Floor Statements

Parliamentary inquiry, Madam President: What is the order right now?

At 4 o'clock?

Due to what is happening here, I would say that if he doesn't make his presentation in 5 minutes that we could vote.

Amendment No. 14

Mr. President, today I ask my colleagues to join me in saluting and commending Ryan Heber, Kim Fields and Mary Murphy, three educators who risked their lives to protect students in Taft, CA.

On Thursday, January 10--less than 4 weeks after the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School--a student armed with a shotgun opened fire in a classroom at Taft Union High School and wounded two of his classmates. Today, one student remains hospitalized, recovering from his injuries.

This was a tragic attack, and it is terrifying to think that it could have been even worse had it not been for the brave, swift actions of Taft science teacher Ryan Heber and campus supervisors Kim Fields and Mary Murphy.

When the shooting started, Mr. Heber responded immediately. After ushering his other students out of harm's way, he began talking the shooter into ceasing his attack. Ms. Fields, who rushed to the classroom when she heard gunfire, joined Mr. Heber in persuading the attacker to put down his gun and surrender to police when they arrived on the scene. Meanwhile, Ms. Murphy stayed calm and made sure that students quickly and safely evacuated the classroom.

Like their teacher and supervisors, the students at Taft were also very brave. They stayed calm and followed school safety measures. I commend these young people and the first responders who swiftly responded to the call for help.

The students, faculty, and staff deserve our support in the days and years ahead, and they deserve our action to help curb gun violence and ensure safety at our schools in Taft and across the country.

Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to my colleague and friend, Senator John Kerry, as his distinguished career in the U.S. Senate comes to an end.

While I am sad to see him go, I am so proud that Senator Kerry will be continuing his long record of service to the United States as Secretary of State.

For more than 13 years, I have had the privilege of serving with Senator Kerry on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Throughout that time, Senator Kerry has consistently shown a tremendous breadth of knowledge regarding the key foreign policy challenges of the day.

Most recently as chairman of the Committee, Senator Kerry championed Senate ratification of the New START treaty--making both our country and the world safer from the threat of nuclear proliferation.

And on a wide range of issues--from United States policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan to efforts to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians--he has offered thought-provoking insight and expertise.

That is why I believe that no one is as prepared as Senator Kerry to serve as our Nation's top diplomat.

I am particularly proud of the many issues we have worked on together, including fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, addressing climate change, and working to end human trafficking around the globe.

I am also grateful that Senator Kerry worked with me to establish the first-ever Senate subcommittee dedicated to ending violence against and promoting the advancement of women and girls around the globe.

I look forward to continuing to work on these and the many other foreign policy challenges facing our country with our new Secretary of State, Senator Kerry, and wish him all the best in his new position.

Madam President, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 calls for the Select Committee on Ethics of the United States Senate to issue an annual report not later than January 31 of each year providing information in certain categories describing its activities for the preceding year. Reported below is the information describing the Committee's activities in 2012 in the categories set forth in the Act:

(1) The number of alleged violations of Senate rules

received from any source, including those raised by a Senator

or staff of the Committee: 47. In addition, two alleged

violations from the previous year were carried into 2012.

(2) The number of alleged violations that were dismissed--

(A) For lack of subject matter jurisdiction or in which,

even if the allegations in the complaint are true, no

violation of Senate rules would exist: 36.

(B) Because they failed to provide sufficient facts as to

any material violation of the Senate rules beyond mere

allegation or assertion: 8.

(3) The number of alleged violations for which the

Committee staff conducted a preliminary inquiry: 5. The

figure includes two matters from the previous calendar year

carried into 2012.

(4) The number of alleged violations for which the

Committee staff conducted a preliminary inquiry that resulted

in an adjudicatory review. 0.

(5) The number of alleged violations for which the

Committee staff conducted a preliminary inquiry and the

Committee dismissed the matter for lack of substantial merit:

1.

(6) The number of alleged violations for which the

Committee staff conducted a preliminary inquiry and the

Committee issued private or public letters of admonition. 2.

(7) The number of matters resulting in a disciplinary

sanction: 0.

(8) Any other information deemed by the Committee to be

appropriate to describe its activities in the previous year:

In 2012, the Committee staff conducted three new Member

ethics training sessions; 33 Member and committee office

campaign briefings; 18 employee code of conduct training

sessions; 11 Member, spouse, and employee STOCK (Stop Trading

on Congressional Knowledge) Act briefings; eight public

financial disclosure seminars and clinics; 24 ethics seminars

and customized briefings for Member DC offices, state

offices, and Senate committees; six private sector ethics

briefings; and 15 international briefings.

In 2012, the Committee staff handled approximately 9,616

telephone inquiries and 2,097 email inquiries by email for

ethics advice and guidance.

In 2012, the Committee wrote approximately 761 ethics

advisory letters, including 576 letters regarding travel and

gifts matters (Senate Rule 35) and 113 letters regarding

conflict of interest matters (Senate Rule 37).

In 2012, the Committee received and reviewed approximately

3,142 Periodic Disclosure of Financial Transactions reports

filed by Members, officers, and employees of the Senate.

In 2012, the Committee issued 3,259 advisory letters

concerning financial disclosure filings by Senators, staff,

and Senate candidates and reviewed 1,915 reports.

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

Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Maryland, who has been such a remarkable leader on all of these issues. We have so much work to do, as she has outlined, and I will add a few specific cases to what she said.

This is the 4-year anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and we were able to push it forward, and it was the first bill President Obama signed in his first term. I think that said a lot about its importance.

Because Lilly Ledbetter is pretty well known in the country, we know her story. You can imagine the feelings she had when she found out that after all the work she was putting in, simply because she was a woman she was getting paid less than the men doing the exact same thing. And, yes, thank you to the men who respected Lilly Ledbetter enough to let her know. There was a notice in her locker that essentially informed her that she was working for way less than they were. Over the course of her lifetime, it was a huge amount of money that made a huge difference.

When Lilly tells the story, you can just see the anguish in her face. And she, of course, went all the way to the Supreme Court trying to get redress. Finally, the Court decided, and they said: You know what. You have a really good case, but you didn't move forward fast enough. You were supposed to come and file this lawsuit much sooner.

