Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the Chair for yielding. As a member of the Transportation Committee, I would like to congratulate Senator Boxer for her extraordinary efforts in pushing this bill forward. This is an enormously important bill that took a lot of hard work, and I commend her for the work she and her staff have done. Senator Inhofe and I have very little in common politically, but I also wish to applaud him and his staff for coming together on this issue and doing something that is extremely important and doing it in a bipartisan way.

Anyone who drives in the State of Vermont or, for that matter, drives around America, understands, to a significant degree, our infrastructure is collapsing. In Vermont, we have dozens and dozens of bridges that are in need of repair. We have many hundreds of miles of roads that need repair. Our public transit system needs help. What this bill is about is a start toward rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our public transit and, in the process, putting a significant number of people back to work.

It is estimated this bill will save more than 1.8 million jobs nationwide in each of the next 3 years, and it will create 1 million new jobs through an expanded infrastructure financing program. What that means in the State of Vermont are thousands and thousands of decent-paying construction and other types of jobs, something we sorely need. So this bill is an excellent start. Does it go as far as it should? No, it does not. Compared to China, compared to Europe, our investments in infrastructure are minimal. When we invest in infrastructure, we make our country more productive, we put people back to work, and we make ourselves more internationally competitive. So I just want to say this is an important step forward, but we have more to do.

Today, we are focused on roads, bridges, public transit--very important--but that is not the entire infrastructure. We have to pick up the issue on rail. We are falling further and further behind China, Japan, and Europe in terms of high-speed rail. We have to invest in rail and there are great jobs in doing that. We have to invest in our water systems and in our wastewater plants. We have to make sure every community in America has high-quality broadband as well as cell phone service. That is what infrastructure is about. We have not invested anywhere near the degree we should, and now is the time to get started.

So this bill, which focuses on roads, on bridges, and public transit is an important step forward, and I wish to congratulate Senator Boxer and her staff, Senator Inhofe and his staff for their important work.

With that, I would yield the floor.

Madam President, the American people are angry because they are living through the worst recession since the Great Depression. Unemployment is not 8.2 percent; real unemployment is closer to 15 percent. Young people who are graduating from high school and college are going out into the world, and they want to become independent and create jobs. There are no jobs. There are workers out there--and I am sure you know them--who are 50, 55 years old who intended to work out the remainder of their work lives, and suddenly they got pink slips and their self-esteem was destroyed. They will never have another job again, and they are worried about retirement security.

What the American people are angry about is that they understand they did not cause this recession. Teachers did not cause this recession. Firefighters and police officers, who are being attacked daily by Governors all over this country, did not cause this recession. Construction workers did not cause this recession. This recession was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of the people on Wall Street.

What these people on Wall Street did was spend billions of dollars trying to deregulate Wall Street, and they got their way. Five billion dollars in 10 years is what they spent. And then they were able to merge investment banks with commercial banks with insurance companies, and they got everything they wanted. They said: Get the government off the backs of Wall Street. They got it. The end result was that they plunged this country into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Four years after the financial crisis caused by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and the other huge financial institutions, one might have thought that perhaps they learned something, that maybe the lesson of the great financial crisis was that you cannot continue to maintain the largest gambling casino in the history of the world. But apparently they have not learned that lesson. They are back at it again. We have recently seen the $2 billion or $3 billion gambling losses at JPMorgan Chase.

What we need from Wall Street if we are going to put people back to work is investment in the productive economy. Small and medium-sized businesses all over this country need affordable loans, and that is what financial institutions should be doing. They should be helping us create jobs, expand businesses, not continuing to engage in their wild and exotic gambling schemes.

When we talk about why the American people are angry, they are angry because they understand that Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. But it was not just the $700 billion that Congress approved through TARP. As a result of an independent audit that some of us helped to bring about in the Dodd- Frank bill, we learned that the Federal Reserve provided a jaw-dropping $16 trillion in virtually zero-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, the central banks all over the world, to large corporations in America and, in fact, even wealthy individuals. What the American people are saying is that if the Fed can provide $16 trillion to large financial institutions, why can't they begin to move to protect homeowners, unemployed workers, and the middle class of this country?

The American people are looking around them. They are angry not just because unemployment is high, they are angry not just because millions of people have lost their homes and life savings, they are angry because they understand that the middle class of this country is collapsing, poverty is increasing, while at the same time the people on top are doing phenomenally well. The taxpayers bailed out Wall Street, and Wall Street recovers, Wall Street does well, but now we have kids in this country graduating college deeply in debt, can't find a job, and we have older workers losing their jobs, and people are saying: What is going on in America?

I believe the American people ultimately are angry because they are looking at this great country--a country for which many of our veterans fought and died--and what they are seeing is this Nation is losing its middle class, losing its democratic values, and, in fact, is moving toward an oligarchic form of government, where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of this Nation.

In the United States today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income since the 1920s. You are not going to see what I am talking about now on Fox or NBC or CBS, but it is important that we discuss this issue because it is one of the most important issues facing America.

Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals in America own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people--400 to 150 million. Today--and this is really quite amazing--the six heirs to the Walmart fortune--the Walmart company started by Sam Walton, his children--one family now owns more wealth than do the bottom 30 percent of the American people. One family owns more wealth than the bottom 30 percent or 90 million Americans. Today, the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of all of the wealth in America. The top 1 percent owns 40 percent of all the wealth in America.

What do we think the bottom 60 percent of the American people own? I ask this question a lot around Vermont. I have a lot of meetings. I say that the top 1 percent owns 40 percent, and people say: That is not good, but we understand that.

Then I ask: What about the bottom 60 percent?

Maybe they own 15 or 20 percent, they say.

The answer is that they own less than 2 percent--less than 2 percent. So you have the bottom 60 percent of the American people owning less than 2 percent of the wealth, and the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the wealth.

Here is another astounding fact. We don't see it much in the media and many colleagues don't talk about it too often, but, incredibly, the bottom 40 percent of the American people own three-tenths of 1 percent of the wealth in this country.

I know we have some of my colleagues coming up and saying: Look, not everybody in America is paying taxes. You have millions of people not paying any taxes.

No kidding. Well, they don't have any money. All of the money is on the top.

According to a new study from the Federal Reserve, the medium net worth for middle-class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010, primarily because of the plummeting value of homes. That is the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle-class family.

I have talked about distribution of wealth. That is what you accumulate in your lifetime. Let me say a word about income, which is what we earn in a year. The last study that was done on

income distribution was done recently. This is what it told us, and this is literally quite hard to believe. The last study on income distribution showed us that between the years 2009 and 2010, 93 percent of all new income created in the previous year went to the top 1 percent. Ninety-three percent of all the new income created between 2009, 2010--the last information we had--went to the top 1 percent, while the bottom 99 percent had the privilege of enjoying the remaining 7 percent. In other words, the wealthiest people in this country are becoming phenomenally wealthier, the middle class is disappearing, and poverty is increasing.

When we talk about an oligarchic form of government, what we are talking about is not just a handful of families owning entire nations, we are also talking about the politics of the nation. As a result of this disastrous Citizens United decision, which is now 2 years of age-- one of the worst decisions ever brought about by the Supreme Court of this country and a decision they just reaffirmed a few days ago with regard to Montana--what the Supreme Court has done is to say to the wealthiest people in this country: OK. You own almost all the wealth of this Nation. That is great. Now we are going to give you an opportunity to own the political life of this Nation, and if you are getting bored by just owning coal companies and casinos and manufacturing plants, you now have the opportunity to own the U.S. Government.

So we have people such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson--the Koch brothers are worth $50 billion. That is what they are worth. They are worth $50 billion and they have said they are prepared to put $400 million into this campaign to defeat Obama, to defeat candidates who are representing working families. Sheldon Adelson, who is only worth $20 billion--he is kind of a pauper--is willing to spend what it takes to buy the government. If we look at it, that ain't a bad deal. If someone is worth $50 billion and they spend $1 billion or $2 billion, they can buy the U.S. Government. That is a pretty good investment, and that is what they are about to do.

