Floor Statements

Mr. President, my impression is that the American people are angry. In my view, they have every right in the world to be angry because what we are seeing in our country today is the kind of economic suffering and pain that we have not seen in this country since the Great Depression.

Recently, last week, Ben Bernanke, who is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, said he thought it ``very likely that the recession had ended.''

I would suggest to Mr. Bernanke that before he makes statements like that, he might want to talk to the tens and tens of millions of people in this country who are suffering economically and who, in many respects, are not going to see a better day soon unless we as a Congress get our act together.

When you ask why the American people are angry, let me suggest to you why that is so. We went through 8 years which, in my view, were led by the worst administration in the modern history of the country. This is what happened during those 8 years before the financial crisis of last year. During the Bush-Cheney administration over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty; median household income declined by over $2,100; over 6.5 million Americans lost their health insurance; 5.4 million manufacturing jobs disappeared; and 4 million American workers lost their pensions. That is between 2000 and 2008.

Colleagues may have seen the other day in USA Today on their front pages unbelievable statistics which were geared toward age groups of young American workers seeing, during that 8-year period, huge declines in their median family income. That was before the financial crisis.

As we all know, about a year ago, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson came before the Congress and essentially said: I know that for 7 years we were telling you how robust and great the American economy was, but it seems we may have made a little bit of a mistake. If you don't give us $700 billion in the next few days, it appears that the entire world's financial system might collapse. It seems we may have made a mistake.

Thank God the financial system of the country and the world did not collapse. But on Wall Street, because of the greed, the irresponsibility, and the illegal actions of a handful of CEOs at the head of huge financial institutions, we have seen the most significant economic decline in this country since the 1930s. Since the beginning of the recession in December of 2007, 7.4 million Americans have lost their jobs. The official unemployment rate is 9.7 percent. Let me give a statistic which I think is enormously powerful and extremely frightening. If we count people who are officially declared as unemployed and if we add to that number those people who have given up looking for work, who are no longer counted as unemployed, and if we add to that number those people who want to work in full-time jobs but are now working part-time jobs, what we are looking at is 26 million Americans who are unemployed or underemployed. That is 17 percent of working-age Americans. As bad as the official statistic of 9.7 percent is, the reality is a lot worse than that. When we wonder why people are angry, I think when 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, when millions more have lost their homes, when they have lost their pensions, when they have lost their health insurance, those people have a right to be angry.

In my view, we have been far too easy in terms of our response to what the people on Wall Street have done. It is beyond my comprehension that we did not begin an investigation weeks or at least months after the financial meltdown and ask what the cause of that meltdown was, who was responsible, hold them accountable, and if they broke the law, they deserved to find out what the American penal system is all about.

What we have to do right now--and I know there is an investigation beginning--is a thorough investigation--it is already very late in the process, and we should have done it earlier--to start holding those people who have caused so much suffering accountable, to understand that they just can't get away with it. What amazes me is that we have a handful of people whose greed and recklessness have caused this crisis. And have you heard one of them come before the American people to say: I am sorry. My greed, my recklessness, my illegal behavior has caused so much suffering in this country and around the world. I want to apologize.

On the contrary, what I have heard is lobbyists all over this place and the financial institutions spending millions and millions of dollars trying to make sure we do nothing and that they are able to continue doing what they did, the same old ballgame which caused the crisis in the first place.

The first thing I think we need to do is a real investigation of this financial crisis. If there are CEOs, who made hundreds of millions of dollars, responsible for this disaster, this financial crisis, they have to be accountable. If they broke the law, they have to go to jail.

Second, in terms of real financial reform, I am more than aware that Congress passed legislation trying to bring more transparency and integrity to the credit card industry. All of us have received prospectuses from credit card companies telling us if we sign on the bottom line, we will have zero-interest-rate credit. They have sent out billions of these prospectuses every single year. Meanwhile, in tiny print on page 4, it appears they could raise their rates to any level they want for any reason. We have begun to deal with that, but we have not gone far enough.

When major financial institutions are charging the American people 29 percent interest rates on their credit cards, 30 percent interest rates in terms of payday lending, 40, 50 percent interest rates, we have to call it what it is. That is loan sharking. In the old days, a loan shark was somebody who lent you money and if you didn't pay it back on time, they broke your kneecaps. Now we have these guys on Wall Street who are doing exactly the same thing, and we call that providing credit. But it is not. It is loan sharking. It is usury. We need to bring back usury legislation, which we used to have but was done away with by a Supreme Court decision which allowed companies to go to States that don't have usury laws to be protected in terms of being able to charge high interest rates all over the country.

I have introduced legislation which imposes a maximum of 15 percent interest on credit cards. The reason I have done that is, in fact, credit unions for many decades now have been operating under that law. It is not the credit unions that are coming here for massive bailouts. It is our friends on Wall Street. I think if it has worked for the credit unions, it can work for private banks as well. We have passed credit card legislation which was a step forward, but I think we have to take another big step. We have to say that there has to be a maximum, a cap on interest rates. I believe an appropriate one is 15 percent.

