Floor Statements

Madam President, Senator Kaine has spoken eloquently about events of today. I wish to speak for a few moments about events of 200- plus years ago.

On Tuesday, August 17, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the delegates debated the question of war. They debated it passionately and with a sense of history and human nature. They understood the propensity of the Executive--any Executive throughout history, a prince, a king, a potentate, a sultan--to lead their country into war for good reasons or no good reasons. They understood that this was a basic question before the body--before the Constitutional Convention, and I would assert that the Framers knew what they were doing.

Interestingly, in the first draft of the Constitution, the clause in article I, section 8 that says the Congress shall have the power to declare war, said: The Congress shall have the power to make war. That was the first draft.

The debate was about whether Congress could effectively make and execute war. They wisely, I believe, realized that was impractical, given the nature of Congress and the large number of representatives, and the exigencies of war. So they left the power to the Commander in Chief, to the Chief Executive. They also recognized the Chief Executive's inherent power to repel an attack on this country. But in all other cases what the Constitution says is very clear. Article 1, section 8, says the Congress shall declare war. There was some discussion about this. Some people said, well, we don't want to tie the hands of the Executive, but others made it more clear.

Madison's notes are a fascinating source of information about the history of the Constitution. The notes were taken the day of the debate on Tuesday, August 17, 1787. Mr. Ellsworth of Connecticut stated that ``it should be more easy to get out of war than into it.'' He understood this principle.

Pierce Butler of South Carolina said the Executive should have the power to repel sudden attacks. That is common sense. But then Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, I think, put it most succinctly. He said, ``I never expected to hear in a Republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.'' That is the fundamental issue that is before us today.

Then George Mason of Virginia later in the debate used a wonderful phrase that I think aptly captures what the Framers were after. He said: ``I am for flogging rather than facilitating war.'' That is what we are supposed to do, is to debate, discuss, and have the people engaged in the discussion before this country is committed to war.

The Constitution in the Preamble makes it very clear that one of the fundamental purposes of this government or any government is to provide for the common defense. Nobody questions that. Neither Senator Kaine nor myself nor anyone else who is talking about this issue questions, A, whether we should be debating it and, B, that it is our solemn responsibility to provide for the common defense. I happen to think, as Senator Kaine does, that the fight against ISIL is worthy of national attention, worthy of national effort, and should be debated and circumscribed through some form of authorization in this body. There has not been a declaration of war by the Congress since 1942.

I will conclude with the observation that power doesn't spring from one branch of our government to the other overnight or in some flash of inspiration or change. I would argue more aptly it oozes from one branch to the other, not necessarily through Executive usurpation as through congressional application. For us to go home, to take a recess, to say: We don't really want to be talking about this, we don't want to be responsible for this, I think is unfair to the American people. It is unfair to the people who are being put into harm's way. It is unfair and not responsive to the basic principles of the Constitution.

We owe it to our country to have this debate, and it is one that I believe is important and is constitutionally based. We are very good in Congress about not making decisions and then criticizing the Executive for what they do. This is an opportunity where we have the power, the constitutional power and the constitutional responsibility to discuss, debate, and authorize the Executive's actions against this terrible foe. I believe it is our responsibility to do so. To not do so is simply one more sliding away, one more giving away of our constitutional authority to the Executive that I think is in detriment not only to the Constitution itself, clearly, but also to the interests of the American people.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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

Madam President, I rise today to speak about ISIS--the threat, what we can do about it, and what we must do about it.

Why are we having this debate? Why are we conducting airstrikes? This is a clear and present danger to the United States of America. This group has done everything but send us an email saying we are coming for you. They have made comments: We will see you in New York. They brutally murdered two of our citizens.

If they have free rein in the area that is as big as the State of Indiana, I suppose, between eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq, there, undoubtedly, will come a time when they will strike here and in Europe and in other parts of the world.

I am here today to support the provision of the continuing resolution that will allow us to begin the arming, equipping, and training of the Syrian moderate opposition.

Why do we even have this discussion? Because the most fundamental responsibility of any government anywhere, any time is to protect our citizens. The preamble of the U.S. Constitution says that one of the fundamental purposes listed in the preamble is to ``provide for the common defense'' and ``insure domestic tranquility''--a basic function of any government. This is why we are having this debate today.

This arming and equipping provision is not a panacea. It is not going to end the war. It is not going to be easy. It is no sure thing.

A friend said to me this morning: It is the least worst option. It is one that we must undertake. It has to be part of the solution because to root out ISIS, whose headquarters are in Syria--not Iraq--there are going to have to be troops. There are going to have be combat troops. There is no such thing as a surgical war.

Where are those troops going to come from? Not from the United States--they have to come from within the Syrian opposition itself.

This is also important as a gesture to the coalition we are building to confront this threat. Having a credible coalition--which I will expand upon in a moment--is an incredibly important part of this entire strategy. Without a functioning real coalition, it is impossible, it is an impossible task. This cannot be a U.S. war. This cannot be a war of the West against this so-called Islamic State. It has to involve particularly the neighbors in the region.

I am also supportive of the general strategy the President outlined, but I think there are several points that need to be absolutely emphasized. One is the importance of the coalition. We cannot have a coalition that just holds our coat while we do the fighting. They have to be engaged in an active way--not just writing checks.

If we try to do this ourselves, not even if we were inclined to do this with our own troops, it wouldn't work. These have to be local faces on the ground. There are going to be boots on the ground, but they are not and should not and cannot be ours.

The second thing that is so important in this strategy the President outlined the other night is a trustworthy, inclusive government in Baghdad. The reason ISIS was so successful in this sweep through northern Iraq and into Mosul was that they were swimming in friendly waters. They were swimming in the Sunni regions of Iraq where the local tribes and Sunni leaders have been alienated and systematically excluded from the government in Baghdad.

If the government in Baghdad cannot build credibility with that group, this is a hopeless enterprise. Prime Minister al-Abadi needs to channel his inner Mandela. He has to be inclusive of even the people who were his enemies and the enemies of his sect at a prior time.

This has to be a government that can be trusted. Really what is going on is a battle for the loyalty of the Sunni population of Iraq to see whether they are going to be loyal to this brutal so-called Islamic State or to the government of the country in Baghdad. That is the challenge that is before that government today.

So far the signs are positive, but we are still in the very first weeks of this regime. But that has to be a crucial element of our strategy. So these are two pieces that are largely out of our control.

We can try to build a coalition. We can put pressure on the government in Baghdad, but these folks have to do it themselves. We cannot be the policemen of the Middle East.

The third piece is building the Syrian opposition. The same goes for Al-Raqqa, the headquarters of ISIS in Syria. There are going to have to be people on the ground, and they are not going to be Americans. They have to come from the Syrian opposition, and that is why that is an important element of the strategy.

I think there is another discussion we have to have. Unfortunately, the calendar doesn't allow us to have it today. I believe there must be a new authorization for the use of military force. The authorization that was passed right after September 11, 2001, has been stretched and strained to the point where if it is allowed to become the justification for anything, there is nothing left of the clause of the Constitution that says Congress shall be the one to declare war.

I have gone back and looked at the history of that clause. Very interestingly, the original draft of the Constitution said Congress shall make war. At the time, the Framers realized that Congress would not be the right entity to execute the war itself, to make the battlefield decisions. The Framers were adamant that the momentous decision of entering this country into war had to be in the branch of the government most representative of the people.

They went through history--in the 49th Federalist they talk about how throughout history unfettered executives, princes, kings mischievously and often on weak grounds got their countries engaged in war. They made a conscious decision that this responsibility was left with the Congress. Unfortunately, over the years, going back to the late 1940s, we allowed that clause to atrophy. We allowed the Executive to take more and more responsibility and power and unilateral authority. People are saying: Well, this President is acting unilaterally. This is nothing new. This goes back to Harry Truman and the Korean war. This isn't something that Barack Obama invented.

Presidents naturally want more authority. They do have the power to defend our country when the threat is imminent and real, but they don't have the power to commit American armed forces in any place, at any time, under any circumstances.

I believe we have a constitutional responsibility to consider this matter, to debate it, to argue about the terms of what the authorization should be--how it should be limited in duration, geography, target, in means of confrontation with the enemy. That is what we must do.

Finally, beyond this AUMF, beyond ISIS, assume for a moment we are tremendously and utterly successful over the next 6 months, a year, 2 years, and ISIS is gone, the problem is history has taught us someone will take their place.

The real issue is radical jihadism. We have to have a strategy to deal with that in the long term that doesn't involve trying to just kill them as they come forward. It was characterized recently as geopolitical Whac-A-Mole. We stop them in one place, and it comes up somewhere else, and we all know about al-Shabaab, al-Nusra, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Boko Horam.