On the one hand, we have a grossly unequal distribution of wealth in income. These guys control the economy. We have the six largest financial institutions in this country that have assets equivalent to two-thirds of the GDP of America--over $9 trillion--and these six financial institutions write half the mortgages and two-thirds of the credit cards in America. That is a huge impact on the economy. But that is not enough for these guys. The top 1 percent own 40 percent of the wealth--not enough for these guys. Now they have the opportunity to buy the U.S. Government.

So that is where we are. In my view, working families all over this country are saying enough is enough. They want this Congress to start standing for them and not just the millionaires and the billionaires who are spending unbelievable sums of money in this campaign. It seems to me what we have to do is start listening to the needs of working families--the vast majority of our people--and not just the people who make campaign contributions.

I know that is a very radical idea. I do know that. But it might be a good idea to try a little bit to reaffirm the faith of the American people in their Democratic form of government. We could let them know just a little bit that maybe we are hearing their pain--their unemployment, their debt, the fact they are losing their houses, the fact they do not have any health care, the fact they can't afford to send their kids to college. Maybe, just maybe, we ought to listen to them before we go out running to another fundraising event with millionaires and billionaires.

I do know, however, that is a radical idea. So let's talk about what we can actually do for the American people. In the midst of this terrible recession, where real unemployment is closer to 15 percent if you include those folks who have given up looking for work and those people working part-time when they want to work full time, we know the fastest way to create decent-paying jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

I see the Senator from Minnesota has taken the chair and is now presiding, and I don't know about Minnesota, but I do know in Vermont many of our bridges are in desperate need of repair, our roads are in need of repair, and our rail system is falling further and further behind Europe and China. We have water systems that desperately need repair, wastewater plants, and we have schools that need repair. We can put millions of people back to work making our country more competitive and more efficient by addressing our infrastructure crisis. Let's do it.

It is beyond my comprehension why we can't even get a modest transportation bill. I know Chairwoman Boxer and Senator Inhofe are working on a modest transportation bill, but we can't even get that through the House. In fact, we have to do a lot more than that, but at least they are making the effort.

At a time when we spend some $300 billion a year importing oil from Saudi Arabia and other foreign countries, at a time when this planet is struggling with global warming and all the extreme weather disturbances we see, and the billions of dollars we are spending in response to these extreme weather disturbances, we need to move toward energy independence. We need to reverse greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, we need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel into energy efficiency and into sustainable energies, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. When we do that, we also create a substantial number of decent-paying jobs.

By the way, in the midst of a very competitive global economy, what we should not be doing is laying off teachers and childcare workers. We should be investing in education, not laying off those people who are educating our kids.

I know there is a lot of discussion on the floor with regard to the national debt--almost $16 trillion--and the deficit--over $1 trillion. That is a serious issue and we have to deal with it. But my view is a little different than many of my colleagues in terms of how we deal with it.

I think most Americans understand the causation of the deficit crisis; that is, President Bush went to war in Iraq and he went to war in Afghanistan, and he just forgot something. We all have memory lapses, don't we? We go shopping and we forget to buy the milk or the bread. He had a memory lapse. He forgot to pay for those wars--a couple trillion dollars' worth. He forgot to pay for them. To all of our deficit hawks out here, all those folks who say we have to cut food stamps, we have to cut education, we have to cut health care--oh, two wars, $2 trillion, $3 trillion, $4 trillion? Hey, no problem, no problem at all.

For the first time, as I understand it, in the history of this country, we went to war--which is an expensive proposition--and at the same time not only did we not raise the money to pay for the war, we went the other way and decided to give huge tax breaks, including to the wealthiest people in this country. We spent trillions going to war and we gave tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country. That begins to add up. That is called creating a deficit.

Then, on top of that, because of the greed and the recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, which drove us into this recession-- and when you are in a recession and people are unemployed and small businesses go under, less revenue is coming into the Federal Treasury. If we are spending a whole lot, less revenue is coming in, so you have a deficit crisis.

Some of my Republican friends say--and some Democrats say--maybe we should have paid for the war. Yes, you are right. Maybe we shouldn't have given those tax breaks to the rich. Maybe you are right. But be that as it may, we are where we are and we need deficit reduction and we know how to do it. We are going to cut Social Security.

My friends back home, when you hear folks talking about Social Security reform, hold on to your wallets because they are talking about cuts in Social Security--nothing more, nothing less. I don't know about Minnesota, Mr. President, but in Vermont no one has heard of the concept of chained CPI. I have asked them, and they do not know what chained CPI is, which is what they are trying to pass here. It is this belief--and senior citizens back home will start laughing when I say

this--that COLAs for Social Security are too high. Seniors back home are scratching their heads, saying: Wait. We just went through 2 years when my prescription drug costs went up, my health care costs went up and I got zero in COLA and there are people in Washington--Republicans, some Democrats--who think I got too much in COLA? What world are these people living in? That is the reality.

So some of the folks here want to pass something called a chained CPI, which, if it were imposed--and I will do everything I can to see it does not get imposed--would mean seniors between the ages of 65 and 75 would lose about $550 a year. Then, when they are 85 and they are trying to get by on $13,000 or $14,000 a year, it will cost them about 1,000 bucks a year. That is what some of our colleagues want to do-- virtually all the Republicans want to do it and some Democrats want to do it as well. I am going to, as chairman of the Defend Social Security Caucus, do everything I can to prevent that.

They also want to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We have 50 million people without any health insurance at all, we have people paying huge deductibles, Medicaid covering nursing home care, and they want to cut Medicare and Medicaid. They have the brilliant idea, some of them, that maybe we should raise the retirement age for Medicare from 65 to 67. Tell me about somebody in Minnesota who is 66 and is diagnosed with cancer, and if we do what the Republicans want us to do in the House, which is to create a voucher plan for Medicare, we would give that person a check for, I don't know, $7,000, I think, or $8,000, and we would say: Go out to the private insurance market, anyone you want, here is your $7,000 or $8,000--remember, they are suffering with cancer--and go get your insurance. I guess that would last them maybe 1 or 2 days in the hospital is what it would do. But that is the Republican plan.

I agree that deficit reduction is a real issue, and I think we have to deal with it. But we are not, if I have anything to say about it, going to deal with it on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick, the poor, and the hungry. The way we deal with deficit reduction in a responsible way, in a fair way, is to look to the billionaires in this country who are doing phenomenally well and make the point that Warren Buffett made, that there is something a little absurd about millionaires and billionaires today, in the midst of the deficit crisis, paying the lowest tax rates they have paid in decades. Yes, we are going to have to ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes.

I saw a piece in the paper the other day which was quite incredible. Rich people, apparently, are giving up their citizenship. They are leaving America and going abroad. These great lovers of America who made their money in this country, when we ask them to start paying their fair share of taxes, start running abroad. We have 19-year-old kids who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan who went abroad not to escape taxes; they are working-class kids who died in wars. Now the billionaires want to run abroad in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. What patriotism; what love of country.

We have to deal with deficit reduction, but we don't have to cut Social Security, we don't have to cut Medicare, we don't have to cut Medicaid, and we don't have to cut education. We can ask the wealthiest people, the millionaires and billionaires, to start paying their fair share of taxes. We can end these outrageous corporate loopholes Senator Conrad talked about. He showed a picture of a building in the Cayman Islands where there are 18,000 corporations using the same postal address in order to avoid paying their taxes. We are losing about $100 billion a year. We have large corporations making billions, and paying, in some cases, nothing in taxes. That is the way to get to deficit reduction, not on the backs of people who are already hurting.