Well, she didn't know much sooner. She couldn't have filed the lawsuit. And that is what led to our corrective legislation, so that in the future a woman who has faced pay discrimination will have her day in court and will have the time necessary to proceed with the court case and get justice. The court had said she had to file from the minute the discrimination started, but Lilly didn't know she was being discriminated against until years later. So thank goodness this Congress and the President remedied that.

But we have unfinished business. We have a bill called the Paycheck Fairness Act, and I hope that all will get involved as well because the fact is that women, after all the progress we have made, earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. We women in the Senate are fortunate in the sense that is one battle we don't have to wage because a Senator is a Senator is a Senator. Imagine if they had a rule saying men Senators get this and women Senators get that. People would say something is very wrong with this picture. But that is the way it is on the outside. It is undercover. People do not know about it, but women who do the same job as a man on average will make 23 cents less.

You could say: Seventy-seven cents for every dollar--is that really a lot? Let me tell you, it is a lot. Over a lifetime it is about $434,000 less that she will have at the end of her career.

This pay gap persists across all occupation and income levels. A Bloomberg analysis found that women earned less than their male counterparts in 264 out of 265 major occupation categories. Women earned less than their male counterparts in virtually all of the occupation categories. So the wage gap clearly hurts women, but it also hurts their families. Think about families

where the major wage earner is a woman. Those children and grandchildren will feel the pain.

Of course the economy is hurt because there are fewer dollars circulating in the economy. A woman is going to spend a lot of the money she earns right out there, supporting her family, going to the store, organizing visits to camps and vacations, and all that money helps the economy.

I am going to close this by reading a couple of stories, real-life stories. A woman from California had an identical advanced degree as her husband. She landed the exact same job as her husband but at a different worksite. The woman's husband was offered $5,000 more in starting salary for the same job with the exact same resume.

A health care worker in Long Island discovered she had been earning $10 an hour less than her male colleagues with the same experience. When she brought this up to her superiors, she was reprimanded for asking about the wage gap.

That goes to what Senator Mikulski said. Imagine the nerve of someone finding out they were paid $10 an hour less and trying to find out why, and for that she is reprimanded, put in her place.

Then a female employee for a major corporation in Florida was told when she was hired that if she disclosed her salary to other workers, that would be grounds for dismissal. She soon realized that her male counterparts made more than she did but she did not have any written proof. A fellow female employee at the company was told that because her husband picked her up from work in a nice car, she did not need to get a salary increase.

We need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. It closes loopholes that have allowed employers to avoid responsibility for discriminatory pay. It prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who share salary information with their coworkers, and it puts gender-based discrimination sanctions on equal footing with other forms of wage discrimination such as race, disability, or age, so women would be eligible for the same remedies available to other victims of discrimination, such as punitive damages.

It is simply a matter of fairness. Every American deserves equal pay for equal work. We have to end this practice of shortchanging half of our country--more than half of the people are female. This means we are hurting our country, we are hurting their families.

In 2010, Senate Republicans filibustered our efforts to proceed to this bill. All we wanted to do was proceed to it and get an up-or-down vote. We faced a filibuster. In June 2012, Senate Republicans blocked us again. We are calling on them in a spirit of fairness and justice to work with us in this Congress and give all the women of America the same chance for success as their male counterparts. Remember, $400,000- plus over a career is a tremendous amount of money for people. That can make the difference in having a decent retirement. We heard today that the vast majority of Americans, if they lost their job, have no savings at all. It is not as if we are paying people lavish salaries. Let's make sure, whatever the salaries are, that they are fair, that they are equal to each other. If a woman is doing the same job, much as a Senator, as a male, they get the same pay. It is simple. It should not be a problem.

If there is a filibuster, I will never understand it. I will say this. No woman in America today will understand why anyone would filibuster such a bill--equal pay for equal work. And no man in America who loves a woman, be it their mom or their aunt or their wife or their daughter, would understand it either. Let's hope we get to a vote on this measure.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, today I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Murray Galinson, an extraordinary San Diego community leader who died earlier this month in California at age 75. Murray was a dear friend of mine, and I will miss him terribly.

Murray Galinson's accomplishments were legendary--as a businessman, philanthropist, teacher, political activist and adviser, friend of Israel, and, above all, family man. But even these amazing achievements do not begin to capture the person Murray was or the life that he lived.

As Rabbi Michael Berk told a 1,000 mourners at San Diego's Temple Beth Israel, Murray was ``a man of substance and loyalty . . . a man who loved family and friends, a man of character and integrity, a man devoted to his people and his community, a man of national stature, a man whom we Jews would call a mensch, a fine example of what a human being should be, a man who leaves this world with the highest attainment: a shem tov, a good name.''

Murray was a remarkable person who was loved and admired by all who knew him and whose countless acts of charity, kindness, and public service touched thousands of people who never met him.

Murray Galinson was a proud Democrat who always sought to build bridges and consensus across party lines. As Rabbi Berk noted, Murray exemplified ``what it means to serve in the noble cause of bettering the lives of those with whom we share this country and this planet by seeking answers to our problems, not just winning.''

On behalf of the people of California, who benefitted so much from his life and works, I send my love, gratitude, and deepest sympathy to Murray's beloved wife, Elaine, and their children, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren.

One measure of Murray's profound impact on his community is how difficult it is to imagine San Diego without him--yet I know that he will live on through his good works and in the hearts of all of us who knew and loved this remarkable man.

Mr. President, the great song lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman are being honored by the New West Symphony with its Bravo Award for their extraordinary leadership, their contributions to the Visions of America multimedia project, and their deep and longstanding commitment to music education and the performing arts. I look forward to paying tribute to them at the New West Symphony's event in Los Angeles.

Alan and Marilyn Bergman are two of the world's best-known and best- loved lyricists. From the 1950s calypso hit ``Yellow Bird'' and Frank Sinatra's ``Nice 'n' Easy'' to Oscar-winning lyrics for ``The Way We Were'' and ``The Windmills of Your Mind'' to themes for many of America's favorite television series, the Bergmans have been contributing to the Great American Songbook for more than 50 years. They have won three Academy Awards (including one for the score of Yentl), four Emmys, two Grammys, and two Golden Globe Awards.