Another issue we have to deal with is the phenomenon of too big to fail. The reason we provided hundreds of billions of dollars in a bailout to Wall Street is that the experts believed--the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the Fed--that if we allowed these huge financial institutions to fail, they would bring down the entire system. That was a year ago. Maybe you know more than I do, but I am not aware that we have taken any steps to begin breaking up these large financial institutions. If they were too big to fail a year ago, they are too big to fail right now.

What we have seen--and there have been a number of articles on this-- is that these huge financial institutions have become even larger. What sense is that? We have to begin to learn what Teddy Roosevelt did 100 years ago. We have to start breaking up these guys. Because if we don't, we will be back here again, except next time the bailout will be even larger, because the financial crisis will be that much more severe.

Furthermore, it goes without saying that for years Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin and all of those people who told us that the secret to financial success in America was to deregulate Wall Street, that what we really had to do

was to get the government off of the backs of all of these big Wall Street companies, we had to do away with Glass-Steagall legislation, we had to allow investment houses to merge with commercial banks, to merge with insurance companies--all of that was going to be wonderful in terms of creating wealth and prosperity for the American people.

Our friends on Wall Street spent billions of dollars on lobbying to get that through. I was one of those in the House vigorously opposed to that approach. Needless to say, it is time to rethink that and, in a sensible way, to start the reregulation of Wall Street.

The bottom line is, these people on Wall Street are by and large concerned about one thing, and that is making as much money as they possibly can for themselves. And they have done phenomenally well. Some years ago 25 percent of all profits in America went to Wall Street, which has relatively few people. Obviously, as I think everybody knows, you had hedge fund guys making a billion dollars a year, CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They have done very well. They don't care that manufacturing is disintegrating in America, that millions of workers have lost their jobs. They don't care that small businesses can't get credit. They don't care about trying to build a productive economy where working people are producing real products that people can consume. That is not where these guys are at. They are at it for short-term gains. If anybody believes otherwise, they don't understand history.

We have to set out a number of rules by which they have to play or else we are looking to bring back exactly what we just went through.

Another issue we have to deal with, as we get to financial reform, is the Fed. I am a member of the Budget Committee. Last year, when Mr. Bernanke came before the committee, I asked him very simply if he could tell me which financial institutions were the recipients of some $2 trillion in zero interest loans. During the financial crisis, Mr. Bernanke and the Fed provided $2 trillion to large financial institutions. I asked him a pretty simple question: Can you please tell me which financial institutions received that money? I don't think that is a terribly radical question, putting $2 trillion of taxpayer money at risk. And he said: No, I can't tell you.

On that particular day, I introduced legislation that would make him tell us. It is beyond comprehension that we are putting at risk trillions of dollars going to institutions, and we don't know who they are, what kind of conflicts of interest exist. We don't know what the terms of payment are. It is beyond comprehension.

On this issue, I must confess, I am working with somebody whose politics and ideology are very different than mine, my old friend Ron Paul, who is a very conservative Republican in the House. Ron and I worked on some issues when I was there. He and I are working together on two pieces of legislation on the Fed. But one of them is going to tell the Fed they can't give away trillions of dollars with the American people not knowing what it is. We need an order to the Fed. We need transparency in the Fed, and we need accountability in the Fed.

There is another issue we want to deal with, and that is oil speculation. I come from a cold weather State. Many people heat with oil. Obviously, all over the country people are filling up their gas tanks to get to work. We have reason to believe that one of the causes of the volatility in oil prices has to do with speculation coming from Wall Street where our friends there are investing in oil futures. We have to begin to control that speculation so that people are not paying outrageous prices, heating their homes in winter or filling up their gas tanks.

Lastly, the issue of Wall Street in one sense is not radically different from the issue of health care or many other important issues, the incredible power these special interests have. The banking and insurance industries have spent over $5 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying activities over the past decade in support of deregulation, and they are spending even more to try to prevent Congress from seriously regulating their industries. The American people want change. They want Congress to reform Wall Street. They want those people who caused this economic crisis to be held accountable. They want to make sure we prevent the country from ever going into a situation such as we were in last year. Whether we can do it remains to be seen, given the power of Wall Street and the incredible amounts of money they spend on campaign contributions and on lobbying.

Which brings me to the issue of campaign finance reform and my strong view that we need public funding of elections.

So, Mr. President, I just did want to say a word as to my perception of why the American people are angry, the fact that they have every reason in the world to be angry because in our great country what we are seeing, for the first time in our lifetimes, is the real likelihood that our kids will have a lower standard of living than our generation, and that is not something we should be happy about.

We have to ask the question why. We have to ask what policies contributed to that decline of the middle class, that increase in poverty. We have to ask why we are the only country in the world that does not have a national health care program guaranteeing health care to all people, why we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth, why we have the greatest gap between the rich and everybody else of any major country on Earth.

