Floor Statements

Mr. President, would the Senator yield for a question?

I want to talk about jobs today, but the Senator piqued my interest by talking about too big to fail. Some believe--and I am one of those who believe--that too big to fail means you are too big. As you know, in Great Britain this week they decided to begin taking apart institutions that are too big to fail. And I know there are other approaches here in trying to deal with systemic risk and a variety of approaches to try to address the issue, but has the Senator had thoughts about whether too big to fail is just flatout too big?

The Senator from Virginia is very thoughtful on these issues. I know the workshops he has been putting on are very helpful. As we try to work through these with respect to resolution and other authorities, it is very important for us to try to use the best ideas that exist in this Chamber to put together an approach that would prevent ever again what happened last year and the year before.

So I have some thoughts about the use of the Fed with respect to systemic risk and other things, and I will speak about them later. But my interest was piqued by the Senator's discussion on the floor because I think this is very important. If we don't find ways to put the foundation back under this economic system of ours, people aren't going to have confidence going forward. Part of financial reform is to establish that confidence, and I think the work the Senator from Virginia has been doing is extraordinary work.

My hope is that at the end stage we can probably come closer to the side of, if you are too big to fail, you are probably too big, because too big to fail is almost, by definition, no-fault capitalism. But between here and there, there are a lot of interesting and useful ideas that are being developed, and the Senator from Virginia is in the middle of them, and I appreciate his work.

Mr. President, I would like to comment this morning about the information that was released this morning on unemployment. The unemployment level has now gone to 10.2 percent. That is an antiseptic number. It doesn't mean so much as a number, but it sure means a whole lot to the folks who have lost their jobs.

We are now at a point where we have had a massive number of job losses since this economic decline began. This is the steepest economic decline since the Great Depression.

In the same couple of weeks where we have learned that the economy has once again begun to grow--that is good news--we also know that people are still losing their jobs, and that is bad news. An economic recovery that is a jobless recovery, in my judgment, is not a real economic recovery.

We are working on a lot of things here in the Senate, all very important--health care, climate change--but in my judgment, the most important thing for this Congress and this government to do is to try to restart this economic engine in a way that creates real jobs, puts our economy back on track, produces real, significant jobs that pay well, and that puts the American people to work in order to make a living and to care for their families. When that happens, we will have achieved something significant.

Let me say quickly, as I have said before, this President has been in office less than 10 months. He inherited an unbelievable economic mess--the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. So I understand that. I

know he understood this was not an optimal time, perhaps, to assume the reins, but he understands and we understand that we have to do everything we can to get this economy started once again.

To hear a report on a Friday that we are at 10.2 percent unemployment--that is tough news, and we have a lot to do here in the Congress and in our government to try to find a way to put this back on track. There is some evidence that maybe this is beginning, but, again, a jobless economic recovery is not a real economic recovery. We need to focus like a laser on the question of how do you create new jobs in this country.

Clearly, small-to-medium-sized businesses are the job generators in this country, and we need to find ways and we need to focus all our attention to finding ways to incentivize the creation of jobs once again in the private sector. I think public policies that can incentivize the creation of those jobs is what is expected of us. There is a lot of urgency for a lot of things. In my judgment, the most significant urgent priority at the moment is the focus on jobs and getting people back to work.

I am going to have a meeting next Tuesday morning with a good many of my colleagues to talk about putting together the set of policies on an urgent basis that will try to push that result. We just cannot decide that, well, this is the long tail of a serious long-term economic downturn that has now reached bottom and is now coming back up with an economic growth of, I believe 3.6 percent this quarter. We cannot believe that somehow that is going to do the job because growth without jobs is not real economic recovery. So we have a lot of work to do.

While saying what I have just said, we also have two different economies working in this country. A lot of folks lost their jobs last month, last year, and the last few years--somewhere over 7.6 million Americans--and they had to tell their loved ones that they weren't employed anymore, that their jobs were gone, not because they were bad workers, not because they did a bad job, but because of cutbacks, because of this steep economic decline. And now we see day after day that there is another economy working out there.

I just brought a few of these to the floor of the Senate to describe the difficulty of people who are looking for work, who lost their jobs last month. When they read these papers, it explains the difficulty they see in this, and probably the anger--more likely the anger.

October 17: The headline from the New York Times reads ``Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth.'' Quoting from the article:

Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making

fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather

than in the ho-hum business of lending people money. They are

also profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable

or unwilling to shoulder--a benefit of less competition after

the failure of some investment firms last year.