We are at a very difficult moment in American history. We are in the process of losing the great middle class. We are seeing more of our people being poor. We are seeing savage attacks being waged against the elderly in terms of cuts in Social Security and Medicare, attacks against those who get sick in terms of going after Medicaid and Medicare.

I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This great country belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all.

I cannot understand why people who have billions of dollars are compulsively driven for more and more. When is enough enough? How many children in this country have got to go hungry? How many people have got to die because they don't go to a doctor because you want to avoid paying your taxes? That is not what America is about. That is not what people fought and died to create.

We have a fight on our hands. The job of the Senate is to represent the middle-class working families of this country, all of the people, and not just the superrich. I hope we can begin to do that.

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

Madam President, I call up amendment No. 2310.

Madam President, this amendment is cosponsored by Senators Boxer and Begich and is supported by over 40 pro-consumer organizations throughout the country, including Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, the Center for Food Safety, and many others.

This is a very conservative amendment. It says the American people should have the right to know what is in the food they and their children are eating and if that food contains genetically engineered products.

This amendment grants States the authority to label genetically engineered food. It is not a mandate. It grants States that right-- something which, by the way, is now taking place in 49 countries throughout the world. If the people in England, Germany, France, and dozens and dozens of other countries have labels allowing their people to know if they are eating food with genetically engineered products, States in the United States should have that right.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.

Madam President, let me begin by saying I suspect that I have the strongest lifetime proworker voting record in the Senate. I want to create jobs, not cut jobs. What Senator Boxer and Senator Cardin and others are talking about is creating meaningful, good-paying jobs as we retrofit coal-burning plants so they do not poison the children of Vermont and other States around the country.

So to Senator Inhofe and others, I say respectfully: Stop poisoning our children. Let them grow up in a healthy way.

The Clean Air Act is set to cut mercury pollution by 90 percent using technology that is available right now. That would be good news since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say mercury can cause children to have ``brain damage, mental retardation, blindness, seizures, and the inability to speak.''

We get exposed to mercury simply by eating fish contaminated with it, and we have seen fish advisories in 48 out of the 50 States in this country. Wouldn't it be nice if the men and women and the kids who go fishing could actually eat the fish they catch rather than worry about being made sick by those fish?

Powerplants are responsible for one-third of the mercury deposits in the United States, but Senator Inhofe's resolution would let them keep right on polluting. His resolution would also eliminate protections against cancer-causing pollutants such as arsenic, as well as toxic soot that causes asthma attacks. Leading medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, and the American Nurses Association have said ``Senator Inhofe's resolution would leave millions of Americans permanently at risk from toxic air pollution from powerplants that directly threaten pulmonary, cardiovascular and neurological health and development.''

That is not Bernie Sanders saying that; it is the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, and the American Nurses Association.

We are talking about preventing thousands and thousands of premature deaths. We are talking about preventing heart attacks. We are talking about what is a very serious problem in my State, and that is asthma. Maybe Senator Inhofe would like to join me in the State of Vermont--I go to a lot of schools and I very often ask the kids and ask the school nurses how many kids are suffering with asthma, and many hands go up. Thank you very much. We do not want to see more asthma in Vermont or in other States that are downwind.

We hear a lot from some of our Republican friends about jobs. The truth is if we are aggressive in cleaning up these coal-powered plants, we can create, and we have already seen created, many good, decent- paying jobs. In fact, if we invest--if the utility industries will invest in pollution controls, we can create almost 300,000 jobs a year for the next 5 years--meaningful, good-

paying jobs making sure that our air is cleaner and that our people do not get sick.

Let's talk about job creation and cleaning up our environment. This is not just theory. I am the chairman of the Clean Jobs Subcommittee. We heard from Constellation Energy, which installed pollution controls at their 1280-megawatt coal plant in Maryland that cut mercury emissions by 90 percent. This $885 million investment created at its peak 1,385 jobs onsite at the plant for boilermakers, steamfitters, pipefitters, operating engineers, ironworkers, electricians, carpenters, teamsters, laborers--just the kind of jobs we want to create. The American people know we have to rebuild our infrastructure. We can create jobs doing that. This is one of the areas where we can create decent-paying jobs and help keep our kids from getting sick.

I urge very strongly a ``no'' vote against the Inhofe resolution.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2254.

Mr. President, I ask that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is a noncontroversial amendment which, according to the CBO, has zero costs. It is supported by the National Wildlife Federation, the American Forest Foundation, the Biomass Thermal Energy Council, and the Trust for Public Land.

This amendment would simply allow, under the Community Wood Energy Program, a new category of small grants to be created which would provide seed capital for biomass cooperatives through grants of up to $50,000. These cooperatives would have the opportunity to work with local wood pellet or wood chip manufacturers to supply bulk purchases that provide consumers with modest discounts.

This amendment can help our Nation move forward to more locally produced renewable biomass heating. Again, according to the CBO, it has zero costs, and I would ask for the support of my colleagues.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on June 20, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD 115 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the United States Patent and Trademark Office: Implementation of the Leahy-Smith American Invents Act and International Harmonization Efforts.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on June 20, 2012, at 2:30 p.m., in room SD 115 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Holocaust-Era Claims in the 21st Century.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 20, 2012, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the IPO Process: Is It Working for Ordinary Investors?''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 20, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``Risks, Opportunities, and Oversight of Commercial Space.''

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

Mr. President, I will be speaking about two amendments that I intend to offer as part of the farm bill. I think both amendments are extremely important, and both amendments have the support of the vast majority of the people of our country. They may not have the support of powerful special interests, but I think that from Maine to California, people will be supporting these amendments.

The first one is amendment No. 2310, which is cosponsored by Senator Barbara Boxer of California.

All across our country, people are becoming more and more conscious about the foods they are eating and the foods they are serving to their kids, and this is certainly true for genetically engineered foods. This is a major concern in my State of Vermont, I know it is a major concern in Senator Boxer's State of California, and it is a major concern all over our country.

This year in my State of Vermont, our legislature tried to pass a bill that would have required foods that contain genetically engineered ingredients to have that information on their labels. That information would simply give consumers in the State of Vermont the knowledge about the ingredients that are in the food they are ingesting--not, I believe, a terribly radical idea.

I personally believe, and I think most Americans believe, that when a mother goes to the store and purchases food for her child, she has the right to know what she is feeding her child, what is in the food she is giving to her kids and her family. This concern about genetically engineered labeling brought out a huge turnout to the Vermont State legislature of people who were supportive of this concept. In fact, it was one of the most hotly debated and discussed issues in our legislature this year. Over 100 Vermonters testified at a committee meeting--the Committee on Agriculture meeting of the State of Vermont-- in favor of this legislation. We are a small State. Hundreds more crowded in the statehouse to show their support.

What people in Vermont, and I believe all over this country, are saying, simply and straightforwardly, is: We want to know what is in the food we are eating and whether that food is genetically engineered. Clearly, this is not just a Vermont issue. Almost 1 million people in the State of California signed a petition to get labeling of genetically engineered food on the November ballot. In California, a big State, 1 million people is a lot of people. In other words, what we are seeing from Vermont and California and all over this country is people want to know what is in the food they are eating and they want to know whether that food is genetically engineered. I thank Senator Boxer of California for representing the people of her State in cosponsoring this legislation.

This is not just a Vermont issue. It is not just a California issue. According to an MSNBC poll in February of 2011, 95 percent of Americans agree that labeling of food with genetically engineered ingredients should be allowed. Those polling numbers have been consistently over 90 percent dating back to 2001.

What we are seeing in polling, year after year, is people want to know what is in the food they are eating. Not everybody agrees. Monsanto, one of the world's largest producers of genetically engineered food, does not like this idea. Monsanto is also the world's largest producer of the herbicide Roundup, as well as so-called Roundup Ready seeds that have been genetically engineered to resist the pesticide. It is no mystery why Monsanto would fight people's right to know. Business is booming for this huge chemical company. It raked in over $11 billion in revenues and cleared $1.6 billion in profits in 2011. This year is going pretty well for Monsanto.