They have also worked tirelessly to promote the arts and champion our creative community. Marilyn served for 15 years as President and Chairman of the Board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the world's foremost performing rights organization. In 2002, she was appointed the first chairman of the Library of Congress National Sound Recording Preservation Board.

Alan serves as a member of the Library of Congress National Film Preservation Board, the Johnny Mercer Foundation Board, the Artists' Rights Foundation Board, and the Jazz Bakery Board of Directors.

And together, Alan and Marilyn serve on the executive committee of the Music Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

They are also strong supporters of music education, including the New West Symphony's outstanding efforts to provide quality outreach and educational opportunities for our communities and our schools.

Mr. President, I know that you and all our colleagues will join me in saluting two great American artists and this year's Bravo Award winners, Alan and Marilyn Bergman.

Mr. President, today I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Catherine O'Neill, the great advocate for refugee women and children who died in Los Angeles last month at age 70. Cathy was my friend and neighbor, and I will miss her.

Catherine was born in 1942 in Queens, NY, the daughter of Irish immigrants Patrick and Bridget Vesey. After graduating from St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn and teaching as a Catholic missionary in Texas, she earned master's degrees in social work from Howard University and in international affairs from Columbia.

Cathy had an extraordinary career as a social worker, writer, editorial director, businesswoman, and director of the UN Information Center in Washington, DC. She was also active in political life, twice running for office in California and serving as finance director for Governor Jerry Brown's 1976 presidential campaign, but she is best known for her groundbreaking and heroic efforts to help refugee women and children.

In 1989, after visiting refugee camps around the world as a board member of the humanitarian International Rescue Committee, Cathy became a founder of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, now Women's Refugee Commission.

As the Commission's board chair, Cathy traveled the world to listen to refugee women and children and learn about their most pressing needs. She attracted prominent women journalists, academics, and philanthropists to the Commission and became a leading advocate for refugee issues on Capitol Hill, at the UN, and in the media. Under her leadership, the Women's Refugee Commission has shaped policies and practices in the U.S. and around the world to address the needs of women and children displaced by war, persecution, and natural disasters.

On behalf of the people of California, I send my gratitude and condolences to Cathy's husband, Richard Reeves, her daughter Fiona Reeves, sons Colin and Conor O'Neill, Jeffrey Reeves, her grandchildren, and her sister Mary Ann Garvey. Catherine O'Neill was an amazing person who made our world a better and more compassionate place, and we will miss her dearly.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to my colleagues, Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Olympia Snowe.

We have served together in the Senate for two decades and I will dearly miss their grace and their friendship. I know that whatever the next chapter brings, both Senator Hutchison and Senator Snowe will leave a lasting and important legacy.

Both of these Senators are true pioneers. When she first entered Congress, Senator Snowe was the youngest Republican woman ever to serve in the House of Representatives. Senator Hutchison graduated law school in 1967 as one of only 5 women in a class of 445 men. When she arrived in the Senate in 1993, she became the first woman to represent Texas in this Chamber.

Throughout her career, Senator Snowe has been a strong advocate for the people of Maine. Whether they were children, families, consumers, or small business owners--the people of Maine knew they had a great champion in Senator Snowe.

Senator Snowe always worked across party lines to get things done for the American people. During her time in the House, she worked with Senator Mikulski to lead the fight to end the exclusion of women in health trials at the National Institutes of Health. She worked with Senator Rockefeller to help bring the internet to America's libraries and classrooms. She worked with Senator Ted Kennedy to pass the Genetic Nondiscrimination Act.

Senator Snowe and I worked together on many, many bills over the years, but I will especially remember our work on the passengers' bill of rights to provide basic protections for airline passengers. I will also remember the many times we fought together to ensure equality for women around the world.

Senator Snowe was a true leader and her presence in the Senate will be greatly missed.

Senator Hutchison was a strong and passionate voice for the issues important to her beloved State of Texas.

She played an critical role in so many of the important issues facing our country over the years, from her work ensuring the safety of our Nation as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to her leadership on the Senate Commerce Committee.

We worked together to promote safety and security for Afghan women and girls, and she played such a key role last during consideration of the transportation bill. I am so grateful for Senator Hutchison's bipartisan efforts to preserve and protect our critical transportation infrastructure.

Senator Hutchison has always noted that we women Senators have repeatedly come together across party lines to achieve action on women's issues: things like pay inequality and creating tax-free individual retirement accounts for spouses who work at home.

I will miss my colleagues, both on the Senate floor and at our monthly women Senators dinners.

I wish them both well in all their future endeavors.

Kent Conrad

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to my colleague, Senator Kent Conrad, whom I have been fortunate to call a colleague and a friend. I have served with Kent for 20 years and my husband Stewart and I have valued the friendship of his and his wonderful wife Lucy Calautti.

From helping North Dakota recover from devastating natural disasters to promoting North Dakota agriculture as a key member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Kent Conrad has been a leader for North Dakota for more than 30 years.

No Senator knows budget and economic issues better than Senator Conrad and he used his knowledge to great effect as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. His exacting and precise assessments of our Nation's fiscal health added wisdom and maturity to a debate that was often difficult and divisive. His many budget charts alone are famous in the Senate--in fact, he uses even more charts on the floor than I do, which is saying something.

He refers to his policymaking approach as ``extreme moderation''--an approach that perfectly sums up Senator Conrad's philosophy and demeanor. Senator Conrad is one of our most respected members, for his steady temperament, his open mind, and his willingness to reach across the aisle in search of policy solutions.

The Senate is losing a powerful voice, and great friend to us all in Kent Conrad.

Mr. President, I rise to register my concerns with the confirmation of Dr. Joshua Wright to be a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, FTC.

The FTC's mission is to ``prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers and to enhance informed consumer choice and public understanding of the competitive process.''

Yet throughout his career, Dr. Wright has shown a disdain for this mission, and the government's involvement in protecting consumers.

As one example, Dr. Wright wrote that one government consumer protection agency's agenda was ``aggressive and dangerous'' and that its ``existence is likely to do more harm than good for consumers.''