We have to be talking about and developing a strategy to deal with this threat to our country and to the rest of the world on a more long- term basis than simply having continuous--what amounts to--battles against elements of these people.

Why are they doing this? What is attracting young people to this destructive philosophy, and how can we best counteract that? I believe we have to make a decision today.

As I said, I also think we have to make a decision before the end of the year as to what the scope, limits, and authority of the President are in this matter. We can try to avoid it, but I don't believe we can.

On December 1, 1862, Abraham Lincoln sent a message to this body, and the conclusion of that message was that we cannot escape history. It will light us down from one generation to the next. I believe that we need to stand and debate, argue, refine, and finally reach a conclusion so that the American people can understand what we are doing and why.

The Executive will have clear authority. The rest of the world will know that this is the United States of America taking this position-- not a President and not a few Members of Congress. That is a responsibility I believe we are ready to assume. This is a threat. It must be met, and we must participate in the decision to meet it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am delighted to join my colleague from Nebraska to introduce what I think is an important and commonsense and workable bill that could be passed in the next several weeks, and I think there will be broad agreement across the political spectrum.

The question we are answering is: What does Suriname, Papua-New Guinea, and the United States have in common? The answer is: They are the only three countries in the world that we have been able to turn up that don't have any provision for paid maternity leave. Every member of the industrialized world, except the United States, has some kind of coverage for paid maternity leave.

This chart gives the various levels. You will see in red is the United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and that is it in the whole world. This is something we can do that will not affect our competitiveness, will not be a problem in our economic growth, and in fact I believe it will contribute to it.

Today a family who has a health crisis with an elderly parent, a child or has the joyful issue of a new child in their family has a terrible dilemma. The dilemma is: Do I stay home to take care of the child or the elderly parent in a health crisis or do I have to put food on the table by going to work because for every hour of work I miss I lose an hour of pay. That is a dilemma we should not put our people through.

As I have said, I believe this is a productivity issue. All of the discussions we have had in recent months about pay and gender inequity often come down to the issue of workplace flexibility, particularly in the case of women who are often the ones who are put in the dilemma I mentioned of having to choose between their earnings and family obligations. Women are the ones who are often trapped in this dilemma, and they are the ones who are asking for and seeking--quite reasonably--the same kind of flexibility that virtually every other working person in the world already enjoys.

I like this bill and agreed with my colleague from Nebraska to join in it because it is voluntary. It is not a mandate from Washington, it is not something that says every employer in the country has to do this, and there will be rules and bureaucracy and adjudications and all those kinds of things. No, this is a voluntary, incentive-based program that says every employer--not just those 50 and above or 100 and above or 500 and above--in the country will have this tax credit available to them that will allow them to offer paid leave to their employees.

I think this is the way we should approach this and not, as my colleague has said, with a one-size-fits-all mandate emanating from Washington. I think incentives are always better than mandates.

The other element that is important about this bill is it focuses on the people who are currently least likely to have some kind of paid leave available to them, and usually those are people who work on an hourly basis. That is whom this bill is focused on. The interesting aspect of the data is that as it goes up the income scale into salaried employees, more than two-thirds of American workers in this category already have a paid leave policy. It is when you get down into the working people--the hourly workers--that we have discovered the real problem lies. That is why I think this bill has an important focus on hourly workers, people who are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act and people who otherwise are not going to have this kind of protection.

This is about flexibility. As I have talked to and listened to women's groups and advocacy groups, flexibility is always first on the agenda, and that is exactly what we are talking about, so people--men or women--don't have to make that agonizing decision, people who are living paycheck to paycheck don't have to make the agonizing decision between being able to put food on the table and pay the rent or staying home to take care of an ill child or an elderly parent or to stay home a reasonable period after the joyous occasion of the arrival of a new child.

It is also about productivity. I believe we will see an increase in productivity because people will not be preoccupied when they are at work. They know they are going to be there and they know they are going to have this protection and it takes away that agonizing worry and anxiety. It also--by giving people paid leave--will enable them to continue to contribute to the economy, and I believe it will actually be a positive stimulus to our economy.

Of course everybody says we are in competition with the rest of the world. Not on this. Every place else in the world provides this level of benefits so we are in a catchup situation, and I believe, as I said, I think we will see an increase in productivity and in economic activity.

Finally, it is about fairness. Frankly, to some extent it is about gender fairness. It is about fairness to working women who are expected in our culture to be the ones to take care of a sick child. That may not be fair, that may not be the wave of the future, but that is a fact today. It is about fairness to those working women who have to make a choice between putting food on the table or taking care of a sick child or taking the necessary time off after the birth of a child in order to have that event be a happy one and not an economic strain on the family.

I am delighted to join my colleague from Nebraska--the leader of the surf-and-turf caucus--on her brilliant bill that I believe is something we can come together on, on a bipartisan basis, and actually do something about and not just talk about the problem of income equality and not just talk about the problem of fairness and not just talk about the problem of flexibility in the workplace but actually do something about it in a practical and commonsense way that I think will have tremendous ramifications across the country.

I am delighted to be able to join her. I compliment the Senator from Nebraska for her work in bringing this

forward, and I look forward to what I hope will be an expeditious consideration of her bill in the Senate and in the Congress. This is a change we can make that will make a real difference in people's lives across America.

I thank the Presiding Officer and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I wish to commend Edie Johnston and her company, Eldertide LLC, for being named a 2014 Small Business Administration Tibbetts Award recipient. Located in Dresden, ME, Eldertide harvests and produces elderberries for medicinal purposes. Along with Eldertides sister company, Maine Medicinals, the business creates various herbal supplements with the elderberry product. Fueled by the belief that natural, native elderberries are nutritionally valuable, Eldertide has successfully marketed and sold their Maine-made supplements nationwide and around the world.

With just two employees and 6 years of business experience, the company is expanding vastly. Their antioxidant-rich elderberry juice concentrate is now being distributed nationally and internationally. Maine Medicinals, which serves as the retail branch of the company, recently reached an agreement with Whole Foods to sell their supplements.

Eldertide and Maine Medicinals not only represent a successful entrepreneurial spirit, but they also strive to impact Maine, the United States, and the world with an emphasis on innovation and education. The company has contributed to two university research initiatives through the University of Southern Maine and the University of Maine-Orono and has also engaged Kennebec Valley Community College students in valuable research to examine the health effects of phytochemicals from whole foods such as elderberries. Specifically, this research has examined the impact of elderberry juice on chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.

In addition, Mrs. Johnston founded the Elderberry School, an institution where family farmers interested in the science and business of herbal supplements can learn the process that has propelled Eldertide to where it is today. Some recent graduates have even gone on to own small businesses dedicated to the same core principles that Eldertide espouses.

We have many great small businesses in Maine, and 2014 Tibbetts Award recipient Mrs. Edie Johnston and Eldertide LLC is certainly one of them. Eldertide and its sister company Maine Medicinals represent the innovative, entrepreneurial spirit that defines the State of Maine. I am proud to join in recognizing their creativity and dedication to larger social and economic goals, and I expect they will continue to impress us--both in Maine and around the world with their superb nutraceuticals.

Madam President, I rise to address the highway funding issue we are discussing today. Four or five years ago, Tom Brokaw wrote a book called ``The Greatest Generation.'' He was talking about the generation that sacrificed--I repeat sacrificed--on our behalf. They struggled through the Depression, they fought World War II. Then when it was over, they paid the debt from World War II and built the Interstate Highway System. I hate to think what Tom Brokaw would call the book written about our generation, which has, in effect, rebuilt the World War II debt, which we are passing on to our children. We cannot even keep the Interstate Highway System fixed. This is shameful.

I am here to support the Carper-Boxer-Corker amendment, because it forces us to deal with it in this Congress. It is not going to be any easier to deal with next May. Let's get it done. We have the answers. We know what we have to do. The highway system is a pay-as-you-go system. The problem is, now we are going more than we are paying. The gasoline tax has not been raised since 1993, 21 years ago. But the cost of maintaining the highways, of course, has been raised precipitously.

Not fixing infrastructure is debt. A lot of people around here talk about debt, and we are worried about the debt we are passing on to our children. I am worried about it too, but I want to make the point that if you do not fix a bridge or do not fix a highway or do not fix an airport, that is debt too because our children are going to have fix them. When they get around to it, they are going to have to pay more for it.