Once it seemed possible that Vermont could pass the bill. That is because the people of the State of Vermont want to see that legislation passed. But our friends at Monsanto threatened to sue the State if that bill was passed. Sadly--and this is what goes on in politics, not just on this issue but on so many issues--despite passing out of the House Committee on Agriculture by a vote of 9 to 1, the bill did not make it any further because of the fear of a lawsuit from this huge, multinational corporation.

Today, we have an opportunity, with the Sanders-Boxer amendment, amendment No. 2310, to affirm States rights to label food that contains genetically engineered ingredients. This amendment recognizes that the 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly reserves powers in our system of federalism to the States and to the people. In other words, that is what federalism is about. This amendment acknowledges that States have the right to require the labeling of foods produced through genetic engineering or derived from organisms that have been genetically engineered. Simply put, this amendment gives people the right to know. It says that a State, if its legislature so chooses, may require that any food or beverage containing a genetically engineered ingredient offered for sale in that State have a label that makes that information public and clear.

It also requires that the Commissioner of the FDA, with the Secretary of Agriculture, shall report to Congress within 2 years on the percentage of food and beverages in the United States that contain genetically engineered ingredients.

There are strong precedents for labeling. The FDA, as everybody knows, already requires the labeling of over 3,000 ingredients, additives, and processes. If we want to know if our food contains gluten, aspartame, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats or MSG, we simply read the ingredients label. Similarly, the FDA requires labeling for major food allergens such as peanuts, wheat, shellfish, and others. But Americans, for some reason, are not afforded that same information when it comes to genetically engineered foods.

Here is a very important point to make. What I am asking now, for the people of America, is something that exists right now all over the world. Genetically engineered foods are already required to be labeled in 49 countries around the world, including Russia, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, China, New Zealand, and others, and the entire European Union allows its countries to require such labels, which is essentially what this amendment is about. It is not telling, but it is allowing States the right to go forward, if that is what the people of those States want.

If this is good for 49 or more countries around the world, why is it not acceptable in the United States of America? The answer is pretty simple. We have a large, powerful, multinational corporation that is more concerned about their own profits than they are about allowing the American people to know what is in the food they are eating.

Let me clarify just a few pieces of information regarding genetically engineered foods. Monsanto claims there is nothing to be concerned about with genetically engineered foods. In the 1990s, there was a consensus among scientists and doctors at the FDA that GE foods could have new and different risks, such as hidden allergens, increased plant toxin levels, and the potential to hasten the spread of antibiotic- resistant disease, but those concerns were quickly pushed aside in the name of biotechnology progress. Their concerns were not, however, unfounded.

In May 2012, a landmark independent study by Canadian doctors published in the peer-reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology found that toxins from soil bacterium which had been engineered into Bt corn to kill pests was present in the bloodstream of 93 percent of pregnant women as well as in 80 percent of their fetal cord blood. In the wake of this study, action is being taken. In 3 days, on June 17, the American Medical Association will consider resolutions that ask for studies on the impacts of GE foods and labeling. Resolutions calling for labeling of GE foods have already been passed by the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association.

There is a great need for this information because there have never been mandatory human clinical trials of genetically engineered crops-- no tests for the possibility of it causing cancer or for harm to fetuses, no long-term testing for human health risks, no requirement for long-term testing on animals, and only limited allergy testing. What this means is that for all intents and purposes, the long-term health study on GE food is being done on the American people. We are the clinical test.

Let me clarify just a few things about labeling genetically engineered food. GE food labels will not increase costs to shoppers. Everybody knows companies change their labels all the time. They market their products differently and adding a label does not change this. In fact, many products already voluntarily label their food as ``GMO free.'' Further, genetically engineered crops are not better for the environment. For example, the use of Monsanto Roundup Ready soybeans engineered to withstand the exposure to the herbicide Roundup has caused the spread of Roundup-resistant weeds which now infest 10 million acres in 22 States, with predictions of 40 million acres or more by mid-decade. Resistant weeds increase the use of herbicides and the use of older and more toxic herbicides.

Further, there are no international agreements that prohibit the mandatory identification of foods produced through genetic engineering. But as I mentioned, 49 other countries already require it.

The Sanders-Boxer consumers right to know about genetically engineered food amendment, amendment No. 2310, is about allowing States to honor the wishes of their residents and allowing consumers to know what they are eating. If this is not a conservative amendment, I do not know what is. Americans deserve the right to know what they and their children are eating and that is what this amendment is all about. Monsanto and other major corporations should not be the ones to decide this issue. The Congress and the American people should make that decision. Without commonsense labeling requirements, the 295 million American citizens who favor labeling, the overwhelming majority of Americans who in poll after poll said yes, want to know whether the food they are eating contains genetically engineered products. They are not being listened to. On behalf of the American people who want to know what is in their food, I urge support for this important amendment.

I have another amendment, but I will come back at another time to talk about the amendment, which will demand that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission do what the law requires of them; that is, end excessive speculation in the oil futures market, but I will hold off on that until a later time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I wish to celebrate Antonio Pomerleau of Burlington, VT, for his remarkable generosity and for his lifetime of service to the people of Vermont. My wife Jane and I have known Tony for over 30 years, since we all worked together when I was Mayor of Burlington, and he is clearly one of the remarkable people in our State.

Last year, Vermont was badly hit by Tropical Storm Irene, the most damaging storm in a half century. Torrential rains, in combination with Vermont's steep hills and narrow valleys, brought flooding on a vast scale to town after town, wiping out roads and bridges, downtowns and mobile home parks, homes, schools and businesses.

Many brave and generous people, from communities across the State, helped those whose lives were uprooted to deal with their losses. The Vermont National Guard, along with the Guards of other States and private contractors, rapidly repaired and rebuilt washed-out roads and bridges. State officials and Federal officials were quick to provide relief and aid.

There are Federal funds available to help rebuild highways, to assist farmers as they cope with damage to their fields, to help many homeowners. But, as the Governor's ``Irene Recovery Report'' indicates, mobile home owners are in a category by themselves. Irene particularly devastated mobile home parks, many of which were built close to rivers that endured major flooding. Sixteen mobile home parks in many regions of Vermont were seriously affected by Irene. Hundreds of mobile homes were badly damaged or completely destroyed. As the ``Irene Recovery Report'' made clear, while mobile homes provide an important affordable ownership option to Vermonters, their construction, location and low resistance to water damage can create additional obstacles to recovery following a disaster. Few of the Vermonters affected had significant discretionary resources with which to secure replacement housing.

Owners and residents of mobile homes faced enormous challenges. Into the breach stepped Antonio Pomerleau.

Tony, who grew up on a small dairy farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, has never forgotten the working families of Vermont. It should be no surprise, though it is nevertheless remarkable, that in the aftermath of the flooding last year Tony would generously look out for those who live in affordable housing and cannot afford to rebuild when catastrophe strikes.

Today, I want celebrate Tony for his act of enormous generosity in creating the Pomerleau Cornerstone Fund and giving it $1 million. This fund has one purpose: to provide direct funding to residents of mobile homes whose residences were destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene.

The Pomerleau Cornerstone Fund will help displaced mobile residents either with full replacement of their homes, or with downpayment assistance for another home. It will provide grants up to $25,000 so that at least 40 families can move into safe and affordable housing.

Throughout his entire adult life, Tony has been a model of what a good corporate citizen should be. He has been an excellent employer, and he has devoted a good part of his life and considerable skills toward public service--without remuneration. For many years he served as Police Commissioner of Burlington and did an outstanding job in that role. He has also been extremely generous in donating funds to a wide variety of very worthy causes.