October 26, Bloomberg. Quoting from this article:

Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. paid top

executives an average of $18.2 million each last year as the

banks accepted a total of $90 billion in taxpayer funds to

survive the financial crisis. Citigroup . . . paid $390

million to 21 people, an average of $18.6 million each . . .

Bank of America paid $227.8 million to 13 executives, or

$17.5 million apiece.

Again, these payments in some cases are from companies that might not have been around were it not for the Federal Government providing some funds for them. These are payments and bonuses that are unbelievable. And we are told now that in the next 30 days or so Wall Street is going to pay itself somewhere around $140 billion in bonuses.

Let me just describe again what was done in the last year and a half for some of the biggest financial firms in this country that steered this country's economy into the ditch. So far, it has been between $12 billion and $15--excuse me, trillion. It is hard to get the b's and t's straight. Between $12 trillion and $15 trillion has been lent, spent, committed, pledged, subsidized, or guaranteed. Let me say that again. Somewhere between $12 trillion and $15 trillion of the taxpayers' money, through the Congress--mostly through the Federal Reserve Board and other devices--has been lent, spent, committed, pledged, subsidized, or guaranteed. And because of that, presumably, some of these firms that are now paying these bonuses are firms that would otherwise not have been around. But for those taxpayer funds, they wouldn't have been around.

So what we are doing is picking up the paper every single day and seeing articles such as this: October 20, the New York Times, Bob Herbert writes:

The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corners, said:

``U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since '45.''

The headline next to it said: ``Bailout Helps Revive Banks,

And Bonuses.''

And this is Allan Sloan, September 8:

A Year After Lehman, Wall Street's Acting Like Wall Street

Again. It's been 12 months since Lehman Brothers failed,

setting off a chain reaction that came horrifyingly close to

destroying the world's financial system. That anniversary

makes this a convenient time to take a deep breath, look back

. . . and see what we can learn from the past turbulent year

. . . What are the lessons? How has Wall Street changed since

Lehman went broke last September 15?

That is a year ago. The fact is, Wall Street is back doing the same things they did prior to the collapse.

Here is another article:

What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses. Despite

crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the

passing of some of the most prominent names and businesses,

employees at financial companies in New York, the now

diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated

$178.4 billion in bonuses for the year.

And they are speaking of the year 2008.

Continuing with this article:

That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a

report by the New York State comptroller.

Again, that was in the New York Times.

Here is one from the Washington Post dated July 30, 2009. The headline read: ``Report Outlines Big Bonuses at Rescued Banks.'' Quoting from the article:

Two firms, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, suffered losses of

more than $27 billion each but paid out $5.3 billion and $3.6

billion in bonuses, respectively, the report noted. At

Citigroup, 738 employees got bonuses of at least $1 million,

the report said, while 11 executives received a combined $77

million in cash, deferred cash and stock awards.

The point is, we have a couple of different economies working here. We have an economy in which we read of some companies making very large profits and paying very large bonuses--and some of them, by the way, wouldn't exist were it not for the American taxpayer backstopping the reckless behavior and the losses they incurred as they steered this economy into the ditch; then, today, 10.2 percent unemployment at the same time we see the economy, we are told, is growing at a 3.6-percent rate in the third quarter.

The point I want to make this morning is simple. The American people will not stand long for two economies. The fact is, 10.2 percent unemployment is not acceptable, not acceptable to anybody. Those who are losing their jobs and losing hope and losing their homes, in some cases, should expect that the urgent priority, among all of us in government, is to decide that jobs are No. 1. Restarting this economic engine, putting this economy back on track, and putting people back to work has to be the urgent priority of this Congress. I hope the work I and others can do will make some small contribution to that in the coming days.

I think the American people, if you look at the history of this country, have always been a resilient bunch. We have been through tough times and been through good times. But it is time now, as I said the other day, for us to stop thinking of ourselves as two different teams in places like the Senate. There ought to be only one team that works together to find ways to put people back to work in this country and get this country's economy started again.

If you take a look over the economic history of this country and see what made America great, it is lifting people out of poverty, putting people to work, on payrolls, making a good wage to be able to take care of their families. That expansion of the middle class is what has made this country great. It is not the capability of the people at the very top to make even more and to pay even bigger bonuses, it is the expansion of the middle class that has made this country a great country, and what we

have seen now is a shrinking of the middle class. We have seen more unemployment in what used to be the middle class. Day after day, even as people are losing their jobs in this country, we still see companies shipping American jobs overseas and getting a tax break for doing it.