Senator Corker used the term ``generational theft.'' That is what it is. Our generation is giving ourselves tax cuts borrowing the money to pay for those tax cuts, and our kids are going to have to pay it. That is not a tax cut, that is a shift of a tax from us to our children and our grandchildren. It is wrong.

To think that generation went through the Depression, fought World War II, paid for World War II, and then built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and 1960s, and then we cannot even keep it paved, and we have rebuilt the debt from World War II with nothing much to show for it, is unconscionable.

There are a lot of problems we deal with here that are hard and complicated. I deal with, on Armed Services and Intelligence, some very complicated problems that are troubling and difficult to figure the right thing to do. This one is simple: Pay your bills. It could not be more straightforward. Pay your bills. If you want to drive on the highways, have the potholes filled, we have to pay for it. To delay this into next May is just that much easier, and then we are going to start talking about Presidential campaigns and other campaigns and 2016 is going to be coming up. There are always reasons not to do it.

This is the 11th time we have punted on this issue. This is what the American public is sick and tired of. They are sick and tired of us not doing our basic job. There could not be a more

basic job than fixing and paying for and maintaining your infrastructure. So I hope we can pass this amendment.

Yes, it is going to go back to the House. The House has said: Well, we are not going to accept it. But let's see. Let's put something good over there, shorten the time, get to it this year, in December, November or December, and let's solve it. It is not going to be any easier to solve in May. I would argue it would probably be harder.

I think it is time for us to start talking straight to the American people and say: We have to pay our bills. That is what this amendment and that is what this bill is all about. I want that book to talk about another greatest generation, not the worst generation that just passed all the bills on to our kids.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, Friday, July 25, marks the 40th anniversary of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). In 1974, Congress--with bipartisan support, including that of President Nixon-- established LSC to be a major source of funding for civil legal aid in this country. LSC is a private, nonprofit corporation, funded by Congress, with the mission to ensure equal access to justice under law for all Americans by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. LSC distributes nearly 94 percent of its annual Federal appropriations to 134 local legal aid programs, with nearly 800 offices serving every congressional district and U.S. territories.

LSC-funded legal aid programs make a crucial difference to millions of Americans by assisting with the most basic civil legal needs, such as addressing matters involving safety, subsistence, and family stability. These low-income Americans are women seeking protection from abuse, mothers trying to obtain child support, families facing unlawful evictions or foreclosures that could leave them homeless, veterans seeking benefits duly earned, seniors defending against consumer scams, and individuals who have lost their jobs and need help in applying for unemployment compensation and other benefits.

It is LSC-funded attorneys who help parents obtain and keep custody of their children, assist parents in enforcing child support payments and help women who are victims of domestic violence. In fact, three out of four legal aid clients are women, and legal aid programs identify domestic violence as one of their top priorities. LSC-funded attorneys provide critical legal services that would otherwise be unavailable.

In fact, I began my career as one of these attorneys. Beginning in 1969, I worked in Skowhegan, ME for a legal services provider called Pine Tree Legal Assistance. Although my time predated LSC, today Pine Tree is funded by LSC and continues to provide high-quality legal services to those in most need. I learned firsthand during this period that the work of LSC attorneys is a critical element of making real the promise of our country to our disadvantaged and disenfranchised citizens.

Given the vital role played by LSC-funded attorneys, we need to do better than turn away more than 50 percent of eligible clients who seek assistance because of lack of LSC program resources. With the growing number of Americans eligible for services and increased demand for legal services, the need for legal aid attorneys has never been greater. On this anniversary, I salute the Legal Services Corporation

and LSC-funded attorneys for the vital work they do every day on behalf of Americans who need qualified counsel. Every day that a legal aid attorney protects the safety, security, and health of our most vulnerable citizens, they bring this Nation closer to living up to its commitment--chiseled in stone above the entrance to the Supreme Court building here in Washington, DC--``Equal Justice Under Law.''

Mr. President, a few years ago Tom Brokaw wrote a brilliant and important book called ``The Greatest Generation,'' and he described our fathers and grandfathers and mothers and grandmothers and what they did for this country by coming through the searing fire of the Great Depression, fighting and winning World War II, and then rebuilding our economy in the 1950s. We owe that generation everything we have. That generation sacrificed--I have to repeat that word ``sacrificed''--on our behalf. We are literally standing on their shoulders. We are driving on the highways they built. We enjoy our freedoms because of their sacrifice in World War II and in Korea.

If Tom Brokaw writes another book about us, I don't know what it will be called, but it will not have ``greatest'' in the title. Instead of a compliment, it would be more of an epithet. We are leaving our children a gigantic national debt, crumbling infrastructure, and a changing climate that threatens their well-being and future opportunities in this country.

I rise to talk about one of those factors; that is, infrastructure. I had a great insight when I was the Governor of Maine because every year Governors go to New York to go through a ceremony of genuflecting and kissing the ring of the rating agencies in order to try to get our States a high bond rating so they will have a low interest rate on their loans. I was all prepared for my meeting with the rating agencies. I had all kinds of data about how prudent Maine was, how low our debt level was, how we paid it off in 10 years, and how low our debt level was per capita. I was in the middle of this presentation when one of the rating agency officials stopped me and said: Governor, just because you have low debt, if you are not fixing your infrastructure, that is debt just as if it is debt on the books, just as if it is dollars you owe because the infrastructure is eventually going to have to be fixed. Of course, when it is fixed, the later you do it, the more it is going to cost. That was an insight for me.

We have this sort of mental bookkeeping where we have the dollars we owe, but we don't think about a bridge being fixed as a form of debt. Yet that is exactly what we have in this country. We are handing our children a gigantic debt on all fronts because we are unwilling to pay the bills.

I had another exchange once with a fellow who was a clerk in a hardware store. This was in the early 2000s, and I said: What do you think of the tax cuts we recently passed? I was just making conversation.

He said: There haven't been any tax cuts.

I said: What are you talking about? You see it all over the news. There are all these tax cuts we just passed in Washington.

He said: No. No, we haven't passed any tax cuts.

I said: Don't you watch the news?

He said: Look, if you pass tax cuts when you are in a deficit situation, all you are doing is borrowing more money and your kids are going to have to pay for it with interest, so you are merely shifting the taxes from us to them.

I had never thought about it that way before. Of course, he was exactly right. If we cut taxes and cut expenditures at the same time, OK, that is legitimate public policy, but if we cut taxes and borrow the difference, we are just shifting the cost to the next generation, and that is what we are doing right now, today, and we are doing it on all fronts. We are doing it in our Federal debt and deficit posture, and we are doing it in our infrastructure posture.

This is going to cost all of us. The subject I am addressing--which I neglected to clarify at the beginning--is the fact that the highway trust fund goes broke in just a few weeks.

Funding from the Federal Government for highways for infrastructure around the country will decline precipitously starting in August, and around here we are about a patch, about something that will get us through 2 or 3 months or maybe 8 months, but nobody is talking about solving the problem. Everybody is talking about all of these convoluted ways to avoid the reality that we need to pay for what we do. We need to pay for our highways, for our roads, for our bridges, and right now we are not doing it.

This is really going to hurt Maine. The estimates from our Department of Transportation is that it is going to cut our highway funding in our State by 17 percent--almost 20 percent. It is particularly going to hurt if we don't do something in the next month because we have a short construction season. If we lose our funding between August and October, we have effectively lost it for the next 8 or 9 months. It is going to impair projects that are ongoing, and it is going to essentially eliminate--across the country--new highway and infrastructure projects.

By the way, if you are the head of the Department of Transportation and your funding is going to be cut, what are you going to do? You are going to maintain, not invest. Maintaining is the bare minimum, but it is not investing because investing is where we have our wherewithal to compete in a global economy.

It is very revealing to me to compare the funding levels of our infrastructure, maintenance, and investment with other countries. That is a fair comparison. It sort of tells us how we are doing. It puts it in perspective. Right now our infrastructure investment is about 2.6 percent of gross domestic product--2.6 percent of GDP. In Japan it is 5 percent and in China it is 8.5 percent. It is more than three times the level in our principal future economic competitor. They are investing, and we are disinvesting because the infrastructure is crumbling faster than we are fixing it.

The joke in Maine this winter was the potholes were so bad that instead of filling them, we were going to lower the roads. That is a joke, but it says something about the seriousness of this issue. Maine is no different than any other State. In fact, I would argue we have some of the best roads in the country, particularly given the farflung nature of our State, but this is going to hurt us. It is going to hurt every State in the country. Yet we are around here trying to avoid talking about paying for them.

There are indirect and direct costs. Not fixing the highways is costing our drivers more than an increase in the gas tax in terms of delay, in terms of maintenance of automobiles, in terms of bent wheels from potholes.