We have to ask those questions, and we need to stand up to powerful special interests in bringing about the kinds of reforms we need.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 279, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 304, 428, 430, 431, 432, 433, and 434; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that no further motions be in order; that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

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

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

Mr. President, I want to touch upon an issue I think has not gotten as much consideration in the Senate as it might; that is, for the first time since 1975, and in the midst of a major recession, senior citizens in our country who are on Social Security will not-- unless we act--be receiving a cost-of-living adjustment this year.

Let me repeat that. For the first time since 1975, and while we are in the midst of a major economic recession which is causing havoc with the lives of all of our people, including senior citizens, this year-- unless Congress acts--senior citizens will not be getting a cost-of- living adjustment.

Among other things, this would mean monthly Social Security payments would drop for millions of retirees because Medicare prescription drug premiums--the Medicare Part D Program--which are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to increase.

So what we are looking at is that not only will tens of millions of America's seniors not receive any increase in Social Security but many, in fact, will see a reduction because their Social Security checks will go to pay for an increase in Medicare Part D payments. I would suggest in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, we cannot allow that to happen.

Many senior citizens in this country have recently, within the last year or two, seen a significant decline in their savings because of the losses they incurred with the drop in the stock market. Many have seen their pensions disappear. Many have seen the value of their home dramatically diminish. All of this is taking place at a time while poverty among senior citizens is going up. And the number of seniors who are declaring bankruptcy is also increasing.

Most importantly, I think it is imperative that sooner than later we take a hard look to determine how COLAs for Social Security beneficiaries are, in fact, determined. Some years ago, when I was a Member of the House, I introduced legislation to establish a separate index for seniors because the simple reality is, it is wrong to include seniors in the overall index because their needs--how they spend their money--are often very different than how the rest of the population spends their money.

If you are a young person or a middle-aged person and you want to go out and buy a laptop computer today, for example, the odds are you are going to get a pretty good price on that computer, and the price of that computer will be substantially lower than it was a couple years ago. So for you, inflation for your expenditures on technology may well have gone down.

On the other hand, if you are a senior citizen, especially one who does not have a whole lot of money, how are you spending your money? Well, a very significant cost for seniors, obviously, is health care. For those needs Medicare does not cover, the truth is, health care costs, as we all know, are exploding. They are going up.

So if you are a senior, the odds are you are spending a lot more for health care out of your own pocket this year than you did last year. If you are a senior and you get caught in the doughnut hole of Medicare Part D, you are spending a lot of money because prescription drug costs, in many instances, are also going up.

So I think when we take a look at the COLA, we should understand the needs of somebody who is 75 or 80 years of age and how he or she spends their money, from an inflation perspective, is very different from somebody who is 18 years of age or maybe 40 years of age. But be that as it may, there can be no debate that millions of senior citizens today, in the midst of this recession, are hurting very badly. I think we would be doing a great disservice to them by turning our back on their needs and not making sure we are providing some financial support to them.

Therefore, I am asking my colleagues to join me in becoming an original cosponsor of the Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act, legislation I will be formally introducing on Thursday. Under this legislation, all Social Security recipients, railroad retirees, SSI beneficiaries, and adults receiving veterans benefits will receive a one-time additional check of $250 in 2010. Since seniors living on fixed incomes are most likely to spend this money--whether it is on health care, whether it is trying to keep warm this winter--this legislation would provide a boost to our economy as it emerges from the economic crisis.

I very much appreciate that my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, is an original cosponsor, and I hope within the next couple of days we can have more.

For more than three decades, seniors have relied on a cost-of-living adjustment in their Social Security benefits to keep up with their increased expenses. Unfortunately, the current formulation for determining Social Security COLAs, in my view, does not accurately take into account the purchasing needs of today's seniors who often do not buy items such as laptop computers and cellular phones but spend, as I mentioned a moment ago, a disproportionate percentage of their income on health care needs and prescription drugs.

The truth is, what we are proposing now is something very similar to what the Obama administration provided for in the stimulus package. This legislation we are offering is fully paid for by simply applying the Social Security payroll tax to household incomes above $250,000 and below $359,000 in 2010.

Under current law, only the first $106,000 of earned income is subject to the Social Security payroll tax, thus a worker earning $106,000 pays the same payroll tax as a CEO making $300 million. This legislation begins to correct this inequity in 2010, while making sure seniors receive a fair increase in benefits next year. I should point out, in terms of this offset, no one in America earning $250,000 or less would see their payroll taxes go up at all.

So I think this is an important issue. I think seniors all over this country are worried about their financial situation. They want the Congress to pay attention to their needs. I think the one-time financial support of a check of $250, while not a whole lot of money, would at least help many people not see a reduction in their Social Security checks and would be of real help.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to jump to the Democratic side for 5 minutes, if that is possible.

Madam President, I thank my Republican colleague.