He has also sharply criticized the FTC, arguing it has been hampered by ``a history and pattern of appointments evidencing a systematic failure to meet . . . expectations.''

Many consumer groups are also concerned about his confirmation to the FTC, noting that his antiregulation philosophy is far outside of the mainstream and runs counter to the mission of the FTC as an enforcement agency designed to protect consumers.

Dr. Wright was selected by Republican congressional leadership to fill a Republican position on the FTC, as required by statute. For this reason I did not block his confirmation, but I will be closely monitoring his activities at the FTC.

I am wondering if the Senator can finish in 5 minutes, and then I would speak, and then he can have more time.

Mr. President, I would like to say to Senator Enzi that I agree with so much of what he said. Our being here on New Year's Eve, some of us without our families, is nothing to be proud of, and having been able to do our work through the committee system, I think he made a very good point.

Enzi and Kennedy were quite a team; Baucus and Grassley had their successes; Levin and McCain recently had their success on the Defense bill, with lots of amendments; Boxer and Inhofe on the Transportation bill. I can tell you, you couldn't find two people more different, and yet Senator Inhofe and I were able to do that work and get that done and protect 2 to 3 million jobs. And also Stabenow and Roberts in the Agriculture Committee.

So my friend is absolutely right; we can do this in the right way and not have to be here in the middle of the night. I don't think that is anything to be proud of. However, I do believe what we did early this morning was right and very important. I think Senators Durbin and Brown laid it out as to why that vote was so critically important: It protected our families, it gave certainty to our businesses, and it keeps this economy moving forward. All this is true if the House passes this bill.

As Senator Enzi said so eloquently and in such a straightforward fashion, this is a deal. Each of us could write our own deal, and each of us would be so much happier with a deal that we personally could write. But that is not the way it is. We are not a parliamentary system where one party controls everything.

In a parliamentary system that we see in Europe, one party controls everything. They have a program. The other party opposition has a program. There may be other parties as well but two major parties. One of them gets elected, they put together a coalition, they have discipline, they have a program. They don't have to sit down with people they don't see eye to eye with. They just have to get together and pass the program. If the people don't like it, there is a vote of confidence and out they go and in comes the opposition. They have a channel. That is not the American system. Our system is much more difficult in so many ways. So many of us are so passionate on so many issues and believe so strongly, and yet we know we have to compromise, as Senator Enzi has said.

When I sat down with Senator Inhofe on the Transportation bill--and I will be doing it now with Senator Vitter on the WRDA bill--the water resources bill--I laid out the five things I cared most about, he laid out the five things he cared most about, and, to be honest, there were only a couple things that matched. So we started with those things, and then we met each other in the middle with the rest. Then the Senate had a chance to work its will.

When the bill got over to the House, it was stuck. It was trapped. We all went over there, all of us together on a bipartisan team, to speak to Speaker Boehner and Chairman Mica and say: OK, let's get it done. And we did. So it can get done.

The Fiscal Cliff

But we are where we are, where we are. This morning we had a choice, and, frankly, I was proud to see the overwhelming vote we had. It was amazing, 89 to 8. I don't know what motivated every colleague; I only know what motivated me to believe this was an important ``aye'' vote for me to cast.

I will never forget this recession that we are just coming out of now, the worst recession since the Great Depression. As Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson--who put his head in his hands and was overwhelmed with what he actually called the potential collapse of capitalism. That is what we faced.

We have short memories here because our lives are so filled with fast-moving events every day. Some of them are wonderful, some of them are awful, some of them lift up our hearts, some of them break our hearts. So we don't remember the things that happened a couple years ago.

When President Obama took over after a very lifeless economy, as my friend Senator Brown said, where only 1 million jobs were being created--maybe not even that many--in the private sector over an 8-year period, and suddenly there was a collapse brought on by the greed of Wall Street and manipulation of securities dealing with housing--a crash, a nightmare, and we were losing 800,000 a month. Then the auto industry was on its knees.

Believe me, in the past I haven't been the biggest fan of the auto industry for California because I believed they weren't producing the cleanest cars they could, the most fuel economy cars they could. I believed they were missing out on an opportunity. But let me tell you, when I was faced with the issue of whether to let them go bankrupt or stand and give them a chance, I chose that chance. And I am proud that I did it, and I am proud of this Congress for doing it. I am proud of this President for leading the way. That was a critical vote. And this vote this morning, I believe, was a critical vote if we really wanted to keep this economy moving forward.

A lot of people say: How did President Obama ever win with that unemployment rate so high? All the historians were saying it was never going to happen because it has never happened. Well, I will tell you why I believe it happened. I believe people understood what we went through, what we suffered through, what he inherited, not to mention two wars on a credit card that he had to end. So I think people understood this. We don't give the people enough credit. They got it. They understood it. And I hope they realize this President has led us to this point, with the Vice President, with Senator McConnell, with Senator Reid, to move this economy forward.

Let me tell you very quickly why it is so important to my home State. A lot of my colleagues roll their eyes when I tell them we have 38 million people in California. My friend from Wyoming, how many people in Wyoming? There are 562,785, and we have 38 million people. All right?

I want to tell you what it means that we voted the way we did. It means 400,000 people this morning will lose their unemployment insurance unless the House acts. If the House acts as we did, they will not lose it.

What does this mean to people, 400,000 of them? As my friend, the Presiding Officer--who is so good on economics--knows, there is a multiplier effect. For every dollar we give in unemployment benefits, we get a bang for the buck $1.42 in the community because the people on unemployment spend it because they are out of work.

They are about to lose this help. We need to help them, and in this package we did--2 million nationwide, 600,000 jobs at stake from the multiplier effect, and in my State 400,000 people. Almost as many people as reside in the State of Wyoming were about to lose their unemployment insurance. Imagine--almost that.

I ask for an additional 5 minutes.

So when we talk about our vote this morning, it is not a wonky discussion. It is real people. Five million Californians are about to get trapped into the AMT problem, the alternative minimum tax, which was set up for a very fair reason. I wasn't here at that time, but I remember reading about millionaires getting away with paying no taxes because we

had no alternative minimum. They took advantage of the Tax Code, got their deductions, and paid nothing. We put it in place, but it is imperfect. We had to fix it to make sure it doesn't catch the middle class--5 million of my people.