Since I was Mayor of Burlington, and this is going back 31 years, Tony Pomerleau has paid for a holiday party each year for Burlington's low income children and their parents. He also sponsors an annual party for the Vermont National Guard. He was the major contributor of funds to the Pomerleau Alumni Center at St. Michael's College--two of his sons and a granddaughter attended college there. He has provided scholarships to Rice High School and funded renovations to Christ the King School. Tony donated the North Avenue building that became our city's police headquarters, and continues to contribute financial support for policemen and policewomen. And this really is just a very small part of Tony's philanthropic work.

But facts tell only part of the story of Tony Pomerleau. His generosity is matched by his energy, and even though his 94th birthday is in his rearview mirror, he has the energy of a man half his age. His mind has always been sharp, and time has not dulled it. His deep love for his wife Rita and their children is the rock on which he has built his life. His understanding of Vermont--where it has been, where it is, where it can be going--is, in my view, remarkable.

Tony Pomerleau stands as one of Vermont's outstanding citizens. Today, I celebrate his generosity--it is the habit of lifetime, and a habit we can all learn from.

Mr. President, this amendment is supported by Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the National Women's Health Network.

In the United States, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs--much higher than Canada, much higher than Europe. There are a number of reasons for that. One of the reasons is the widespread fraud, systemic fraud being perpetrated on the American people by virtually every major drug company in this country.

In the last few years, companies such as Abbott, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and many others combined have paid billions of dollars in fines because they are ripping off Medicare, they are ripping off Medicaid, and they are ripping off the American consumer. It is high time we said that fraud cannot be perpetrated as a business model by some of the major corporations in this country.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse and Senator Merkley and everybody else for the very hard work they have done on this monumentally important issue. It is hard for me to think of an issue that is more important.

A moment ago Senator Merkley used the word ``precensorship,'' which is an interesting concept. I want to give an example of this.

Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article that appeared in the ``American Banker'' fairly recently.

(See exhibit 1.)

Let me read what this article says. This is a member of the banking industry who contrasts what the old rules would have allowed, and that is under the old rules where there are limits as to how much people can contribute into a PAC, and that is $5,000 before the primary, $5,000 after, for a total of $10,000.

This is what this gentleman, Mr. Packard, from the banking industry, says:

If someone says I am going to give your opponent $5,000 or

$10,000, you might say, ``Yea, okay.'' But if you say the

bankers are going to put in $100,000 or $500,000 or $1

million into your opponent's campaign, that starts to draw

some attention.

What that gentleman is saying, and what this whole issue is about, is that if a Member of Congress is prepared to stand up to Wall Street, they better watch out. If they are going to vote for a bill that protects consumers, they better watch out because--as this banker said--there may be $500,000 or $1 million going to your opponent and going into television and radio ads.

So when Members of the House and the Senate are thinking about how they want to address the recklessness and irresponsibility on Wall Street--if they are thinking, as I am thinking, about the need to break up these huge banks which have so much power and have done so much harm to our country; if they want to bring about reform of the Fed so we don't have representatives of the largest banks in America sitting on regional Feds--guess what. They are going to think twice about going forward because they are going to worry that when they go home on the weekend, there are going to be all kinds of ads from the banking industry.

Maybe they are concerned as to why in America we spend almost twice as much per person on health care as any other Nation. Maybe they want to move, as I do, to a single-payer health care system. Well, the private insurance companies are not going to like that. They are going to pour huge amounts of money into advertising.

Maybe they are concerned that in America we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Are they going to take on the pharmaceutical industry if they now have the ability to spend unlimited sums of money?

I come to the Senate floor this afternoon to express my profound disgust with the current state of our campaign finance system and to call for more disclosure until we can finally overturn Citizens United. I know the Presiding Officer from New Mexico has a very good constitutional amendment to do just that. I have one. There are other good amendments. Long term, there is no question in my mind that we need to overturn Citizens United. In my view, it will go down in history as one of the worst decisions ever to come from the Supreme Court by a 5-to-4 decision. Five members on the Court came to the bizarre conclusion that corporations should be treated as if they were people and that they have a first amendment right to spend as much money as they want in elections, even though corporations cannot vote.

On election day, the average American, after studying the issues, goes out and with pride votes for the candidate of his or her choice. There are many people in this country who make campaign contributions. Maybe they will contribute $25, maybe they will contribute $50. If they have a lot of money, maybe they will contribute $1,000 or $2,000. But what Citizens United is saying is that a small number of people who run large multinational corporations can spend as much as they want on campaigns. And if that is what American democracy is supposed to be about, you surely could have fooled me, and I think many of the Americans who have put their lives on the line to defend American democracy. American democracy is one person, one vote. We are all in this together. You may be rich or you may be poor, but under our Constitution you have one vote.

This country has had to go through a very rocky process to ensure one person, one vote. In the beginning poor whites could not vote, women could not vote, African Americans could not vote. We struggled and struggled, and we said in America every citizen of this country is going to have their say on election day. That is what we learned when we were in elementary school. That is what democracy is about. And by a 5-to-4 Supreme Court vote, the Supreme Court said: Everybody has one vote, but if you are rich or if you are the head of a corporation, you can go into corporate treasuries and spend as much money as you want. For the average Joe, it is one vote. Corporate America can spend unlimited sums of money buying the airwaves, and we are seeing this today.

This is no academic or intellectual debate. People all over America are

seeing the results of Citizens United today on their television stations and on their radio stations. In the past few months the American people have seen what Citizens United means.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, super PACs alone have spent over $112 million on this election, and we are still more than 5 months away from election day. If 2 weeks before the election there is a billionaire out there or the head of some corporation, who is to say that person cannot take hundreds of millions of dollars out of a large corporation and spend it on an election? It is totally legal but not what America is supposed to be about.

Mr. President, I know you are aware of it, once again, because of your excellent constitutional amendment. What we are seeing throughout grassroots America is that people are beginning to stand and they are saying: No, we don't want Citizens United. We want to overturn it. We want real democracy in this country.

I am very proud that in the State of Vermont, and in four other States, State legislatures have gone on record saying: Overturn Citizens United. There are 209 cities that have passed resolutions to that effect, including some 50 or 60 in the State of Vermont, and people are organizing all over America on this issue.

I thank Senator Whitehouse and others for the work they are doing on this DISCLOSE bill. This is the very least we can do, and I am eagerly waiting to hear the arguments from those people who oppose it.

If I put an ad on as a candidate or if Senator Whitehouse puts an ad on as a candidate, we have to say: I approve this ad. If you are saying something nasty or dishonest, the viewers have a right to know you are behind that ad, you are not hiding. Right now the ads that are going out over this country--who is paying for them? We don't know who is paying for them. We don't see that pretty face on TV saying: I am the CEO of this corporation, and I approve this ad. We don't get the immediate disclosure we should as to who is paying for that ad. That is all this DISCLOSE legislation does.

Long term, no question, we need a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. It would be awfully nice if maybe our friends on the Supreme Court realized the error of their ways and acted accordingly. But at the very least here in the Congress, we need to pass a DISCLOSE piece of legislation and minimize the severe damage that Citizens United is doing to our democracy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the chairman for his hard work on this legislation and for the opportunity to talk about what I consider to be a very important amendment.

I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment No. 2109.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment, to my mind, is an extremely important amendment and it has the support of some of the major consumer organizations in our country, including Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the National Women's Health Network. These are some of the large consumer organizations in America representing tens of millions of our people.

When we talk about prescription drugs, it is important to understand that in our country we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. That is simply the reality. That causes enormous problems because millions of our people go to the doctor, the doctor writes a prescription, and then the person can't afford to fill that prescription. That is pretty crazy, because doctors are doing the diagnosis, telling the patients what they need; patients can't afford to pay for the drugs because they are the highest prices in the world in this country. This is an issue we have to deal with.