I begin by congratulating my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, for the distinguished manner in which he has led these hearings.

I rise today in support of the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. As an assistant district attorney, a Federal district judge for the Southern District of New York, and a Federal circuit court judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated her eminent qualifications, impartial jurisprudence, and a faithful interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and this body has every reason to vote today in support of her nomination.

It is no secret that over the last 50 years, the Supreme Court has become a very conservative institution. We are long past the days when the Court respected and dutifully applied the full implications of the Bill of Rights and vigorously protected the freedoms provided us by the Founders of our country and the Framers of the Constitution. Recently, this rightwing drift has become worse, not better. The present Court has routinely favored corporate interests over the needs of working people and the interests of the wealthy and powerful against those of ordinary citizens.

My hope is that Judge Sotomayor will help bring balance to a Supreme Court that today is way out of balance and has moved very far to the right.

The Court recently gutted a key provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, allowing well-financed corporations to manipulate the legislative process under the guise of free speech--as if the Bill of Rights were written to grant giant corporations the same level of constitutional protection that it does flesh-and-blood American citizens. That is wrong, and that is unfortunate.

The Supreme Court recently made it easier for employers to avoid valid pay discrimination claims by their employees on procedural technicalities, a decision Congress had to rectify. And just this past term, the Court scaled back environmental protections, holding that the Clean Water Act permits a mining company to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater per day into an Alaskan lake.

I sincerely hope and I have every confidence that Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court will help curb this corporatist trend and put the Court back on the path of respecting the rights of individual Americans and the environmental and other laws passed by Congress. For that reason, I intend to vote for Judge Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Thermal Energy Efficiency Act, which I believe can play an important role in moving our Nation toward green job creation and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. I thank Senator Merkley for being an original cosponsor on this bill. I also thank the International District Energy Association, the Biomass Energy Resource Center, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Sustainable Northwest, and the U.S. Clean Heat and Power Association for working with us to ensure that as we consider comprehensive global warming legislation, we do not forget about energy efficiency and thermal energy.

This legislation addresses two ways of producing and distributing thermal energy, which is a technical term for heat. The legislation focuses on combined heat and power and district energy. Combined heat and power is simple to understand and has great capacity to transform our use of energy and increase large-scale efficiency. It is a fully developed technology, and there is nothing experimental about it. Combined heat and power means that one source of energy can produce electricity and then capture and use the resulting heat for a second purpose: heating homes, schools, offices, and factories. Combined heat and power gets both heat and power from one energy source and can work with fossil fuels or biomass or even waste. Combined heat and power can offer huge efficiency gains and lower carbon footprints for our powerplants.

District energy can be used together with combined heat and power, or separate from it, in systems designed purely for heating. What district energy does is use heat not just for one building or location but for multiple locations. Just as homes or businesses share electric lines or telephone lines, they can also share a heat source. And sharing a heat source can often be a major source of efficiency.

For too long, Federal energy policy has not focused enough on thermal energy or energy efficiency. We know we can do more. According to the Department of Energy, combined heat and power represents roughly 9 percent of our existing electric power capacity today, but if we moved to 20 percent by 2030, we could avoid 60 percent of the projected growth in carbon dioxide emissions in this country, equivalent to taking more than half of the current passenger vehicles off the road in the United States. Additionally, we could create 1 million new jobs and generate $234 billion in new investments.

We are talking about real technology that is deployable today. In Copenhagen, district energy provides clean heating to 97 percent of the city. In our own country, in St. Paul, MN, district energy and combined heat and power provide 65 megawatts of thermal energy and 25 megawatts of electricity from renewable urban wood waste. Jamestown, NY, started their district heating project in 1981, and today the system provides 16 megawatts of thermal energy heating. Jamestown's public school district uses district energy and has saved more than 16 percent of their energy use over a 30-month period and saved more than $500,000 dollars for taxpayers in the process.

We have opportunities to expand this technology all around our Nation. For example, in my home State of Vermont, several of our cities and towns are looking at district energy. In Burlington, VT, we have 50 megawatt powerplant that uses wood chips and wood waste for power. Yet approximately 60 percent of the energy produced by this plant is lost as wasted heat. This is typical of many conventional power plants. If Burlington implemented a district energy system it could use the wasted thermal energy to heat and cool many buildings downtown. The hurdle for Burlington, and many cities and towns, is the upfront capital investment required to build a district energy system.

That is why today I am introducing the Thermal Energy Efficiency Act. We need a stable, long-term funding source for district energy and combined heat and power. This bill would use 2 percent of the revenues derived from auctioning emissions permits under global warming legislation to support hospitals, cities and towns, schools and universities, businesses and industries, and even Federal facilities and military bases as they implement efficient thermal energy systems.