So this is like a partridge in a pear tree in a way: 400,000 people would have lost their unemployment compensation; 5 million would be caught in the alternative minimum tax, which would have been an extra in taxes right there; and 15 million would have seen their tax rates go up on average of $2,200.

This bill we voted for this morning had real consequences, and I know a lot of people are worried about the future and what is coming down in 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days--and I worry too. But I have been around here long enough to know it isn't going to get better if we put this off until then and we have twice as many issues on our plates to deal with.

So I believe what we did this morning--and my voice is going because it was a very difficult and emotional day for all of us, some being away from their families for the first time. I know my friend from Rhode Island and I talked about it. It wasn't easy, but we know what we are doing here is critical. We are not proud of the fact that it took us this long to get it done.

I agree with my friend from Wyoming. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is important what we did. We have certainty for businesses that depend upon consumerism. We have an economy that is driven by consumer activity, about 70 percent of it. Now the business community knows--if the House acts. I have to keep reminding myself it is not done. If the House acts, we will give certainty to our families, to our businesses, to our low-income people who depend upon refundable tax credits, to our energy community that relies on energy tax breaks to keep on moving and keep on producing.

So I don't want to see economic growth derailed. It was too hard and painful to sit through this very difficult economic recovery inch by inch, every day hoping we would push forward despite the odds. We had the economic crisis in New York that weighed on us as well.

Well, what we did this morning was important. So I want to close by saying this to my friends in the House, all of them--Democrats, Republican, liberals, and conservatives--this is not the perfect deal. We all know it. Each of us can find a piece of it that we really, really don't like. But on the whole it will give certainty to this economy.

In many cases, many of the provisions are permanent, such as the AMT. It gives certainty, and certainty is critical. We will not go back. We will not take billions and billions of dollars out of this economy. We can't do that now.

I would say to my conservative friends over there: Now it is the first of the year. You are actually cutting taxes now because as of today they went up. So you could take credit for cutting taxes.

I just hope and pray that the House will do the right thing; that Democrats and Republicans will come together as Americans and put the country first. I believe they will do this. I pray they will do this.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are all here and hopeful there will be a deal so we can avert going over the fiscal cliff. I listened carefully to the remarks of my friend Senator Harkin, which I would have to describe as fairly negative. I wish to project a bit more of a positive view.

We all know that no side, if there is a deal, is going to get 100 percent of what they want. We know that because one party doesn't control everything, so we are going to have to meet somewhere in the middle of where both parties stand. We also know if we don't act, 100 percent of the American people are going to start feeling an impact of higher taxes.

I honestly do not worry about the millionaires and the billionaires at all. I don't worry about the people who are fine, who don't even know or care that much about a tax hike that takes them back to the Clinton years when they did very well. I don't worry about those folks. I worry about the folks in the middle. There are always arguments about what that line is. Some say the middle class is at $75,000, some say $150,000, and some go even higher because their States, as is my State, are very high cost-of-living States. So we know if we are going to get a deal, we are going to have to meet somewhere in the middle. To me, if we fail, it will be a very sad moment in history.

I hear a lot of talk about the sequester. I don't know exactly how the President pro tempore voted, but I voted for a sequester if we couldn't find savings as part of a debt limit deal. I am not about to stand here and say we should throw it out. I don't like it; it will bite. But if we said we are going to make savings, and if we couldn't do it one way we would do it through the sequester, then I think we have to step to the plate and admit that is the policy we voted for.

I would much prefer to ease it, and I think there are ways to do that. One way is to bring the money home from the overseas spending account and use that money because we are getting out of Afghanistan, thank God, and the war in Iraq is over. So we could bring home that overseas war account money and use that to soften the sequester or even to stop it completely. My understanding is my Republican colleagues don't view that as real, but the Congressional Budget Office says it is real. So that is a way we can stop the sequester.

Other than that, I think we have to own up to the fact that in the debt ceiling made-up crisis--this is a made-up crisis and that was a made-up crisis--we said if there were not cuts coming forward, we could go to an automatic spending cut regime. We can't run away from things we did, it seems to me.

So I think there are the elements of putting something together. I know the Vice President is working hard with Senator McConnell and Senator Reid as an honest broker to bring us together. I know Senator Harkin is not very optimistic at this point based on what he is hearing. I believe, from what I am hearing, there may be something, maybe--there may not be; we don't know, we haven't seen it. It may be something that extends unemployment benefits, which is very important. It is critical. If we want to talk about the real cliff, it is for the people who are about to lose their unemployment compensation.

The economists tell us that is the best bang for the buck. When we give someone who is unemployed a dollar, he goes out, she goes out, they spend in the community, and it has a multiplier effect that actually spurs economic growth in the community because 70 percent of our economy is based on consumers. If they have nothing, then the communities have nothing, the local businesses have nothing, let alone they would suffer and some, perhaps, lose their houses and such. So we need to do that. That is critical.

If that is not in the deal, that deal is a real problem. So if that is in there, and we do the tax extenders even for a shorter period of time, and we stop raising taxes on 98 percent, 97 percent of the people, I don't think we should

prejudge that at this point. The devil is always in the details. Something could come out that is just a nonstarter.

Senator Reid went down to that microphone yesterday and said to the Republicans: We are not cutting Social Security benefits; that is not part of this package: Don't even put it on the table; stop. After the Republicans had their luncheon meeting, they came out and actually took it off the table. That was positive. Don't try to slip things in here that could hurt the people, that will balance the budget on the backs of those who can't do it. Don't bring up Social Security when we are doing a very short term deal to get us over this cliff.

So none of us, except for a couple of people, really know what is in this deal. We are hearing leaks about it, we are hearing rumors about it, but we don't know if we will have the deal. Personally, I hope we have something we can look at and decide whether it is something we can support and not prejudge it at this stage because we have to remember something: This is a compromise. We don't have a parliamentary system of government. One party doesn't run the show. It is shared responsibility. It is frustrating, and it is difficult.

