forced ranchers to cull their livestock. Agriculture is prone to weather disruption such as drought, flood, hail, pests, disease, and global market forces which can drastically disrupt prices, and that is why the farm bill safety net is so essential and important.

The farm bill safety net provides disaster assurance for livestock producers, and it contains crop insurance so farmers have certainty over their planting decisions. It also contains a dairy program to make sure we have a healthy dairy economy in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, New York, and other States.

That is why we have the Sugar Program, to help protect our sugar growers. The program is important to Minnesota's sugar growers and to growers across the Nation. In addition to protecting farmers, these programs enhance the domestic supply of food that is so important to our Nation. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues don't support a strong farm safety net, and they have decided to go after the Sugar Program in the farm bill this year.

Let's be clear about one thing: By attacking the Sugar Program, or any other farm safety net, they are helping to send jobs overseas. Ironically, this attack comes just a week after 60 Senators supported a provision to make sure some of the funds used in water infrastructure projects are used to purchase U.S. iron and U.S. steel. Some of the very same Senators who are fighting for a domestic steel industry are now turning their backs on our farmers by pulling the plug on our Sugar Program. I also heard some argue that we should just let the free market work.

Madam President, did you know that the government of Mexico is Mexico's biggest producer and exporter of sugar? That is not much of a free market.

Brazil, the world's largest sugarcane producer, spends billions of dollars to subsidize its Sugar Program. Let's be clear: Removing the protections we have for our domestic sugar producers will do nothing but kill an American industry and outsource jobs to our competitors.

Some have depicted the amendment of Senator Shaheen and Toomey as nothing more than a rollback of U.S. policy to the pre-2008 policy.

Let's be clear: The reason Congress modified the U.S. sugar policy in the 2008 farm bill was primarily because the provision in NAFTA, which allows subsidized Mexican sugar unfettered access to U.S. markets, kicked in in 2008. The reason the bill changed in 2008 is because the Sugar Program changed. Let's be clear: Eliminating or weakening the Sugar Program is going to kill rural jobs in America.

I urge my colleagues to stand for agriculture and American jobs. I ask that my colleagues oppose the amendment of Senator Shaheen and Senator Toomey.

I see the Senator from Illinois is here and about to join us on the floor.

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