This bill would recognize the important role that efficiency and thermal energy can play in helping our Nation meet our energy security, emissions reduction, and economic goals. As a member of both the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that combined heat and power and district energy are included in comprehensive energy and global warming legislation.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Thermal Energy Efficiency Act, which I believe can play an important role in moving our Nation toward green job creation and greenhouse gas emissions reductions. I thank Senator Merkley for being an original cosponsor on this bill. I also thank the International District Energy Association, the Biomass Energy Resource Center, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Sustainable Northwest, and the U.S. Clean Heat and Power Association for working with us to ensure that as we consider comprehensive global warming legislation, we do not forget about energy efficiency and thermal energy.

This legislation addresses two ways of producing and distributing thermal energy, which is a technical term for heat. The legislation focuses on combined heat and power and district energy. Combined heat and power is simple to understand and has great capacity to transform our use of energy and increase large-scale efficiency. It is a fully developed technology, and there is nothing experimental about it. Combined heat and power means that one source of energy can produce electricity and then capture and use the resulting heat for a second purpose: heating homes, schools, offices, and factories. Combined heat and power gets both heat and power from one energy source and can work with fossil fuels or biomass or even waste. Combined heat and power can offer huge efficiency gains and lower carbon footprints for our powerplants.

District energy can be used together with combined heat and power, or separate from it, in systems designed purely for heating. What district energy does is use heat not just for one building or location but for multiple locations. Just as homes or businesses share electric lines or telephone lines, they can also share a heat source. And sharing a heat source can often be a major source of efficiency.

For too long, Federal energy policy has not focused enough on thermal energy or energy efficiency. We know we can do more. According to the Department of Energy, combined heat and power represents roughly 9 percent of our existing electric power capacity today, but if we moved to 20 percent by 2030, we could avoid 60 percent of the projected growth in carbon dioxide emissions in this country, equivalent to taking more than half of the current passenger vehicles off the road in the United States. Additionally, we could create 1 million new jobs and generate $234 billion in new investments.

We are talking about real technology that is deployable today. In Copenhagen, district energy provides clean heating to 97 percent of the city. In our own country, in St. Paul, MN, district energy and combined heat and power provide 65 megawatts of thermal energy and 25 megawatts of electricity from renewable urban wood waste. Jamestown, NY, started their district heating project in 1981, and today the system provides 16 megawatts of thermal energy heating. Jamestown's public school district uses district energy and has saved more than 16 percent of their energy use over a 30-month period and saved more than $500,000 dollars for taxpayers in the process.

We have opportunities to expand this technology all around our Nation. For example, in my home State of Vermont, several of our cities and towns are looking at district energy. In Burlington, VT, we have 50 megawatt powerplant that uses wood chips and wood waste for power. Yet approximately 60 percent of the energy produced by this plant is lost as wasted heat. This is typical of many conventional power plants. If Burlington implemented a district energy system it could use the wasted thermal energy to heat and cool many buildings downtown. The hurdle for Burlington, and many cities and towns, is the upfront capital investment required to build a district energy system.

That is why today I am introducing the Thermal Energy Efficiency Act. We need a stable, long-term funding source for district energy and combined heat and power. This bill would use 2 percent of the revenues derived from auctioning emissions permits under global warming legislation to support hospitals, cities and towns, schools and universities, businesses and industries, and even Federal facilities and military bases as they implement efficient thermal energy systems.

This bill would recognize the important role that efficiency and thermal energy can play in helping our Nation meet our energy security, emissions reduction, and economic goals. As a member of both the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that combined heat and power and district energy are included in comprehensive energy and global warming legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate to conduct a hearing on Thursday, August 6, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 10 a.m. in Dirksen room 406 to hold a hearing entitled, ``Climate Change and Ensuring that America Leads the Clean Energy Transformation.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on August 6, 2009, at 10 a.m. in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on August 6, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to continue the executive business meeting from July 30, 2009.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 6, 2009, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``The U.S. Postal Service in Crisis.''

Madam President, I thank the Senator and applaud his strong efforts in fighting for health care for all Americans. I want to take a few minutes right now to touch on an issue that in fact has not gotten a lot of discussion here in Congress and that is that family- based dairy agriculture is on the verge of collapse. This is not a regional issue, this is a national issue. From the east coast to the west coast, what we are seeing is prices plummeting for dairy farmers way below the cost of production. If Congress does not act, all over America rural communities are going to be suffering economically. People are going to be losing their jobs. The American people increasingly will not be able to obtain fresh locally produced food.

As we talk about stimulus, as we talk about trying to revive this economy, let's remember rural America and let's remember the dairy farmers throughout this country who are producing an important part of the food we consume. At this moment, dairy farmers across the country are suffering from the lowest milk prices in four decades. Let me repeat that. Dairy farmers across the country are suffering from the lowest milk prices in four decades.

In the last year, the price farmers receive for their milk has plummeted 41 percent, to $11.30 per hundredweight. To understand how low $11.30 per hundredweight is, you must understand it takes $17 or $18 to produce a hundredweight of milk. In other words, for every cow that is milked, the farmer is losing a substantial amount of money.