I was able to bring a highway bill to the floor as the chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, doing it with Senator Inhofe, and a person couldn't find two people more philosophically apart than we are. I have seen the President pro tempore do the same in his committee, working with the other side, and he brought out of his committee an incredible bill called the Violence Against Women Act. He did it with the Republicans.

I watched Senator Stabenow and Pat Roberts come forward with a farm bill. I have watched Senator Feinstein in intelligence, and I have watched Senator Levin and Senator McCain. We can make it happen. It can happen. We have to make it happen.

I will close with this: I served in the House for 10 years. I served with incredible Members. One of them was Tip O'Neill, and he was the Speaker. Tip O'Neill had a certain magic about him. The magic was he understood how to get things done because he didn't consider himself Speaker of the Democrats; he considered himself Speaker of the House. He knew the magic number was 218. That was the number. He would come over to me and every Member when there was a tough vote, and he would say: Well, Barbara, can you be with me on this one?

I would say: Gee, Mr. Speaker, I don't think so. It is not good for my district. I really don't think I can.

He would say to me: Well, you know what. If that is how you feel about it, I understand. If I need you, I will come back to you.

Then he would go do the same thing and pick up some Republicans on the other side, and he would get the magic 218 and it would be done.

Right now we have Speaker Boehner, whom I know and like personally, but it seems as though he doesn't want to talk to the Democrats. Nothing is going to get done for our country if we don't talk to each other. We don't have a parliamentary system. We have to work together.

So I wanted to add at least a cautiously optimistic note. I am hopeful we will get something done, and I think if we do, and if it is fair--fair enough--we should get our country off this cliff.

Thank you very much. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Dave Brubeck, the iconic jazz musician and composer who defined and popularized modern jazz during a pioneering career that spanned seven decades. Mr. Brubeck passed away on December 5, a day before his 92nd birthday, in Wilton, CT.

Dave Brubeck was born in Concord, California, on December 6, 1920. When he was 11, Dave's family moved to the town of Ione in the rolling Sierra foothills of Amador County, where his father, Pete, managed a cattle ranch, and his mother, Elizabeth, a classically-trained pianist, taught Dave and his two brothers how to play various musical instruments. Although his poor eyesight kept him from reading music, this determined young musician learned mostly by listening, and his abundant musical talents made him a popular feature at local events by the time he was a teenager.

At the College of the Pacific, Dave initially studied veterinary medicine before switching to music after one year. It was there that he met Iola Whitlock, a schoolmate who became his wife in 1942. Almost immediately upon graduation, he was drafted into the Army, where his standout performance as part of a travelling Red Cross show prompted a commanding officer to assign him to form a band to play for the troops in combat areas. He recruited black and white musicians to play together in his 18-piece band, the Wolfpack Band.

After the war, Dave returned home to study music on a GI bill scholarship at Mills College under the tutelage of French composer Darius Milhaud. During this period, he met the musicians who would later form the Dave Brubeck Quartet. With Mr. Brubeck at the helm, the quartet's unique and groundbreaking style earned wide acclaim and a legion of fans from across the country, and eventually from around the world. In 1954, in recognition of his fame and prodigious talents, he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 1959, the quartet's recording of ``Take Five'' became the first jazz single to sell a million copies. Over the years, he would produce other iconic jazz hits such as ``Time Out'' and ``It's a Raggy Waltz,'' record more than a hundred albums, and even write two ballets.

A man of strong convictions, Mr. Brubeck used his musical gifts and celebrity to stand up for principles and causes in which he believed. In 1958, at the invitation of the U.S. State Department, he led the quartet on a good will tour that introduced jazz music to countries and audiences behind the Iron Curtain and in the Middle East. That same year, he refused to tour in South Africa when promoters insisted that his band be all white.

Mr. Brubeck performed for eight presidents and composed the entrance music for Pope John Paul II's 1987 visit to Candlestick Park in San Francisco. He was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts and received a Kennedy Center Honor for his contribution to American culture. His alma mater, now known as the University of the Pacific, established the Brubeck Institute to further his lifelong work and goal to use the power of music to ``transform lives as well as to enlighten and entertain.''

On behalf of the people of his home state of California, I extend my deepest sympathies to Dave Brubeck's wife of 70 years, Iola; sons Darius, Chris, Dan and Matthew; daughter Catherine Yaghsizian; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Dave Brubeck was an American treasure, and he will be dearly missed.

Mr. President, as we stand here--or sit here--and watch what is happening, we know there are negotiations going on to avert at least part of the fiscal cliff. I want to say--I have said this privately, but I want to do it publicly--I hope our leaders can find a way out of this.

I watched the President speak today and I thought, as usual, he was very fair in what he said. What he basically said is it is the middle class that grows this economy. It is the middle class that needs to be lifted up. It is the middle class that cannot afford tax hikes. Those at the very top can do just a little bit more.

It is a very simple point. I hope, given that everyone says they are for the middle class--I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that every day, that they agree with that--that finding this compromise will not be elusive but will come to pass.

I have been here for a while. My understanding is we have not met between Christmas and New Year's Day since 1962. So it does take a crisis of major proportions to make that happen. I think we are in a crisis right now, but it is a self-made one. It is a self-imposed one. It is similar to the crisis we had on the debt ceiling--self-imposed. It is not some, God forbid, exterior attack on our country which we

could not prevent. It is not some, God forbid, plague or a terrible virus that is running across the land. To me it is something that is not that complicated.

As the President said, we have a series of tax cuts that are expiring. If we let them expire, it means there will be a huge tax increase, mostly hitting the middle class and the working poor. The upper incomes, the people in that category, have done so well that even they say they would have to talk to their accountant before they even knew there was any impact on their tax bill. So we can come together.

The President favored a limit which would be $250,000, meaning that everyone who earns up to that would get a tax break. Everybody's income up to $250,000 gets a tax break, everybody, 100 percent of the people. But those who are fortunate to have higher incomes would go back to the tax rates that prevailed when Bill Clinton was President.