I talked to some people from the United Parcel Service, UPS. As to their fleet nationwide, a 5-minute delay per vehicle--because of congestion, because of lack of infrastructure investment--costs that company $100 million a year--a 5-minute delay. Multiply that by everybody in the country and we are paying a high price.

The point is, we are paying a high price, but it is hidden. We do not notice it. If we increase the gas tax, everybody is going to notice that. But that is called paying your bills.

As a young man, I represented a client before the Maine legislature that was an engineering firm that was owed a bill by the State of Maine, and for some reason it had not been taken care of. I ended up appearing before the appropriations committee. This was 40 years ago. But I remember distinctly going before the committee and saying: Here is this bill and it has to be paid, and the members of the committee-- by the way, the senior members were all Republicans--they looked at each other and said: We have to pay our bills. That is called governing, and right now we are not paying our bills. It seems to me that is what we have to do.

One interesting thing about the gas tax is--which, by the way, has not been increased since 1993, 21 years ago; it has fallen in value by something like 35 percent because of inflation over that period--but the interesting thing about the gas tax is, it is the only tax that is not effectively indexed. By that I mean the sales tax, which many States have--my State does--5 percent. You say: Well, that is fixed over time. It is not indexed. But it is because the value of goods to which the sales tax applies goes up over time. On a hundred-dollar tire, the sales tax, at 5 percent, is $5. But 5 years from now, that tire is probably going to cost $110, so it is going to be higher revenue. It is the same thing with the income tax. It may be at a flat level--22 percent or 15 percent or in Maine 5 or 6 percent--but incomes go up, so revenues go up proportionately to the changes in the economy.

The gas tax is a fixed number--18.4 cents. That is what it has been since 1993. It does not change at all. Do you think, Mr. President, the cost of building a road is the same today as it was in 1993--21 years ago? The answer is no.

We have to grapple with this. To me, what bothers me about this is it is part of a pattern. I started with Tom Brokaw and the ``greatest generation.'' If you think of the legacy that ``greatest generation'' left us--because they were willing to make sacrifices on our behalf-- and then you say: What is the legacy of our generation? it is debt and it is crumbling infrastructure and it is the crippling of our ability to compete in a globalized economy. Shame on us.

I do not know exactly what the answer is. I do not know whether it is a gas tax, a mileage tax, a change of the tax to the wholesale level as opposed to the retail level. I do not know. But I do know that no matter what we do, and no matter how much we try to avoid it, we are going to have to pay our bills; and to not pay our bills, we have to realize, is simply passing those bills to our kids. That is unethical. It is immoral, it is wrong, and it is not what our parents and grandparents did for us.

I think we owe the same level of consideration, the same level of sacrifice, the same level of realism, the same level of paying our bills to our children and grandchildren that we have been the beneficiaries of.

So I hope, as this debate unfolds in the next several weeks, that we pay attention to the critical importance infrastructure plays in the competitiveness of our society and in the future of our children. The ``greatest generation'' built the Interstate Highway System, and we cannot even keep it maintained. That is inexcusable. It is inexcusable, Mr. President, and I am sorry to be so preachy about this, but I think this is a really important issue, and I think it goes in some ways to the heart of our politics today where we are trying to do things and accomplish things but not pay for them. The point of my comments, though, is: They are going to be paid for; it is just going to be somebody else, that is, our children and grandchildren, who are going to be paying that bill. I think we ought to stand up and pay the bills ourselves and maintain the infrastructure this country needs to compete and give the same opportunity to our children and grandchildren we were given by the ``greatest generation.''

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

I withhold my suggestion.

Mr. President, I believe in markets and I believe in transparency, and that is what I wish to speak about today. I think markets generally are the best allocators of goods and services, but in order for markets to work, people who purchase--consumers--need information. I wish to address one small piece of a very important market today.

I serve on the Budget Committee of this body and as such I have had an opportunity to look at not only the current budget but projections of future

budgets. I think it is important to emphasize that virtually all the growth--all the growth--in future Federal budgets is attributable to health care--all the growth. It is not Pell grants, it is not national parks, it is not national defense, it is not the National Security Agency; it is all in health care.

There are several ways we can control those costs. One way which has been suggested is to simply shift those costs off to other people--to the States, to the elderly, to other citizens--and say it is not the Federal Government's problem; it is someone else's problem. I would suggest that is not the answer. We need to be focused on the issue of health care costs generally, for everyone--for the Federal Government as a consumer, as it is in Medicare and Medicaid, but also for all of us as health care consumers across the country.

The standard response around here to growing health care costs is to cut programs, cut recipients, reduce payments to States, or reduce payments to providers. That does nothing about the fundamental issue. I can tell my colleagues that none of these steps has anything to do with reducing the demand for services or the costs of those services. We have to spend the money we have more responsibly.

There have been discussions recently about repealing the medical device tax which was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act. The theory, by the way, was that the Affordable Care Act would produce, as it has, millions of new customers for the private insurance industry as well as for all of those who participate in the health care system, including those who manufacture medical devices. The Affordable Care Act has produced new customers. And the theory, as I understand it, because I wasn't here when the bill was originally passed, was the industry--the businesses that will profit by the production of new customers through new people gaining insurance who never had it before--was that part of that would be paid back to support the overall system. That was the idea of the tax on medical devices. I realize the medical device tax is a controversial tax and that strong arguments can be made that it should be modified or reduced. But the repeal of the medical device tax would cost the government $29 billion over the next 10 years. That is money, as we all know, that has to be replaced somewhere else. So I think that is a consideration that has to be taken into account as we discuss this matter which is under consideration as part of the tax extenders package.

As I looked into this issue and thought about the medical device industry, I was surprised to find it is very difficult to find out the price of an implantable medical device. One of the reasons is that the hospitals, which are the purchasers of these devices, are often prevented by agreements with the medical device company from revealing the price they pay. In other words, there is no transparency about the prices of these devices which find their way into the cost of everybody's health care.

Imagine for a moment going to buy a new car and there is no advertising about the prices of the cars. We couldn't go on the Internet and determine the prices of the cars. We couldn't compare the prices of the cars from one dealer to the other. But we go in and somebody behind a closed door says, OK, the price is $20,200, and we are not allowed to tell anybody the price we are paying for this car, and we have to sign an agreement that we are keeping that price secret. Imagine that system, and imagine for a moment what would happen to the price of cars. I don't think it is gross speculation to assume that the price would go up, because there is no transparency.

I have filed amendment No. 3802 to H.R. 3474, which is the tax extenders bill that is pending. It simply says that when a medical device is being sold, the manufacturer cannot impose a secrecy provision on the hospitals that purchase these devices, and they also have to report median prices to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on a regular basis.

In 2012, the GAO did a report on Medicare and one of the pieces of the report was titled ``Lack of Price Transparency May Hamper Hospitals' Ability to Be Prudent Purchasers of Implantable Medical Devices''--a long title, but the conclusion is contained in the title: ``may hamper hospitals' ability to be prudent purchasers.'' Well, if hospitals can't be prudent purchasers, we who are paying the bills, quite often through Medicare and Medicaid, are not able to get the best prices. Who pays? All of us pay.

This amendment would prohibit medical device manufacturers from requiring hospitals and buyers to sign purchasing agreements that contain confidentiality clauses that would restrict them from revealing the prices paid for medical devices to third parties. In addition, as I mentioned, the amendment would require these manufacturers to submit the average and median sales prices of covered devices to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on a quarterly basis.

In 2007, my good friend Senator Grassley from Iowa sponsored a bipartisan bill to create a process of reporting this kind of price data to HHS, and I believe it is time to do just that.

To the extent that prices of implantable medical devices, which are very expensive generally, are not disclosed, the ability of hospitals to bring price information to bear in negotiations and decisions is clearly limited. I believe if we are going to talk about repealing a medical device tax, we should also talk about calling upon the industry to provide to consumers and policymakers greater transparency in order to better control costs.

In a world of limited resources, we have to spend the money we have most wisely. It is very difficult to spend money wisely if prices and comparative prices and prices of the various components of the health care system are essentially kept secret.

This is a simple amendment. It is simply based upon the fundamental idea that markets work, but they only work when consumers--in this case, hospitals--have the information necessary to make good purchasing decisions. I think markets, as I said at the beginning, are the best way to allocate goods and services, but that information is necessary for markets to work, and that is the purpose of this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time between now and 12 noon during quorum calls be equally divided.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the comments of the senior Senator from Maine. I, too, am proud to commend the Aroostook Aspirations Initiative, AAI, and the Gauvin County Scholarship Fund for their efforts to increase educational and economic opportunity in Aroostook County. AAI's partnerships with all 16 of the county's high schools and all 4 of the county's institutions of higher education serve as a model of what forward-thinking private citizens, schools, colleges, universities, and businesses can accomplish when they set out to better their communities.