As a result of these low prices, many family farms have gone out of business and, if we do not act immediately, you are going to see many more, from one end of this country to the other, close up. I can tell you in the State of Vermont there was a lot of publicity surrounding a farm in the southern part of our State that had been in one family since the Revolutionary War--since the Revolutionary War. But because of these horrendously low milk prices, that farm has gone up for sale.

This is not just an issue for dairy farmers. This is not just an issue for rural communities. This is an issue for every American who wants to gain access to good quality, locally produced food.

All over this country people are saying no, I don't want my food coming in from China, I don't want my food coming in from places all over the world. I want to see the quality food that is produced in my area, in my State, in my region. If we do not act to protect family- based dairy agriculture, we are going to increasingly lose that opportunity.

Let me underline this. I know the people familiar with dairy always say these are great regional fights, the Northeast is fighting the Midwest is fighting the Southeast is fighting the west coast, and every region has its own set of priorities.

This is not a regional issue, this is a national issue. Let me talk a little bit about what is happening, briefly, in various regions around the country. California Farmers Union President Joaquin Contente spoke about the situation in his State of California. He testified:

In my lifelong history as a dairy farmer, I have never seen

prices this far below our cost for this long and I have never

seen so many dairy producers so desperate for relief. In my

county alone--

This is in California, not Vermont.

In my county alone, 25 dairies have either filed or are in

the process of filing for bankruptcy and many more are closer

to bankruptcy each day.

Joaquin Contente, California Farmers Union president.

Let me talk about Texas, the Southwest. The executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen spoke about the situation in his State of Texas. He said:

This is the worst situation I have seen since 1970. Some

say it is the worst since the depression.

That is the State of Texas. Let me talk about the Midwest, Wisconsin. A Stanley, WI dairy farmer stated:

In my area, farmers are burning up their equity accumulated

over their lifetimes. One farmer in my area had to cash out

his wife's IRA just to get crops planted this spring. My

parish priest in my small town has had to counsel one or more

dairy farmers a week to prevent their suicides. And we know

of reports across the country of farm suicides that have

already occurred.

These are just a few examples from California and Texas. I can go on and on about what is going on in California and the Northeast.

Last week, after Congress's strong urging, Secretary Vilsack announced that the government would spend $243 million to raise price supports for dairy farmers, and we very much appreciate the Secretary and the Obama administration's quick response to our needs. That support is important. It is likely to raise milk price supports by about $1.25 per hundredweight, but that is nowhere near enough of what we need when in fact cost of production is $17 or $18 per hundredweight.

This afternoon I will be offering legislation cosponsored by you, Senator Gillibrand, cosponsored by Senator Schumer, Senator Tom Udall, Senator Specter, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, among others. This amendment will go a long way to help farmers over the short-term crisis.

Long term, obviously we need to do some fundamental rethinking about dairy agriculture, how you bring long-term stability to the dairy industry and end that volatility that has been rampant in that industry for so many years. There are so many ideas out there about how we bring long-term stability for dairy farmers in this country. This is short- term relief to make sure farmers all over this country do not go out of business. What this amendment would do is provide the Secretary of Agriculture with $350 million in additional funding for milk price supports. That would, again, bring the price up about another $1.50 per hundredweight. This short-term help could mean the difference between economic viability or financial disaster for dairy farmers from one end of this country to the other.

Once again, all of us are focused on how we get out of this deep recession. All of us are focused on how we create decent-paying jobs. I urge my colleagues, do not forget about rural America. Rural America, whether it is Vermont, Wisconsin, California, Colorado--rural America is hurting. They need help as well.

Later on this afternoon I will be bringing forth this very important amendment to provide some economic support for rural America and hope to have the support of all my colleagues.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following postal naming bills en bloc: Calendar Nos. 133 through 144: S. 748, S. 1211, S. 1314,

I ask unanimous consent the bills be read a third time and passed en bloc, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table en bloc, and any statements be printed in the Record.

I yield to the chairman, Senator Kohl.

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

Mr. President, I will take a few minutes while we are waiting until procedures get lined up to say a few words about an amendment I am offering which is going to come up for a vote fairly soon. This is an amendment which addresses the crisis in dairy all over this country. It is an amendment that is supported by Senator Snowe, Senator Udall of New Mexico, Senator Schumer, Senator Bennet of Colorado, Senator Specter, Senator McCaskill, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Casey. As you will note, these are people from all over the country. What we are not talking about here is a regional issue, we are talking about a national issue.

I want to pick up on a point for a moment that Senator McCaskill made earlier this morning. I think it is important. All of us know that today our country is in a major economic crisis, the deepest recession since the Great Depression. But sometimes what media does, and maybe what we do here in Congress, is focus on that crisis in the areas where there is, if you like, concentrated misery, such as Detroit, which has undergone terrible problems, thousands of people on a given day have lost their jobs, and sometimes, in the midst of the economic crisis facing our country, we forget what is happening in rural areas, in small towns all over this country. Sometimes when farms go out of business, farms that have been owned by a family for generations, when rural communities go into, literally, an economic depression, we don't pay quite as much attention

to that. It is not on the front pages of the New York Times. The fact is, right now rural America is in the midst of a very serious economic crisis. Unemployment is extremely high.