Why the other side is horrified by that is perplexing to me. I look back at the Clinton era. I was here. That is a long time ago. I came to the Senate with Senator Feinstein when Bill Clinton was President, and he faced similar issues in that we had a deficit that was getting out of control, a debt that was getting out of control. We needed to have growth. So he put forward a budget plan that invested in our people, invested in the infrastructure, invested in education, and at the same time said we can find cuts in other areas and we can raise taxes on those who are doing very well.

What happened with that fair and balanced approach? What happened was the greatest prosperity in modern history--23 million jobs, no more deficits, we got to a balanced budget. I remember saying to my husband: My goodness, what is going to happen? There will not be any more U.S. Government bonds because we are going to be out of the debt situation. We saw it on the horizon.

When George W. Bush became President, he decided to go back, backward on rates across-the-board, from the wealthiest to the middle to the poor, and he put two wars on a credit card and we are where we are.

To add to this history, we all know we are coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. It has been difficult. It was led by, unfortunately, some unscrupulous people on Wall Street who created a nightmare in the housing market. I remember saying to Treasury Secretary Paulson: Can you please explain the role of derivatives here and what happened and how we got into this crisis? He put his head in his hands and he said: Not now. I will talk to you later.

That is not very encouraging when the Secretary of the Treasury puts his head in his hands and says I can't explain it now.

We are coming out of this difficult time, and guess what. We are doing much better. We had an election. It was pretty clear. People want to see us reach a balance.

As I stand here, I know there are negotiations going on in the rooms surrounding us. I wish for the best, I hope for the best, and I ask for the best. There is a word called ``compromise.'' It doesn't mean you compromise your principles, but it means that you can compromise because that is what the American people want us to do. Yes; they do.

I wish to give an example. Say you were out hiking. Mr. President, in your State there are a lot of hikers. If you saw someone on a cliff, trapped, caught on a rope and you knew the only way to save the person was first to cut the rope--you are standing with someone else and you say: Cut the rope at the top. He says: Cut the rope at the bottom, and you stand there arguing; meanwhile, the man is struggling on this cliff: Get me down. Wouldn't it be smart to cut the rope in the middle and save the guy? You can argue later, should I have cut the rope at the top or the bottom--no, cut it in the middle, save the man.

That is a pretty simplistic example of where we are. But I have the privilege of knowing we can get it done when we work together. I was so proud to bring to this Senate a highway bill, a transportation bill. Millions of jobs were at stake. Our States were worried they would stop getting their highway funds. We would have had to stop road projects in the middle. We would not have had State funding for transit. But you know what happened. Senator Inhofe and I sat in a room. You could not find two more divergent people in their thinking, he a conservative Republican and I a progressive Democrat. We sat in a room and he said I want this, this, and this. I said I want that, that, and that. Then we said let's make a deal. Let's meet in the middle. We did it--much to everyone's surprise--and that bill passed the Senate.

When it got to the House, it got stuck. So Senator Inhofe and I and Senator Reid went over to meet with John Boehner and Chairman Mica and we all agreed we would get it done. Neither side got everything they wanted. Anyone who takes that position, in my opinion, is not putting country first. I don't care whether they are Republican, Democrat or anything else.

We are not, each of us, going to get everything we want, Lord knows. There is a lot I could do if I had a wand and could make it happen. But everybody has a different view of exactly how to go forward. I think we are being tested.

I know it is tough going. I know if we do not get a deal, it does not stop there; we will keep on working. But there is no reason on this beautiful, God's green Earth why we cannot get a deal. If everyone is sincere and saying they want the middle class to be protected, we can get a deal. President Obama says $250,000 is the line. Maybe I think $350,000 is the line; maybe someone else, $500,000; maybe someone else, $150,000. We can meet somewhere and cut that rope somewhere in the middle and save this country from the uncertainty that plagues us right now.

In the olden days--when I say ``olden,'' it is a long time ago--I was a stockbroker. I was an economics major and a stockbroker on Wall Street. The thing Wall Street and investors cannot take is uncertainty. If they know taxes are going up, they will refigure things. If they know taxes are going down, they will refigure things. If they know taxes are staying the same, they will figure it out. But right now they are frozen because they do not know. Families are also, in many ways, frozen. They do not know whether they have to budget so they will have $2,000 less next year. They do not know whether it will be $4,000. They don't know if it is ever going to change. The uncertainty is the fault of leaders who cannot get together. I think it is critical that we get a deal, and I hope it is in the next couple of hours.

I believe it was a reporter who asked me: What is the difference if it is done now or 5 days from now?

I said the difference is this uncertainty, this pall, and an unneeded escalating crisis.

Then someone might say: Well, we don't have to do it now. We will do it on January 4. Well, we don't have to do it on January 4; we will get it done on the 10th.

We need to get it done. America wants us to get it done.

The President has shown that he is willing to be flexible. He has come out with some ideas that I have to swallow--very hard--to accept. I know personally how strongly he feels that $250,000 should be where we draw the line when we allow tax breaks, but he was willing to offer $400,000. He was willing to look at changing some of our programs. It is very tough for him to do that, but he is willing to do that even though he ran on his program and won by millions of votes on his program.

So if the President can be flexible and say: OK, I will step back from everything I really want to do and move in the direction of the Republicans, then the Republicans need to move in our direction. I think we are going to be judged by whether we are going to be stuck in the mud because we just don't have the courage to change or whether we step forward at this moment. I think it should be this moment.

If we cannot get it done, I certainly hope we will have an up-or-down vote on the President's plan, which I feel was very fair. The President offered a plan. Do I like everything about it? Absolutely not. But he showed he is willing to take those steps. I would hate to think our colleagues would filibuster that and demand a 60-vote threshold as we go over this cliff.

The American people are hanging from the cliff, and we can let them

down very gently today and solve this problem. If all we do is stand and stay in our corners, I am very fearful the message is that we don't know how to meet each other halfway, and that is not a good thing. Voters are going to turn on those people who stand in their corners and don't move. That is not the role of legislators.

I will close with this. We have a different form of government than they have in Europe. This is not a parliamentary system. In a parliamentary system, one government rules everything, one party rules everything. They have the Prime Minister, the equivalent of the Speaker, and the leader all in one party, and then they don't compromise. They put their agenda there and get their program through. If there is a lack of confidence, the people can change parties. The next party then comes in and does what it wants. That is not what we do here.