There are a number of reasons why prices in this country are higher than in Canada, Europe, and Scandinavia. Certainly one of them is that we are the only major country on Earth that doesn't have a national health care program so that the government can negotiate prices with the drug companies. So what happens in this country is the drug companies simply charge us what the market will bear--any price they can come up with by which they can make money. The end result is that in 2009, prices in this country were 85 percent higher than Canada, 150 percent higher than France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and so forth and so on.

But the reason drug prices are high in this country is not just that we don't have a national health care program, it is because of the enormous amount of fraud that takes place within the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, every single year the major drug companies are ripping off the American people to the tune of billions of dollars a year because of fraudulent practices.

While I do not have enough time here today to recite every example of fraud that has been caught and prosecuted in the last 10 years. But here is the bottom line--and I am going to list some of the cases of fraud. Virtually every major pharmaceutical company in this country has either been convicted of fraud--i.e., ripping off the Federal Government, State government, or individuals--or else has reached a settlement. We have got to get a handle on this crisis. I am going to bore some people because it is a long list. Sadly, it is a long list. But it is a list that has to get out, and it is an issue we have got to deal with.

Abbott Labs is one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world. It had $38.8 billion in revenues and $4.7 billion in profits in 2011. Last month, Abbott reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pay $1.6 billion for illegally marketing the antiseizure drug Depakote. According to the New York Times:

As part of the agreement, Abbott said that it would pay

$800 million to resolve civil cases brought by federal and

state authorities, $700 million in criminal penalties and

$100 million to states in connection with consumer protection

matters.

That was just last month, they are going to pay $1.6 billion.

In 2010, 2 years ago, Abbott and two smaller companies collectively agreed to pay $429 million to settle charges that they deliberately misreported drug pricing in order to hike reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. That is Abbott in recent years.

Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, $67.9 billion in revenues and $10 billion in profits in 2011. Pfizer in 2012, this year, allegedly avoided paying hundreds of millions in rebates due to State Medicaid Programs for Prontonix. Pfizer holds four different exclusives for Prontonix. Talks are under way with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle the charges for up to $2 billion for ripping off Medicaid.

In 2009, Pfizer agreed to plead guilty to a felony of ``misbranding Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead'' and to pay $1 billion to resolve allegations under the civil False Claims Act.

In 2004, a division of Pfizer pled guilty to two felonies and agreed to pay $430 million to settle charges that it fraudulently promoted the drug Neurontin for a string of unapproved uses.

Johnson & Johnson is the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, which had $65 billion in revenues and almost $10 billion in profits in 2011.

In 2012, this year, Johnson & Johnson illegally marketed Risperdal, an antipsychotic medication, to nursing home patients, and paid over $2 billion in fines, which constituted a mere 6.3 percent of sales revenue from the drugs.

In 2010, two subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson illegally marketed the epilepsy drug Topamax for off-label psychiatric uses.

Now we go to Merck. Merck is the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world. In 2011, last year, Merck pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge for violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and paid a $950 million settlement for illegally promoting Vioxx for rheumatoid arthritis before that use was approved.

In 2011, Merck will pay the State of Massachusetts $24 million to settle claims that former subsidiary Warrick Pharmaceuticals reported inflated and false prices for asthma medications, causing the State's Medicaid Program to overpay.

In 2008, Merck reached a $670 million settlement for fraud on patients and Medicare/Medicaid, involving a conspiracy with hospitals to give the elderly cheaper drugs but charging them for the more expensive product.

Now we go to GlaxoSmithKline. GlaxoSmithKline is, again, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. It made profits of almost $44 billion in 2011.

GlaxoSmithKline in 2011 announced that it had reached an ``agreement in principle'' with the U.S. government to pay $3 billion to conclude the company's most significant ongoing Federal Government investigations, specifically illegal sales and marketing practices in Colorado and Massachusetts; overcharging the Medicaid rebate program; and illegal development and marketing of Avandia, a diabetes drug.

In 2006, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $14 million to settle allegations that it engaged in patient fraud.

In 2005, GlaxoSmithKline paid $150 million to settle claims it overcharged the government for two antinausea drugs.

In 2003, GlaxoSmithKline signed a corporate integrity agreement and paid $88 million in a civil fine for overcharging Medicaid.

And on and on and on it goes.

When we talk about the high cost of health care, when we talk about the fact that the United States has the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, it is important for us to address the crisis in terms of fraud within the pharmaceutical industry and the fact that virtually every major drug company has been found guilty of fraud or reached a settlement in terms of fraud charges.

In 2010, the pharmaceutical industry achieved a dubious distinction. It surpassed the notoriously corrupt defense contracting industry in defrauding the government. The pharmaceutical industry accounted for nearly half--$1.8 billion of a total of $4.1 billion--of the penalties collected in 2011 by the Department of Justice/Health and Human Services Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program.

In 2012--and this is quite amazing--the pharmaceutical industry is expected to pay out up to four times the amount of last year's penalty, between $8 billion to $9 billion in penalties due to pending fraud settlements with the Department of Justice. And those are the penalties for fraud that has been discovered. Who knows what type of fraud is taking place on behalf of the drug companies that has not been discovered.

Let me recapitulate. Virtually every major drug company has either been found guilty of, or settled charges of, significant fraud over the last 10 years.

The question arises--and this is an important question--is fraud within

the pharmaceutical industry the exception or, is it, simply put, their business model? Is fraud the business model of the pharmaceutical industry, which thinks that in most cases they can get away with the fraud, make huge profits and, in some cases when they get caught, they will in fact pay a penalty but the penalty will in no way match the kinds of huge profits they are making from their fraudulent activity?

The question the Senate has got to address is, Do we look away from this issue, do we ignore this issue, or do we finally address the very important issue of fraud within the pharmaceutical industry, fraud being practiced by virtually every drug company in our country?

It is obvious to anyone paying attention to the prevalence of pharmaceutical industry fraud that our punishments are not enough to address this problem, because apparently the drug companies are not too intimidated by the laws on the books. They think it makes business sense for them to continue going forward on their fraudulent activities.

The amendment I am offering would send a strong and clear message to the drug industry: Illegal behavior will not be rewarded with continued government-granted monopolies. There are some things--patients' safety, the devotion of scarce public resources to provide health care to needy patients--that are more important than drug company profits.

This amendment is designed to effectively deter pharmaceutical fraud by making government-granted monopolies contingent on good corporate behavior. I think that is the least we can do.

This amendment would penalize any instance of pharmaceutical fraud resulting in a civil or criminal judgment or a settlement with an acknowledgement of fault by revoking any applicable data or marketing exclusivity for the particular drug or product involved in the fraud. giving pharmaceutical companies another factor to consider, when weighing whether to violate the law in their sales or billing practices.

If a company violated Federal or State law by inflating the price of a drug in Medicare or Medicaid billing or illegally marketing a medication, under my amendment that company would lose the remainder of any exclusivity period for that medication. Companies would be required to self-report qualifying violations to the FDA within 30 days.

Let me conclude by saying this: Our people are paying the highest prices----

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Our people are paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. One of the reasons is widespread fraudulent activity on the part of virtually every major drug company in our country. It is no longer acceptable to turn a blind eye to that crisis. The time to act is now. This amendment would go a long way forward to ending that outrageous fraud. I ask the support of my colleagues for this amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to express deep disappointment in the

vote that just took place a few hours ago where our Republican colleagues voted to filibuster our efforts to make sure student loans in this country do not double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in July.

I think everybody understands that young people in our country today, in the midst of this terrible recession, are facing extraordinary challenges. They are paying three to four times as much as their parents paid for a college education regardless of whether they attend a private or public college. When they receive their diplomas, they have no guarantee, given the state of the economy today, that they are going to be able to get a job and earn the income to pay off those debts.