One of the particular areas where we are seeing not just a deep recession but, in fact, a depression is within the dairy industry. In the last year, if you can believe it, the price dairy farmers--many of them small, family-based dairy farmers--have received for their milk has plummeted by 41 percent. In the last year, it has gone down by 41 percent. The reality of what that means is that farmers today, for every gallon of milk they are producing, are losing money. It is not that they are making a little bit, they are losing money. What we are seeing, not just in the Northeast, not just in the Midwest, not just in the Southeast, not just in the West, but all over this country, are family farmers going out of business, plunging their rural economies and their communities into depression-type economics.

Let me quote, if I might, from people from different parts of the country.

A Minnesota dairy farmer writes:

This situation is unlike any experienced in the past and

the width and depth cannot continue to be ignored. It has not

discriminated based on herd size or geographic location.

Dairy farmers of all sizes and across all regions of the

country are enduring an unprecedented disaster.

That is from Minnesota.

The President of the California Farmers Union--when we talk about dairy, sometimes California is in another world from the rest of the country because their herds are much larger.

By the way, I should say the National Farmers Union is supporting this amendment, and 11 agricultural commissioners and secretaries from States are supporting this amendment as well, as is the DFA, the Dairy Farmers of America, which is the largest dairy farm cooperative in America.

This is what the fellow who is the head of the California Farmer's Union says. His name is Joaquin Contente. He testified:

[I]n my lifetime history as a dairy farmer, I have never

seen our prices remain this far below our costs this long and

I have never seen so many dairy producers so desperate for

relief. In my county alone 25 dairies have either filed or

are in the process of filing for bankruptcy and many more are

closer to bankruptcy each day.

From Texas, the executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen said:

This is the worst situation I have seen since 1970. Some

say it is the worst since the Depression.

From Wisconsin, a dairy farmer states:

In my area farmers are burning up the equity accumulated

over their lifetimes. One farmer in my area had to cash out

his wife's IRA just to get his crops planted this spring. My

parish priest in my small town has had to counsel one or more

dairy farmers a week to prevent their suicides.

Those are just a few examples from Wisconsin, California, and Texas. Trust me, I could tell you many similar stories from the State of Vermont.

Once again, as we attempt to revitalize our economy, let's not forget about rural America. Let's not forget about dairy farmers. Let's support this legislation which will provide $350 million to increase dairy support prices. I look forward to the support of my colleagues.

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

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive the applicable sections of this act for purposes of the pending amendment.

This amendment is supported by a number of Senators, not just from the east coast or Midwest or Southwest or the West but from all over the country--among others, Senators Snowe, Udall of New Mexico, Schumer, Bennett, Collins, Franken, Casey, Udall of Colorado, Specter, McCaskill, Gillibrand, Klobuchar, and Shaheen.

We are united from every section of the country to make the point that when we talk about the deep recession we are facing, this is a recession that is impacting rural America very severely, and we cannot forget about rural America.

Right now, at this moment, dairy farmers across the country are suffering from the lowest milk prices in four decades. In the last year, the price farmers received for milk has plummeted 41 percent. I ask for support on the amendment.

Madam President, I seek unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so that I may call up my amendments Nos. 2276 and 2271.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Dodd for his kind words and extraordinary efforts over the last several months to lead the fight in health care reform.

Let me pick up on one issue Senator Dodd raised. Most Americans do not understand this, but in the midst of a disintegrated health care system, we have 60 million Americans who do not on a regular basis have access to a physician--60 million. What happens when those people get sick? If you are in Vermont and you are kind of stubborn, you delay going to the doctor when you should go, and you wait and you wait. And 6 months after you first were feeling badly, you go crawling into the doctor's office, and the doctor says: Why weren't you in here 6 months ago?

And the person says: Well, I felt awkward. I didn't have any health insurance. I was embarrassed.

The doctor says: I am getting you to the hospital because you are really sick.

So instead of treating people when they are initially ill, what we end up doing for people who do not have access to a doctor on a regular basis or do not have any health insurance is we wait until they become very ill and then we send them to the hospital and spend tens of thousands of dollars, in some instances, when we could have treated them with much less suffering and at much less cost.

There is another point that is not widely known, and that is, according to the Institute of Medicine, in this country today, we lose about 18,000 Americans every single year who die because they do not go to a doctor when they should go to the doctor. That is six times the number of people who were killed on 9/11 every single year.

What Senator Dodd is talking about and what many of us have worked on is significantly expanding the federally qualified health center program, started by Senator Kennedy four decades ago, widely supported in a bipartisan manner.