The initiative takes on the goal of increasing access to education for first-generation college students and those from lower income families, clearly critical in its own right as a matter of fairness and pairs it with measures designed to harness the benefits these students will bring to the local economy. Scholarship recipients are directed to local colleges and universities, allowing them to forge connections with local business leaders through AAI-coordinated internships. As a capstone, AAI matches scholarship recipients with mentors who help them craft business plans in their senior year of college, ensuring that each graduate has a roadmap as they enter the workforce. The first group of scholarship recipients will graduate in 2015, and I look forward to observing their accomplishments and the added energy they will bring to their communities.

None of this would be possible without the vision and generosity of Ray and Sandy Gauvin, along with that of the businesses, schools, colleges, and community organizations that have heeded their call in supporting AAI. The Gauvins' personal experience, as a first-generation college student and a career teacher, respectively, clearly inspired the effort they have spearheaded. As they noted in an interview with the Bangor Daily News, they believe ``education is the great equalizer,'' and I could not agree more. I thank the Gauvins and the initiative's business and education partners for stepping up to support the county's next generation of leaders. I cannot wait to see, with their communities behind them, what these students will achieve.

Madam President, there is an ominous tide rising in this country. It is not water. It is not oil. It is not any kind of substance. It is dollars. It is cash. It is a tide of dark money that is flowing in and threatens to dominate our political system.

Yesterday we had a very interesting hearing in the Rules Committee on the subject of disclosure and the rise of outside money in campaigns. We have developed a kind of parallel universe of campaign financing, where the candidates, you and I and other Members of this body, work hard to raise money from supporters so we can fund our campaigns. By the way, all of that money that is raised has to be under certain limits. There are limitations. There are disclosure requirements. If you get a contribution, it has to be disclosed who paid it and what do they do for a living and what is their address. All of that is public.

Yet on the other side is this parallel universe, as I mentioned, where a multimillionaire can come into your State or my State or anybody's State and put in an enormous amount of money, essentially unregulated and often totally anonymous. I think this is a danger to our country. I started the hearing off yesterday by saying I fear for my country. I fear for our democracy.

There are several basic points I wish to make. This isn't an evolutionary change. This isn't, OK, we are spending a few more dollars this year than we did last year and it is a little more of the same and it is no big deal. This is what is happening: This is nonparty outside spending starting back in the early nineties, and we see what happened in 2012. Now we don't have the numbers in 2012. Of course, 2012 was a Presidential year. What we see is it started to go up, the Presidential year in 2004, and then down. It goes up in 2008 in the Presidential year, down--but not so much--and then way up in 2012, and this gives the context of what is happening. This isn't evolutionary change; this is revolutionary change. This is a fundamental change.

I asked one of our witnesses yesterday at the hearing: Is this a very significant, great change that is going on? He said: Senator, it is an explosion.

It is an explosion. Here is what it looks like. This is nonparty spending, cycle to date, and the day was the day before yesterday. In other words, it is the outside party spending, the so-called independent expenditures comparing apples to apples as of April 29 of each year.

So here again, 2004 Presidential year, then it drops way down in 2006 midterms, again jumps up in 2008, down in 2010, big jump for 2012. But look where we are as of this date in 2014. Look at the comparison between this and the last midterm year. It is almost 10 times as much. This is a threat that is growing and it is going to overwhelm us.

Some of my colleagues have said we are bound for a scandal. Indeed, that is what has driven campaign finance reform throughout our history. The first major campaign finance reform was in 1907. It resulted from the Presidential campaigns in the late 1890s and the turn of the century, where Mark Hanna, a political operative, called the major corporations of America and said: You will give us this--and that is how the money was raised for those campaigns. We then passed the first campaign finance law under the leadership of Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 because he saw a scandal coming.

So this is nonparty outside spending. This is both disclosed and undisclosed, but look at this. This is spending by nondisclosure groups, cycle to date. Look where we are. This is the money that nobody knows where it comes from. If we start back in here, 2012, this is a Presidential year to date and here we are in 2014. It is an explosion, and nobody knows where that money is coming from. It is secret money.

What we have is the development of organizations and institutions engaged in what I call identity laundering. I am not going to attempt to explain this chart, but this is a chart that traces in 2012 one set of funds. It is about $400 million from three large organizations that go through all of these different entities and the whole purpose is to keep the names of the donors secret. So the public doesn't know who is trying to influence their vote. This isn't insignificant money. Fifty million dollars this line represents to something called the American Future Fund. They create these entities--and there is also the wonderful nomenclature here--there are even entities entitled ``undesignated'' or ``disregarded''--and the whole purpose of this is to hide the identity of the people who are supporting it.

I don't think that is consistent with the First Amendment. It is not consistent with our political traditions. It is not consistent with the whole idea of conveying information. If somebody wants to come and buy ads in Pennsylvania or North Dakota or New York or California, that is fine. They have a right to do that, at least under the current Supreme Court rulings, but they also ought to tell us who they are. That is part of the information the voters should have in assessing the validity of the message that is being delivered to them.

In Maine you cannot go to a town meeting with a bag over your head. If you are going to make a speech, if you are going to take your position on an issue, you tell who you are, and people can assess the validity of your views based upon in part who they know you are, what your interest is, what your stake is in this process, and we are denying the people of America the opportunity to know that.

It is important to realize in this whole area of campaign finance, which is unbelievably complicated, that the Supreme Court has significantly narrowed our ability in Congress or in the States to regulate campaign finance. They have essentially said that money is speech and that it can't be limited--at least in the aggregate, that is the McCutcheon decision. Under the Citizens United decision, the corporations are also people and have a right to free speech and can spend as much money as they want.

When you go back and read those key opinions--Citizens United and McCutcheon, which was just decided about a month ago--the Supreme Court said: We are going to strike down these limitations because they are limitations on free speech, but the basic reason we feel comfortable doing so is because the public still has disclosure and they will know who is talking, and that is our bulwark against abuse and corrosion of our system.

The problem with that reasoning is the bulwark doesn't exist, and clever campaign operatives have created this elaborate system which is designed to disguise who the contributors are, and that is the problem with our system.

The problem right now is that one party may think they are advantaged by the current system, but 2 years from now that advantage could disappear. Indeed, data we received just before our hearing indicates that 2 years ago 88 percent of the outside money was conservative. Indeed, this year--so far in 2012--it is closer to being balanced. It

is 60-40 conservative over more liberal messages. I submit that once it gets to be 50-50, everybody on both sides of the aisle will say that maybe we need to do something about it. I am suggesting we do something about it sooner rather than later.

The Supreme Court has invited us to do something about disclosure. I think it is the tool we know we have. There is discussion about a constitutional amendment, which is fine, and I am a supporter. That is a long-term solution. That could take 4, 5, 6 years, assuming the support could be achieved in the Congress and in the States. In the meantime, disclosure is something we could do next week, and it is something we should do. We owe it to the American people to allow them to know who it is that is trying to influence their vote.

Occasionally, there is an argument that people who make these kinds of contributions will be subjected to some kind of intimidation--crank phone calls, threats, and those kinds of things. Well, Justice Scalia-- the Supreme Court Justice whom I used to know in law school--recently said: ``Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.''

If people are willing to spend millions of dollars attacking someone else's character, integrity, and career, they ought to at least be willing to stand up and say: Here am I. I am making these statements.

They should not be allowed to hide behind something created by an army of accountants and lawyers to disguise their identity. I think this is something--and based upon the hearing we had yesterday and the work we did in preparing for it--we really need to attend to.

When I first got into this subject last year, I thought it was bad. Well, what I have learned over the last several months is that it is a lot worse than I thought. It is happening fast. It is a tidal wave, and it is going to engulf our system. Why do we care? Because it is corrosive and it undermines the confidence citizens have in us as their political leaders.

In the 1970s and 1980s, people had a perception that money was corrupting around here, even if it wasn't. But, boy, when we start to have unidentified, outside dark money and nobody knows where it is coming from, what could be more calculating to undermine public confidence in their leadership than a system like that? It is corrosive. It undermines the trust of our people. It is wrong, and I think it is something we should attend to. It is something we can do. We know we can do it constitutionally. We had an 8-to-1 majority vote. McCutcheon and Citizens United invited us to do this. I think we should be able to find a bipartisan solution to this subject because it will benefit this whole country, and I think it will be a great benefit to the institution of democracy itself. This is not what the Framers envisioned, and we have it within our power to do something about it so we can improve this situation and the flow of information--including the source of that information--to the people of America.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to take a few moments to talk about Jon David Levy, who is a nominee for the Federal district court in Maine who will be voted on this afternoon. Senator Collins and I have come to the floor together to talk about this nominee and his extraordinary qualifications for this position.