Given the challenges college students are facing today, the least we can do is to keep student loan interest rates at a low rate for another year. The interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans has been steadily reduced since Congress passed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. But if Congress does nothing, interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, 2012.

When we talk about Stafford loans, we are talking about loans for students from low- and moderate-income backgrounds. Subsidized Stafford loans are need based and targeted to students who otherwise might not be able to attend college. Nearly one-third of undergraduates have benefited from these low-interest Federal loans. If the interest rate doubles this year, the rate hike will impact up to 9 million students, and we must not allow that to happen.

Among the students who will be impacted are 19,000 young people from the State of Vermont. In my State nearly 70 percent of college graduates are carrying student loan debt--70 percent. On average that debt is $30,000, which puts Vermont at the sixth highest student loan debt load in the country.

Everybody understands that in order to get ahead in the economy today, it is very important that one has a college degree. The cost of college education is soaring. In the State of Vermont--and I have talked to many of these young people in my State and throughout this country--students are leaving college deeply in debt. Nineteen thousand students in the State of Vermont are on Stafford loans. If interest rates double from 3.4 to 6.8 percent, it will make their current situations, which are very difficult, much worse.

So I hope our Republican colleagues will end their filibuster. I hope we can get back to work as soon as possible in passing a bill which will maintain Stafford loan rates at 3.4 percent.

With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, for a very long time, in a bipartisan way, a number of people have come together to save the U.S. Postal Service. Senator Lieberman and Senator Carper and Senator Collins and Senator Brown have worked very hard, as have many others, because if the Postal Service goes under or is dismembered, we are talking about 8 million jobs in this country--small businesspeople who are dependent on a strong Postal Service.

The Postmaster General originally was talking about shutting down 3,700 rural post offices in every State in this country. I hope Members understand that a post office in a rural town is more than just a post office. If that post office disappears, in many cases that town disappears. The Postmaster General was talking about specifically slowing mail delivery standards, shutting down half the processing plants in this country--over a short period of time, eliminating 200,000 jobs in this country.

I hope we can proceed, have a serious debate on these issues, hear all the amendments, but at the end of the day, I hope we will go forward and save the U.S. Postal Service.

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

Mr. President, let me begin by once again thanking Senator Lieberman and Senator Carper and Senators Collins and Brown for their long and hard work on this issue, which is of enormous consequence to the American people.

Sometimes what people inside the beltway perceive as opposed to what people outside the beltway perceive are two different worlds. I can tell you that back in Vermont--and I suspect in rural areas and States all over this country--people want to save the post office. They know how important it is for small businesses, for our economy, and for their own needs. So the issue we are dealing with is a very significant issue, and I hope that as a Senate we can show America that we can come together regardless of political ideology. This is not a progressive issue, a conservative issue, Republican, Democratic or Independent. This is an issue that impacts tens of millions of Americans, and I hope we can move together as we should.

I wish to say a few words on the Postal Service and finances today. Everybody knows the Postal Service is, in fact, facing significant financial difficulties. Revenue at the Postal Service has gone down from about $75 billion in 2008 to $66 billion last year. In the midst of the digital revolution, first-class mail has gone down significantly--no debate about that--and it has been replaced and will continue to be replaced by e-mail usage and the Internet. There is no question but that this is a real issue that has to be addressed.

But let me be very clear that in terms of the revenue problems facing the Postal Service, the major problems we have are not just the decline in first-class mail. It is an issue that happens not to be the major issue. The major issue, in fact, is that the Postal Service has seen a significant loss in mail volume and revenue due to the most severe recession our country has faced since the 1930s. As the Postal Service indicated on May 30, 2010, ``The effects of the recession account for two-thirds of the mail volume decline.''

The first point we want to understand is, yes, decline of first-class mail is a real issue. But second of all, similar to businesses all over this country, revenue is being impacted by the recession. How we can get our country out of the recession, create more jobs, put more money into the hands of working people is, of course, a major issue we must address.

In that regard, I do wish to say that in the middle of this terrible recession, when real unemployment--real unemployment; it is not 8.2 percent but, in fact, is closer to 15 percent, counting those people who have given up looking for work, those people working part time--it would seem to me this body wants to do everything we can not to see 200,000 jobs slashed at the U.S. Postal Service, many of them decent- paying jobs, many of them union jobs.

We may not be able to save every one of those jobs; we want the Postal Service to be efficient. But on the other hand, I would hope we see as a significant priority that in the midst of a recession, we do not want to downsize a major American institution by 200,000 jobs--many of them, by the way, jobs belonging to veterans.

A couple months ago there was a whole lot of debate about how do we create jobs for veterans. I can tell you one thing we don't do is downsize the Postal Service by 200,000 workers, many of them being veterans.

We talked about the decline in first-class mail being important. We talked about the recession being important. But I wish to raise another issue that I think many people are not familiar with and that has nothing to do with first-class mail, nothing to do with the recession or, in fact, e-mail or the Internet; that is, to a very significant degree, the major reason the Postal Service has been running a deficit since 2007 is due to accounting issues.

For example, everybody has to understand this issue if we are going to have an open and honest debate about the future of the Postal Service: Due to a law passed in 2006, the U.S. Postal Service--uniquely in America, uniquely within government, Federal, State, local, uniquely in terms of the private sector--has been forced to prefund 75

years' worth of future retiree health benefits in just 10 years-- seventy-five years' worth of future retiree health benefits in just 10 years. There is no other agency of government that comes close to that onerous requirement, nor are there any companies in the private sector that have been asked to do that. This mandate costs the U.S. Postal Service between $5.4 billion and $5.8 billion per year.

So what I beg of my colleagues is when they look at the financial problems facing the Postal Service--which are real--do not forget that, because of this 2006 legislation, the Postal Service needs to come up with approximately $5.5 billion every single year to prefund retiree health care. This is an important point, and I hope my fellow colleagues in the Senate are listening. One hundred percent of the Postal Service's $20 billion debt from 2007 to 2010 is the result of this prefunding mandate. Let me repeat it. One hundred percent of the Postal Service's $20 billion debt from 2007 to 2010 is the result of this $5.5 billion per year prefunding mandate. Without this mandate, the Postal Service would have made a $700 million profit from 2007 to 2010.

Let me repeat that, because these are facts that have not often been introduced into this debate. We have folks coming up here who are saying the Postal Service is collapsing financially and so forth and so on. But it is important to understand the facts, and the facts are that despite the worst recession--which we are currently in--since the 1930s, despite the competition from e-mail and the Internet, the Postal Service would have made a $700 million profit from 2007 to 2010 if it was not forced to prefund future retiree health benefits.

In addition--and I hope people listen to this as well--during the first quarter of 2012, a few months ago, the U.S. Postal Service would have generated a $200 million profit had it not been required to prefund its future retiree health benefits.

I think as we debate these issues about the future of the post office, it is absolutely imperative that we understand the role of the $5.5 billion every single year that the Postal Service has to come up with to prefund retiree health benefits.

A few months ago I asked the Inspector General of the Postal Service, whose name is David Williams, David C. Williams--he is the Inspector General of the Postal Service--I asked him to talk a little bit about what this prefunding of health benefits meant. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of his letter, which is dated February 6, 2012.

If I might, because I think this is an important letter, I wish to report a significant part of it. I hope people appreciate what the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service is saying. This is a guy who knows something about the Postal Service. This is a letter to me.

Dear Senator Sanders:

For several days last week I met with you and your staff to

discuss solutions to the current financial crisis within the

Postal Service. At the conclusion of those discussions you

requested our office focus on one of the solutions that we

presented, which examined an option to address the current

benefit fund financing. This proposal would eliminate the

requirement for the Postal Service to make annual $5.5

billion payments into its retiree health benefit fund, and

allow the $44 billion currently in the fund--

Let me talk about that. There is right now, as a result of these funding payments, $44 billion currently in the fund--``to grow with interest.''