Sometimes I wish it were the form of government we had because at least there would be some action and we would know what to expect. We would not have this uncertainty because each party has its dreams, its hopes, its plans, and they would have a chance to get those policies through. We don't have that here. We have to meet each other halfway because the House is run by the Republicans, and it will be next year. The Senate is run by the Democrats, but it is not a supermajority. We have to deal with our colleagues. The President is a Democrat. We have to work together. That is the name of the game.

If I can work with Jim Inhofe on the highway bill and Debbie Stabenow can work with Pat Roberts on the farm bill--and there are other examples I could give. For instance, Senator Feinstein worked with her Republican counterpart. I could give many examples on the Appropriations Committee. We know we can do this. We just have to take a deep breath and put our egos aside for this country's sake and make those compromises that allow us to still stand tall. I am only 5 feet, so that's hard, but you get the point.

We can do this, and we should do it now. If we don't do it now, we should vote on the President's plan because the people of this country deserve better than to be left hanging on a cliff. They don't deserve that. It is not right.

Thank you very much.

I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum. I ask that the time be equally divided between the two sides.

Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

Will the Presiding Officer let me know when I have talked for 4 minutes.

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Corker for his remarks and join in with his support for Carol Galante. She has a long and distinguished career of building and promoting affordable housing, and she is very well qualified.

She began her career as a housing coordinator for the city of Santa Barbara, rising to become the city's housing and redevelopment manager. I want to point out that Santa Barbara is a magnificent part of my State. I have a beautiful State. At the time, they didn't have much in the way of moderate-income housing, and that was part of the very important work she did.

She moved on to Eden Housing, a nonprofit affordable-housing developer, where she developed over 400 homes as a project manager. She eventually took over as executive director.

She later joined BRIDGE Housing as vice president, and in 1996 she took the helm of that organization as its president and chief executive. BRIDGE is the largest nonprofit developer of affordable- income and mixed-use developments in California. While she was there, Carol oversaw the creation of 13,000 affordable homes for more than 35,000 Californians and programs that helped one-fourth of their residents advance to home ownership because she knew that was the goal. Home ownership, even after all we have been through, is the dream, and she understands that.

So in 2009, President Obama appointed Carol as HUD's Deputy Assistant Secretary for multifamily housing programs where she oversaw a $50 billion portfolio of affordable and market rate multifamily properties through FHA's multifamily insurance program. At a time when support for housing was desperately needed, she took a smaller staff and grew annual lending from $2.5 billion to over $10 billion.

Carol has served for a year now as Acting Commissioner for FHA where she has worked to weed out bad lenders, ensuring greater stability of the reverse mortgage program, and increasing counseling resources for borrowers. As we look over what happened in the housing sector, we know people bought homes who shouldn't have bought homes, lenders took advantage of them, and everybody was in the mix in terms of why things went so sour.

Carol's accomplishments have been recognized through numerous honors, including inductions into the Hall of Fame for Bay Area business leaders in California. She has been recognized by California Home Building and the California Housing Consortium. So she gets support from everybody--from the builders, from the homeowners, from the renters.

Carol has the strong support of a broad coalition of housing advocates and lenders. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Mortgage Bankers Association and a letter from what looks to be two or three dozen other housing organizations.

Mr. President, I wish to read from a letter the majority and minority leaders received from the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Homebuilders, and the National Association of Realtors. These are the businesspeople, and this is what they said about her:

Carol Galante will bring tremendous expertise and a deep

commitment to strengthening FHA's programs . . . Her decades

of work in affordable housing development and more recently,

managing FHA's multifamily programs, give her a unique

perspective on the issues facing our nation's housing and

mortgage markets.

So here we have a person who understands the business side, and she understands the renters and the owners.

I ask for an additional 30 seconds, please.

So we have someone who understands the business side, the renter side, and the home ownership side.

I am very proud this woman is a Californian. I know there are lots of issues within FHA, and we all have to work on them, and we have heard that from Senator Corker. But, my goodness, we want someone who can work with us. She is the perfect person.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the eloquent remarks made by my colleague Senator Durbin, Senator Reid, and all those who have come to praise a one-of-a-kind Senator and extraordinary human being, my friend Dan's Inouye.

I was telling Senator Lieberman that when the Senate put on a little retirement dinner for our retiring Senators--including Senator Lieberman--there was Senator Inouye. When we look back, it was only 2 weeks ago. We know he could not have been strong, he was not well, but he came to that dinner and sat at that table because of the love and respect for the individual Senators and for this institution.

As for me, I will miss Danny's sonorous voice, his big heart, his self-effacing manner, his integrity, and his patriotism.

Over the years, so many of us have worked together on so many issues with Dan. I worked on bringing a state-of-the-art, first ever comprehensive casualty care center to my State to take care of the wounded vets who were coming home without their limbs, post-traumatic stress, and all the problems they had. There was no such place on the west coast, and with Dan's help--and we worked with Senator Stevens--we got it done. Now that facility really stands as a tribute to Dan's Inouye.

In 2010 I had a very difficult campaign, as most of us did at that time, and Dan's said: I am going to come out there and help you. I was under fierce attack, and we had an event for veterans. Dan's was a speaker, and I was a speaker. As I was speaking, we heard these voices of screaming demonstrators yelling things that were not complimentary toward me, let's put it that way. It was very loud, and I was so humiliated and embarrassed. Here was this amazing patriot, and they would keep screaming when Danny was speaking about my work and his work for veterans. Sure enough, the demonstrators kept it up, and I was so upset.

I went up to him and I put my arm around him when he was finished and said: Dan, I am so embarrassed. I am so sorry.

He said: Barbara, they are not going to beat you by screaming. Don't worry about it.

He went on to go to a couple of other events, and he took his wife to them. He was extraordinary.

I loved Danny with all of my heart. Every time I looked at him, I smiled because he was so good. He was such a good person, and I pay tribute to him today. I don't think we will ever replace him. We will never replace this remarkable American. He personified the meaning of love and the meaning of country.

I send my love to his family.