My history with Jon Levy is kind of interesting. He was one of my very first appointments to the bench when I was Governor of Maine in 1995. The important thing I wish to get across is I didn't know him. He wasn't a contributor, a supporter or a political ally in any way, shape or form. At that time he was a really smart lawyer with a judicial demeanor. He was recommended to me--he was discovered, if you will--by a nonpartisan judicial selection committee. I interviewed him, met him, liked him, and appointed him to the Maine District Court, which is our lower court of general jurisdiction, where it is really the people's court. He excelled in that court in terms of his decisionmaking skills as well as in his demeanor and his ability to interpret and apply the law in very real and practical circumstances.

He was so good, as a matter of fact, that as I was leaving the governorship in the last year or so, I had the opportunity to appoint him to Maine's Supreme Court. In fact, I believe he is the only person to have gone directly from our district court to the supreme court in our State without stopping in the middle at our superior court, the court of general jurisdiction, because he was so outstanding. He has proven himself as an appellate judge to be exactly what we all hoped and expected would be the case: thoughtful, deliberative, very much sensitive to the real needs of the people who are appearing before the court. He has never forgotten that the law is about serving the public.

So I think he is uniquely qualified--perhaps not uniquely but especially well qualified--for this position because he has been a trial-level judge and an appellate judge, and now he is being considered for a Federal trial-level court where I think he will be an outstanding judge. I don't think he will be; I know he will be.

The other thing I think is so important--and it happened that just a few years ago I was in our supreme judicial courtroom watching a ceremony where young lawyers were being admitted to the bar. It is a ceremony that happens every year. Of course, to the judges, it is fairly routine. To the young lawyers, it is the biggest deal in their lives thus far. It happened that the day I was there to move the admission of a young friend of mine, Justice Levy was presiding. It was an opportunity for me to watch him interact with the members of the bar and the public. Of course, a lot of members of the public are in the courtroom on that day. His whole demeanor was so thoughtful, dignified, and yet warm and not intimidating.

Having practiced law myself, my least favorite judges were those who tried to intimidate members of the bar. I remember vividly at one point being in a trial and making an argument to a judge in Maine that wasn't really going very far, and I said: Judge, I really feel as though I am batting my head against a brick wall here. After a slight pause the judge said: Mr. King, I know of no one in Maine better equipped for that venture. I wasn't all that thrilled by that response, although he was probably right.

Justice Levy has a wonderful demeanor. He has that wonderful combination of high intelligence and yet at the same time a warm and thoughtful demeanor that is not intimidating but allows the litigants, the lawyers, and the witnesses to get their stories out, to get the record complete so that he or the jury can make the best decision.

I think he is a judge's judge. In fact, in seeking comments about his appointment to this position, I think one of the most telling comments came from the chief justice of our supreme court where he has been now for some 10 years, and her comment was, ``You tell Angus I am going to get him for this,'' which meant she doesn't want to lose him. I think that is pretty high praise--that he has been such a valuable member of that court that his colleagues thought that highly of him.

Jon Levy is, as I say, a judge's judge, really a model of what we should want on our Federal bench. I am delighted that he went through the cloture process yesterday. Thanks, in part, to my senior colleague, he received more than 60 votes. In other words, he enjoys a significant amount of bipartisan support. He was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on a strong bipartisan basis.

I am just delighted to be able to rise today and urge my colleagues to support this really extraordinary gentleman who will grace the Federal bench in Maine and will, I believe, make us all proud for having supported such an outstanding jurist who has yet many years of service to his State and his country. I believe this is a great appointment by the President, and I look forward to Jon Levy's performance on the bench.

With that, I yield the floor for my esteemed senior colleague.

I thank my colleague from Delaware for his leadership on this issue. He has been indefatigable. He has been very strong on this issue. I think it is one of the most important issues that faces us.

I am not an economist; I am a country lawyer from Maine, but one of the things I know about any economy is you can't build an economy by taking in each other's laundry. Somebody somewhere has to make something, and that is the basis of wealth creation. Somehow in the 1980s, 1990s, and the early part of this century, we sort of lost sight of that and manufacturing took an enormous hit. We lost 32 percent of our manufacturing jobs in the decade from 2000 to 2010. We lost 42,000 factories--not people, 42,000 factories. Manufacturing was literally withering away in this country.

I think a lot of people sort of wrung their hands and said: Oh, well, I guess that is just the way of the world. It is all going to Asia, China, and Mexico. It is going to low-wage countries, and that is just the way it works.

The problem is, as my colleague from Delaware pointed out, Germany has gone in the opposite direction, and their country has the same standard of living, the same labor standards, the same employment cost levels, and yet 20 percent of their economy is based upon manufacturing; whereas, it is only 10 or 11 percent in this country. So that tells me it is not impossible. It tells me there is an opportunity here and that we can't just lay back and say: Well, I guess that is going to go away. Woe is us. That is never the way to seize the future.

Why do it? The Senator from Delaware said it: Better pay. In Maine, in looking at the data, employees in manufacturing on average make twice as much as employees in other areas--twice as much. There is a tremendous difference in pay, and of course a better difference in benefits. There is also a bigger multiplier for manufacturing. Manufacturing creates more jobs down the line and around a manufacturing facility. It is important for national security.

We are in danger of losing our industrial base, which is part of our national security infrastructure. If we can no longer make things-- whether it is destroyers at Bath Iron Works or jet airplanes or uniforms or boots or other things that are necessary to support our national security apparatus--we are in trouble, and that is a danger to our country. That is a national security danger because if we are dependent upon other countries that may or may not be our friends for essential components of our national security infrastructure, that is a very dangerous and risky place to be. That is not often talked about, but the maintenance of manufacturing jobs in the United States is a critical part of our industrial base and a part of our national security strategy.

Manufacturing allows for more exporting. It brings money into our country. Eighty-three percent of the exports from Maine come out of the manufacturing sector, and that is bringing money into our country rather than sending it out to other countries.

Also, I think it is very important to remember that this is a way of dealing with what I think is one of the most serious issues of our time, which is income inequality. It is the widening gap between those at the top and those at the bottom, and what is really a concern is the stagnation, and, in fact, the decline of the American middle class.

Manufacturing was the path into the middle class for our parents and grandparents. The manufacturing resurgence after World War II--by the way, part of that resurgence was based upon the GI bill, probably the greatest economic development program ever fostered by any government anywhere in the world--which helped to create the middle class is in danger. One of the ways to preserve and strengthen the middle class-- and to deal with this problem of income inequality--is more manufacturing and more of those good jobs.

This is the 100th anniversary of one of the most amazing and transformative actions in American corporate history. The year was 1914 when Henry Ford doubled the pay of all of his workers. Everybody was astonished. His competitors were aghast. The advocates of unbridled capitalism said: How can he do this? Henry Ford was a genius in many ways. But one of his insights was he wanted his workers to be able to buy his products, and one of the problems in our economy today is a lack of demand. The people of the middle class don't have enough income to buy the products and it becomes a downward spiral. It is a lack of demand that is truly at the heart of the weakness of the current economy, and it is because people don't have good enough jobs and they are not being paid enough.

Henry Ford realized if he paid his workers more--and, by the way, that munificent sum in 1914 was $5 a day, but it was a doubling of what the rate of pay was everywhere else in American society at that time. That was a huge breakthrough intellectually, economically, and socially for this country.

OK. We talked about the losses. There is some good news. In the last 2\1/2\ years we have gained 500,000 jobs. We lost 6 million in that decade, but now we have gained 500,000 back. So something is happening. A lot of different things are happening. The low price of natural gas I think is helping to rejuvenate manufacturing. I know it is in Maine. I think there is more innovation happening around the country. People are realizing--I have talked to manufacturers who have been offshore and have come back because they said the offshore factory was a little cheaper, the labor costs were less, but the hassle factor was higher, and what I have learned is I can control costs, I can control transportation, I can control time limits better if the manufacturing is in the United States.

So what do we do? What do we do if we want to increase manufacturing? We can't wave a wand here in Washington. We can't say, well, go out and create jobs. We have to create an atmosphere where we can create jobs.