What studies tell us is, if, in fact, we can do what is in this legislation and provide a community health center with physicians, with dentists, with low-cost prescription drugs, with mental health counseling, do you know what we would end up doing, amazingly enough? We save money. We save money. We invest over a 5-year period about $8 billion, and we end up saving money because we keep people out of the emergency rooms, we keep people out of hospitals, we keep people alive. If that is not a good investment, I don't know what is.

So the fight to make sure that every American has access to a doctor, to a dentist, to low-cost prescription drugs is certainly, in my mind, one of the crowning achievements of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee piece of health care reform.

A month ago, I asked people on my e-mail list, which is not only Vermont, but all across the country, to write to me and tell me their relationship, how they are dealing with private health insurance companies. Within a week, we had over 4,000 responses. The booklet is available on my Web site, sanders.senate.gov. I urge people to take a look at it. If you want to know what is wrong with health care in America, this booklet will tell you.

People are writing from their hearts, from their own suffering, describing the health care crisis. I want to read and comment on a few of the statements sent to my office. This is from a fellow in Swanton, VT, a small town in the northern part of Vermont:

My younger brother, a combat decorated veteran of the

Vietnam conflict, died three weeks after being diagnosed with

colon cancer. He was laid off from his job and could not

afford COBRA coverage. When he was in enough pain to see a

doctor, it was too late. He left a wife and two teenage sons

in the prime of his life at 50 years old. The attending

doctor said that if he had only sought treatment earlier, he

would still be alive.

People talk about waiting lines in Canada or in Great Britain. Let's talk about over 18,000 Americans dying every year because either they do not have any health insurance or, if they do, they cannot get access to a doctor.

When we talk about the health care crisis in America, it is not just the pain that millions of Americans are experiencing, the fear, or the tens of millions of people who stay at their job today. Do you know why they are staying at their job? Not because they particularly want to stay at their job, but because they have good health insurance and their wife has an illness that needs to be covered. Talk about economic nonsense, absurdity--millions of people staying at work because they do not want to give up their health insurance. What President Obama says, because of the economic crisis, we have to address health care, is absolutely right.

Some of our friends on the other side say what they have always said: Let's do nothing. You want to do nothing? Within 10 years, the amount of money you are paying for health care today will double. If you are a small business person today in Vermont or around the country and having a hard time providing health care to your workers or maybe your family, think about what happens when the cost of health care doubles. Think about large corporations that have to compete with European, Scandinavian countries, and companies where health care becomes a right of all people and not something placed on the employer.

In this year, amazingly enough, when we talk about health care and economics--and Senator Whitehouse was alluding to this a moment ago-- there are 1 million people this year, it is estimated, who will go bankrupt because of medically related illnesses. Most of those people have health insurance--1 million Americans. And our friends say: We can't go forward; now is not the time to go forward on health care reform. Tell that to 1 million American families who have suffered bankruptcy.

In my view, the evidence is overwhelming that our current system is extraordinarily wasteful and bureaucratic; that in a very significant way,

the function of our current health care system is not to provide quality health care to every man, woman, and child, but, in fact, to allow people within the industry--the private insurance companies, the drug companies, the medical device suppliers--to make as much money as they possibly can.

Amazingly enough, according to the papers in the last few days, the health care industry has spent over $130 million in the last quarter on lobbying. There are 100 Members in the Senate and 435 Members of the House--to spend $130 million?

Where do they get that money? They get that money, if they are a drug company, by charging the American people the highest prices in the entire world. I was the first Member of Congress to take Americans over the Canadian border a number of years ago where women with breast cancer who were fighting for their lives were able to pick up breast cancer medicine at one-tenth the price. The drug companies cannot lower prices in this country--they have to charge us the highest prices in the world--but somehow they do manage to come up with tens and tens of millions of dollars to try to buy Members of the Congress.

While more and more people are losing their health insurance, we are seeing many of these private insurance companies seeing huge increases in their profits. We are seeing the insurance companies, the drug companies paying, in some cases, tens of millions of dollars in compensation packages to their CEOs.

For anybody to suggest that this country does not need health care reform is simply not to understand what is going on from one end of this country to the other. We are a great nation. There is no reason in the world why we should end up spending almost twice as much per person on health care as any other nation and yet have inferior health care outcomes in terms of infant mortality, in terms of life expectancy, in terms of preventable deaths.

We can do better. And right now, despite all of the lobbying money coming in from the health care industry, the moral imperative is for Members of Congress to think about the folks back home, the people who have no health insurance, the people who are underinsured, the people who are going bankrupt, the people who are staying at their work, not because they want to but because they have a decent health insurance program or the small business people who cannot invest in their company because they are busy spending all of their money on health care. We can do better than that. We must do better than that. Now is the time.

I hope the American people work with us in standing up to very powerful special interests and moving us toward real health care reform.

I yield the floor.

I thank my colleague very much.