What he is saying here, what happens if you have $44 billion and it accrues, as it does, interest between 3 and 4 percent a year. Then he continues. If you did that:

No payments would be made from the fund until it is deemed

to be fully funded, and the Postal Service would continue to

directly pay for the health care premiums for retirees. An

additional element of the proposal would allow current

overpayments of $13.1 billion in the Postal Service pension

funds to be funded to the Postal Service.

This is also a point that has not been discussed at all. In fact, we do address it in the current legislation. That is, not only is the Postal Service being asked to come up with an onerous $5.5 billion a year to prefund future retiree health benefits, it is generally acknowledged--I think by everybody who has studied the issue--that the Postal Service has made overpayments of $13.1 billion into the Federal Employees Retirement System and the Civil Service Retirement System, adding those two together. This is what he said, the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service:

Our analysis of this proposal shows that if it were

adopted,the amounts in retiree healthcare fund would grow

from $44 billion to the $90 billion estimated current

liability in 21 years. This $90 billion protected liability

is not a static or precise figure--

It varies a little bit is what he is saying--but essentially he says that if you don't add another nickel into the $44 billion, it will grow to $90 billion in 21 years and essentially take care of the payments it has to take care of.

The point I want to make clear is that in terms of future retiree health benefits, we already have $44 billion in the account. In my view and in the view of people who know more about

this issue than I do, it is not necessary to put more money into that account. That is an issue that this legislation attempts to address.

Let me conclude by saying the issue we are dealing with is of enormous consequence to our country. It is imperative, in my view, that we not shut down 3,700 rural post offices. I commend the Postmaster General. We have been working with him and he has moved away from that position. In my view, we have to do everything we can to make sure that we maintain very high standards for mail delivery in this country. So when a business puts a package in the mail, they know it will be delivered in a reasonable time. That is one of the strengths of the Postal Service. In my view, we do not want to shut down, as in the Postmaster General's original proposal, half the processing plants in this country which would slow down mail delivery service. In my view, we do not want to end Saturday mail. I think it is an important part of maintaining mail delivery standards.

But the main point I want to make today is, yes, the Postal Service faces financial problems. But not to understand the significant role-- the causation of those problems that are a result of the $5.5 billion in prehealth funding for retirees--is to miss a very significant part of this debate. I think it is fair to say in this bill we are beginning to address that issue and also address the issue of the overpayment from the Postal Service to the Federal Employees Retirement System.

Let me conclude by thanking Senators Lieberman, Collins, Carper, and Brown for the work they have done. I hope we can have an intelligent and constructive and kind of nonpartisan discussion as we go forward, with good amendments that are relevant, from both sides of the aisle.

The bottom line is that saving the Postal Service is enormously important for our economy and certainly for the tens of thousands of workers who are out there every day doing a great job for us.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the issue we are debating right now is an issue of enormous consequence for the American people, for our economy, for rural America, and for the hundreds of thousands of workers in the U.S. Postal Service. I thank Senators Lieberman, Carper, Collins, and Brown for the important work they have done in moving this legislation forward.

Let me begin by saying the debate we are having is not whether the Postal Service in the digital age should change. Everybody agrees the Postal Service should change. The question is what kind of change do we want, what kind of change is good for the American economy, and what kind of change is good for our country.

Last year--I think about 9 or 10 months ago--the Postmaster General gave us his view of change. There was concern about some of the financial problems facing the Post Office. He came up with a proposal that would do the following: What he said is we should close more than 3,600 mostly rural post offices. In my State, I think the number of rural post offices is about 15. All over this country post offices, in so many ways, serve a function beyond delivering mail or selling stamps. In many ways, post offices become the center of a small town. The Postmaster General's proposal was to shut down more than 3,600 mostly rural post offices.

Furthermore, he wanted to shut down about half of the mail processing facilities in America--somewhere around 250 of them--and when we do that, by definition we slow overnight delivery standards for first class mail. So at a moment when the Postal Service is being challenged by e-mail in the digital age--instantaneous communication--he was proposing to slow down mail delivery.

He also proposed to end Saturday mail service and reduce the postal workforce in the midst of a horrendous recession by some 220,000 workers, going from 550,000 down to about 330,000.

I find it a bit ironic that a couple of months ago we had a great debate here--and I think bipartisan support--to make sure veterans get the jobs they need. Many of the people who work in the Postal Service are, in fact, veterans. They are doing a good job. When we downsize the Postal Service, as the Postmaster General proposed, by 220,000 workers, we are downsizing many of our veterans.

Many of my colleagues in the Senate and the House and I are strongly opposed to what the Postmaster General brought forth and we have been working with him and his staff to improve this plan. Frankly, I think we are making some progress. Obviously, the key danger of what the Postmaster General has proposed is that if we slow down mail delivery standards, what ends up happening is that individuals and businesses will be rethinking whether they want to use the Postal Service and whether they want to go elsewhere. So what we could very well begin is what we call a death spiral: slow down mail delivery service, businesses stop using the Postal Service, less revenue comes in, more cuts are made, more delays, more slowdowns. We think that is a bad idea.

Again, I believe, and I think everybody in this Senate believes, we need a new business model for the Postal Service in the digital age. Some of us believe we can bring forth a new business model which does not necessitate hundreds of thousands of job losses and cuts, cuts, and cuts.

Among other things, I wish to point out that a recently disclosed study by Opinion Research Corporation, commissioned by the Postal Service itself, found the Postal Service would lose nearly $2 billion by eliminating overnight delivery standards. Let me repeat: A study commissioned by the Postal Service found that ending overnight delivery standards and shutting down half of the mail processing plants in America would cost the Postal Service nearly $2 billion. The answer is a lot to do with what I said: If we slow down service, fewer and fewer people are going to be using the Postal Service.

For the last several months I have been working with several dozen of my colleagues in the Senate to oppose those cuts. I thank Senator Lieberman and Senator Carper for their support, as well as Senator Collins and Senator Brown. We have been working with them, and what we basically did is come up with a good bill that is much better than the Postmaster General had originally proposed, and we think we can do better. In fact, we have been working, and I think it is fair to say we have made some significant improvements which have been incorporated in the substitute amendment that is before us. Let me begin by touching on some of the improvements that I think we have brought about.

The managers' amendment brings more protection for rural post offices. I come from a rural State. I know how important rural post offices are, and the managers' amendment provides more protection for these rural post offices.

No. 1: The substitute amendment would prevent the Postal Service from closing any post offices until it has established a set of service standards that would guarantee all postal customers regular and effective access to retail postal services nationwide on a reasonable basis. The Postal Service is required to establish the standards within 6 months. The service standards would be required to take into account certain factors. In other words, what we are talking about here is that before a rural post office can be shut down, certain standards are going to have to be addressed. They are:

A, a consideration of the reasonable maximum time a postal customer should expect to travel to access a postal retail location. In other words, if we shut down a post office and somebody has to go 20 miles and spend money on gasoline, and an enormous amount of time, it doesn't make sense to shut down that rural post office;

B, furthermore, we want to look at the age and disability status of individuals in the area. If there are elderly people, if there are a large number of disabled people and we shut down that postal service, those folks are going to be, for all intents and purposes, isolated. Don't shut down that postal service;

C, there would be a requirement that the Postal Service serve remote areas and communities which have transportation challenges. If I live in a community and I don't have a car, how do I get to a post office that is 5 miles away?

D, the effects of inclement weather or other natural conditions that might impede access to postal services. In other words, if people live in a climate where they have a whole lot of snow, how are they going to get to another post office?

I see the majority leader standing. Does the leader wish to address the Senate?

I will be another 5 or 10 minutes. I will yield to the majority leader.