When my little girl Molly, who is not so little anymore, was in the third grade, I used to teach her things with pneumonics. I would say the three Xs or the three Ys or whatever. In this case, if she were here and she were still in the third grade, I would say it is the four Ps, Molly. It is the four Ps that are going to make this happen. The first is a plan. Nothing happens without a strategy or a vision or a plan. This bill has a vision of how to link innovation and the American economy and manufacturing in such a way as to create and rejuvenate this sector. A plan--we have to start with a plan or a vision.

The second P is partnerships, and this bill is based on partnerships. Nothing good happens without partnerships. It is based upon linking the academic world with the manufacturing world with government; putting those partnerships together, mostly universities and manufacturing, to create innovation, to create new jobs, to create new ways of building wealth. We don't have to look much further than Silicon Valley in California. That is a perfect example of a natural born innovation hub built around several knowledge factories: Stanford University, University of California, University of San Francisco. Knowledge factories, together with manufacturers, created one of the greatest hotbeds--probably the greatest hotbed--of innovation, creativity, and new wealth creation in the history of this country and perhaps in the history of the world. We want to create these kinds of hubs all over the country, putting together the academic community and the business community to develop the capacity for innovation and creativity.

I should mention--it is not part of this bill, but the other thing I think we have to do a lot of thinking about is the skills gap. I got a call right after my election from a chamber of commerce director in southern Maine and

he said: Senator, we want you to come down and talk about jobs.

I said: Oh, OK. I will. And I was prepared to talk about how to create jobs and add jobs.

He said: No, no, it is not that. The problem is we have 500 jobs and we can't fill them. These are good-paying jobs in manufacturing, and we can't fill them because the people we need aren't available with the skills we need. There is a mismatch.

I believe one of the things we have to do around here is think hard about all the programs--I think there are something like 59 different Federal job training programs--how to integrate them, coordinate them, and focus them on business-ready jobs, not 10-years-ago jobs but the jobs of today. Therefore, I think the coordination and cooperation between business and the job training infrastructure has to be much closer than it is today.

That gets me to S. 1468. I think it is a wonderful idea. One of the best parts of it is that it is bipartisan. This is an idea that is supported--Sherrod Brown and Roy Blunt were the spearheads of it, and then we have people such as Roger Wicker, the Senator from Mississippi, and the Senator from Delaware; we have a good bipartisan group from around the country geographically and across party lines. This is what we have to do. Why is it so important? Because what drives new manufacturing jobs is innovation.

When I was Governor of Maine, somebody gave me a cap and on it it said ``innovate or die.'' Bill Gates once famously said: Every product we make today is going to be obsolete in 5 years. The only question is whether we make it obsolete or someone else does.

Innovation is the heart of this economy. That is why we have to put together the knowledge factories with the production factories--the knowledge factories, the universities, such as the University of Maine, that has the advanced composites lab that has created amazing new ways to deal with composites. One of their creations is the bridge and a backpack. The bridge and a backpack is a composite system which I have seen in action. They are long tubes made of fiberglass. You spread the tubes out, fill them with concrete, mold them into the shape you want, and in about 3 or 4 days you have a bridge, and you put the deck over it. It is a wonderful system. It came out of the University of Maine and now it is being used across the country.

The other piece I like about this is that it isn't a government program. Government is the catalyst, the convener, the pulling together of these hubs, and that is, I think, our function. We shouldn't be doing it. We shouldn't be steering it, but we should be launching it, and that is what this bill is all about. Does it solve all the problems of manufacturing? Of course not. There are dozens of things we have to do in order to support this industry, whether it is tax reform, job training or innovation hubs and more support for R&D. All of those we have to do, but I think this is one of the most important, and we don't have to guess about it. It works in Germany. They have twice the role for manufacturing in their economy as we do. It works. So let's see what we can do here with the same idea.

I compliment the Senator from Delaware and the others who have led this bill, and I am delighted to be able to tag along. I think this is a great idea. It truly can make a difference, and I think we will see that difference in the coming years.

I yield the floor.

I like the Senator's suggestion of a hub in Maine involving composites. Could we write that in the bill? I wouldn't object to that amendment.

I think this is such an important idea, and in my comments I outlined how we get here. We start with a vision or a plan which the bill entails, and we start with partnerships, which is truly the essence of the bill, but there are two more pieces. There are two more Ps. One is perseverance. Any Member of this body knows about perseverance. That is what this place is all about. We have to stick to it. We have to not take no for an answer. We have to listen to our colleagues to find out how they feel about the bill and try to form a consensus and then move this bill through.

Last Friday was the 100th birthday of Ed Muskie of Maine. Ed Muskie was the father of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Talk about perseverance. He spent 2 years, hundreds of hearings, hundreds of hours of markup and ended up with that bill passing the Senate unanimously-- unanimously. That is a monument to perseverance.

Normally, I would say those are the three Ps: plan, partnership, and perseverance, but I think there is one more, and I am sure my colleague from Delaware agrees with me.

Nothing is going to happen without passion. We have to care about this. The people of America have to care about this. We have to say that this is something we are going to do. We are going to rebuild the manufacturing centers that made this country what it was--a sector that made this country what it was. We are going to have to do it with passion and commitment. I believe this bill is an opportunity to restart that process.

It will, and as I mentioned earlier, it can change us and provide benefits everywhere from higher wages to better national security to a stronger middle class. A plan, a partnership, perseverance, and passion--that is what changes the world.

Madam President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Virginia. I think they were timely and important. I wanted to add one note. The Senator and I were in a hearing yesterday in the Budget Committee with three eminent economists--one was a Noble Prize winner-- talking about income inequality and the status of our economy and where we are going.

But there was one aspect of the Affordable Care Act that came up in a discussion that really has gotten essentially no play whatsoever, no discussion in the press or in the media. I think in the long run it may turn out to be one of the most important aspects of the Affordable Care Act. It came home to me 2 weeks ago. Every Wednesday morning I have a coffee in my office here in the Senate office building for anybody from Maine that happens to be in town, whatever reason they are here, whether they are touring or have business in Washington. They can come in and have some blueberry muffins and some Maine coffee.

I met a couple there. The woman, in talking to us--she was down touring and everything. She said: By the way, thanks for supporting the Affordable Care Act.

I said: Oh, well, that is great. I appreciate that. Why do you say that?

She said: Because I have been in a job for a number of years that I do not like. But I could not leave it because it was how I got my health insurance. My husband does not have health insurance. So I had to stay in the job in order to keep the health insurance. She said: Now under the Affordable Care Act, I have an option to get health insurance at a reasonable price so I can leave this job and start my own business.

After I had this discussion, I did a little research. It turns out there is an economic term for this. It is called job lock. All over the country there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of people who are locked into a job where they are not feeling very appreciated, where they are not really enjoying it, where they are not expressing their productivity and their talents fully because they could not leave their insurance.

Now they can. There is a lot of talk around here about job creators. The job creators are the people that start businesses, the entrepreneurs. Those are the job creators. This is going to lead to an explosion of new businesses, of people who do not have to stay in the job that they are in simply because of their health insurance but have the option to go out and start a business of their own because they can get their health insurance at a reasonable price through the Affordable Care Act.

So there is a lot to discuss about the Affordable Care Act. But this is one of the aspects of it that has been underappreciated. As the years go on, we are going to see a decrease in people uninsured--which we are already starting to see--and we are going to see an increase in small businesses because people no longer have to stay in their jobs simply to maintain their insurance.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Braylin Cathey, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress.

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

Madam President, I rise this afternoon to memorialize one of the great residents, citizens, denizens of this body--Senator Edmund Sixtus Muskie of Maine--who tomorrow, March 28, 2014, would have been 100 years old.

I knew Ed Muskie--not well, but I knew him. I knew him working here as a staff member. We were very scared of him. He was a presence. He was a force. He was indeed a great man. He is the classic American story--a classic American story we need to remind ourselves of.

He was the son of a Polish immigrant tailor in a small town called Rumford on the Androscoggin River in western Maine. He rose to become a great U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, candidate for President, candidate on the ballot for Vice President of the United States, and one of the great citizens of Maine and the country of the 20th century. Ed Muskie rose by his own merits.

I am convinced that the secret sauce of America is the welcoming of people from all over the world who come here to bring their talents and allowing them to express themselves fully and freely in the wonderful rich soil of this great country.

Ed Muskie went to school on a scholarship at a small college in Maine, Bates College, where the Muskie Archives currently reside. Then he went on to Cornell Law School through the generosity of individuals and scholarships because he had no resources of his own. He was in World War II and then came back to practice law in the small town of Waterville in Central Maine.

In 1954 Ed Muskie literally invented the Democratic Party in Maine. I don't believe there had been a major Democratic officeholder in Maine for some 50 years. I think perhaps there were a few in the 1920s and 1930s, but the State was completely dominated by the Republican Party all through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

When Ed Muskie ran for Governor in 1954, it was the longest of long shots. In fact, the story in Maine was that, of course, in the 1936 election, when

Franklin D. Roosevelt ran against Alf Landon, Roosevelt carried every State in the Union except two--Maine and Vermont. Hence the famous saying: As goes Maine, so goes Vermont.

The story goes that on the coast of Maine, in a small Republican town of several hundred people, the clerk announced the vote.

At the end of the tally, she said: Landon 47, Roosevelt 2.

Someone mumbled: The SOB voted twice.

That was the way the Republican Party dominated the State--until Ed Muskie in 1954. He drove from one end of the State to the other with friends, stayed on friends' living room couches--nothing fancy. The idea of a political ad on television in those days was to show up at the TV station at the appointed hour, and as the clock ticked to 8 you would look into the camera, give your statement for 30 seconds, and then you were off to the next campaign stop.

As the campaign went on in 1954, something happened in Maine: An excitement built--a buzz, I guess we would say today. Ed Muskie-- indeed, to everyone's shock and surprise--was elected Governor in that year. In those days, the Maine Governor's term was 2 years. He was reelected in 1956--a very successful Governor--and then was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958.

There is a wonderful story about when Muskie first came to the Senate. Lyndon Johnson, of course, was the dynamic, I would say all- powerful majority leader of the Senate at the time. The story is that Johnson took Muskie aside and said: Now, Ed, when somebody comes and asks you for your vote, you just tell them you haven't made up your mind yet. Your vote is the most valuable thing you have in the U.S. Senate, and keep it to yourself. And if they press you, just say, ``Senator, they haven't gotten to the M's yet. When they do, you will know how I am going to vote.''

This was Johnson's advice to the freshman Senator from Maine.

A few weeks later, apparently there was some kind of procedural vote on the floor, and Johnson wanted to line up his votes in his Democratic caucus.

He went to Ed Muskie and said: Ed, can I count on your support?

Allegedly, Muskie replied: Senator, they haven't gotten to the M's yet.

The result was that Muskie was exiled to the Public Works Committee-- at the time one of the least desirable of committee assignments. Of course, now it is the Environment & Public Works Committee and one of the most important and prestigious of our committees. But at the time it was the same as being sent to the outer limits by the majority leader, who didn't like this smart aleck from Maine.

But I think this story has an important and instructive ending because Ed Muskie, with his Maine work ethic, his common sense, and his intuition and insight, used the Public Works Committee to invent environmental law in America.

In 1970, 12 years later, the passage of the Clean Air Act was the first major passage of an environmental piece of legislation in American history. There had been a few small things here and there, but most States had very little in the way of environmental regulation and certainly there was no national regulation. But the amazing thing, the astonishing thing about the passage of the Clean Air Act--and it was a very important piece of legislation. It was very significant. It affected every business in the country. It affected the automobile industry. It affected the paper and manufacturing industry. It was a tremendously important piece of legislation and very controversial. But the Clean Air Act passed the Senate unanimously. Imagine. We can't pass the time of day unanimously, and he marshaled the resources, the votes, and the sentiment of the entire Senate. He did it through amazingly hard work. They had hundreds of hearings and hundreds of hours of markup. He listened to his colleagues, he found compromises, and he found ways to make it work across the entire spectrum of the Senate.

There were plenty of conservative Senators here in 1970. In fact, at one point in the debate on the Clean Air Act, Howard Baker, who was the Republican leader, gave his proxy to Muskie because he had to be out of the Chamber for a few hours. Again, imagine today the Republican leader giving his proxy to one of the Democratic Senators on a major piece of legislation. I think it says something about, unfortunately, the difference between then and now in the Senate, but it also says something about Muskie's leadership. It was made up in part of incredibly high intelligence. People who knew him well, such as Senator George Mitchell, have said he was one of the most brilliant people they have ever met. So he had high intelligence, but he also had high emotional intelligence. He could intuit what people needed, what they needed and wanted, and what they had to hear and how to persuade them. But he also had incredible perseverance and patience, and he was willing to listen and understand other people's point of view.

The Clean Air Act and later the Clean Water Act in 1972 are really the pillars of environmental law in this entire country. It is hard for us to realize today because we take for granted our commitment to environmental protection, but it didn't really exist until Ed Muskie's leadership in the late 1960s.

It is all the more remarkable for me as a political representative of the State of Maine that Muskie took this step because it had a significant impact on our major industry. Maine is a pulp and paper State, with huge mills and outpourings into the water and into the air. At the time, they were virtually untreated.

So this was not an insignificant act from Muskie's own political situation. It wasn't as though he had a free ride on this, but I believe part of the impetus for this great action, for this great insight was Muskie's being raised as a young boy in the town of Rumford on the Androscoggin River. The Androscoggin River at one point was one of the most polluted rivers in America. I live on the Androscoggin today. When Muskie was a boy, the saying was that the river was too thick to drink and too thin to plow. It was a terrible situation. Ed Muskie realized that, and he realized he had to do something about it. So he used the vehicle of the Public Works Committee, where he had been sent in exile, to achieve one of the great legislative monuments of the 20th century.

He also is the father of our current budget process. He was one of the Senators who put together the budget process in the mid to late 1970s. He had an incredibly distinguished career. He was an incredible force and a very powerful man.

I have a vivid personal recollection of him which to this day I don't quite know what to make of, but it is an absolutely true one. In 1968 he was running for Vice President of the United States. Ed Muskie was Hubert Humphrey's running mate. In the latter stages of the campaign-- September, October of that year, 1968--it was the last several weeks of the campaign, and it was a time when Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates flew around the country. They didn't even take the time to have a motorcade and go into town to make a speech. The plane would land, the crowd would be right out on the airport runway, there would be a little fence line, and the candidate would come down the stairs, make a speech, and get back on the plane and go.

I was a law student that year at the University of Virginia, and I had no connection to Maine at the time, but I somehow heard that Ed Muskie, the Vice Presidential candidate, was coming to Richmond, VA, and was going to be at the airport at 8 or whatever on Tuesday night. So a bunch of us went over to Richmond to hear him. I can remember standing in this crowd along a fence line with probably 300 or 400 people and listening to Muskie right before the election in 1968. He spoke passionately about his vision for America. He spoke about what this country can and should mean. And this was a very important election. This was Richard Nixon versus Hubert Humphrey, and it was an election decided by one vote per precinct across the country--it was that close. It was a very close election.

Here is my strange memory, which again I say I don't really fully understand. I remember standing in the crowd listening to Muskie speak--whom I didn't know at all. I had never set foot in Maine at that point. I didn't know him. I hadn't met him. But I was listening to him speak. And at the end of his speech, out of my mouth completely spontaneously came the words

``We trust you.'' It was something about the man that made you feel you could trust him. He was so honest, so authentic, and so entirely himself. It was an amazing moment.

Here it is almost 50 years later, and I remember that evening in Richmond, VA, my first encounter with Ed Muskie.

I got to know him somewhat more when I worked here as a staff member for his colleague Bill Hathaway, the other Senator from Maine at that time. Then I had the privilege of interviewing him in my capacity as a public television host for a documentary in 1981, when he retired as Secretary of State.

He had a distinguished career here in the Senate. Then he went on and heeded Jimmy Carter's call in 1980 to serve as Secretary of State during the height of the Iran hostage crisis. He served our country honorably and well during that period and then retired. But when he retired, he didn't stop his involvement in public affairs. He became a champion of access to the legal system for the poor. He, of course, remained committed to the environment and had a very active life-- mostly in Maine, in his beloved house in Kennebunkport--and was a contributor right up to his death in 1996.

Ed Muskie is a true American hero. There is no way my poor words or anybody else's can really capture his career and the impact he made. I think perhaps the closest I could come is to recall Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph on his tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral. On the tomb it says, ``If you seek his monument, look around you.'' If you would see Ed Muskie's memorial, look around you. Take a deep breath. Experience our great rivers. Experience the environment we now have in this country which we treasure and which is so much a part of who we are across the country and in, of course, the State of Maine. Ed Muskie was a great man. He was a great member of this body and it is an honor for me--to say it is an honor is a gross understatement--to be standing today in his seat, the seat that he held for those important years from 1958 to 1980 and when he served our country so, so well. Ed Muskie is a man who belongs to the ages, who we all miss, and who made such a difference in all of our lives.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.