We have a lot of things on our plate to do to try to fix what is wrong. I am convinced we can. I have an effervescent spirit of hope that we can do these things, but we have to start now. Of those this morning who read in the paper that the unemployment rate is 10.2 percent, those who have lost their jobs fully understand what that number means. I hope all of us in this Chamber do as well. It requires from us an urgent priority to get to work and fix this problem.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that LTC Joseph J. Martin, a U.S. Army Special Forces officer currently serving as Senator Reid's military legislative fellow this year, be granted floor privileges for the duration of H.R. 3082, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2010.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of S. Res. 343, 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 without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 344, which was submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider en bloc Calendar Nos. 480 and 522; that the nominations be confirmed, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that no further motions be in order; that any statements be printed in the Record; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding an adjournment of the Senate, the Record remain open today until 1:30 p.m. for the submission of legislation, statements, and cosponsorships.

I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m. Monday, November 9; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period of morning business until 3 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak up to 10 minutes each; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 3082, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations.

Under a previous order, at 4:30 p.m. Monday the Senate will debate the nomination of Andre Davis to be U.S. Circuit judge for the Fourth Circuit. At 5:30 p.m. the Senate will proceed to vote on the confirmation of the nomination. We could also have a vote on an amendment to the Military Construction bill following the 5:30 vote.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. President, on October 30, 2009, President Obama issued a proclamation designating November 2009 as National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. This President follows a tradition of Presidents since 1990 of issuing proclamations honoring the significant contributions of tribal governments and individual Native Americans to our Nation's history and development.

Congress also has traditionally recognized the contributions of Native Americans to the United States in the form of resolutions, findings, coins and medals. The resolution introduced here today continues in that tradition.

This resolution recognizes some of the many contributions that Native Americans have made to help build our great Nation as well as the continued contributions of Native Americans to the growth of the United States. Native Americans have made significant contributions in the fields of agriculture, medicine, music, language, and art. They were an influencing force in the founding documents of our Federal Government. Indian tribes have even made use of Native languages to develop an unbreakable military code that helped defeat the Axis powers in World War II. These remarkable tribes and individual Native Americans have shaped our Nation's history in so many very meaningful ways.

Through this resolution, we recognize and celebrate these and many other contributions of tribal governments and Native Americans during the month of November. It is particularly important that President Obama has decided to host a Tribal Leaders Summit at the White House. The President will meet with tribal leaders in Washington, DC, November 5, 2009, to discuss the many issues facing tribal communities throughout the Nation.

We have several very important pieces of legislation before this body that I hope to move in the interest of the First Americans. S. 1790, the Indian Health Care Improvement Reauthorization and Extension Act of 2009, was introduced on October 15, 2009, after much consultation and discussion among tribal leaders and Indian health experts. I will work very hard this Congress to get this important piece of legislation to the President's desk. In addition, after many, many hearings and numerous listening sessions, I introduced S. 797, the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2009, earlier this year. This important piece of legislation has strong bipartisan support and will help to improve the status of law and order on tribal lands. The bill has been approved by the Indian Affairs Committee and is waiting for approval by the full Senate.

I urge all citizens, and local, State, and Federal governments and agencies to take time this month to learn more about the many facets of Native American history, traditions, and their important contributions to the formation of the United States. Mr. President, I ask that this resolution be adopted quickly and that it act as encouragement to all people of the United States to observe the month of November as National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month.

Mr. President, a couple weeks ago, I was on an airplane. The passenger sitting next to me had on a pair of sweatpants and looked pretty relaxed. I asked him where he was going. He said: I am dressed this way because I am going to Thailand, then going to Singapore, and then going to China. He said: I have a 24-hour flight ahead of me so I dressed pretty casually. I said: What are you going to do in Thailand, Singapore, and China? He said: I work for a company, and we have a lot of smaller companies that provide parts to us. We want those smaller companies to move those parts jobs to Thailand and Singapore and China so it costs us less to purchase parts. I am going to these three countries in order to see if we can offshore these jobs from companies we purchase from.

I was thinking about that as I sat there talking to him. I was thinking, there are likely hundreds of employees someplace going to work today not knowing he is on an airplane going over to Asia to see if he can get rid of their jobs and move them to Asia so they can pay just a fraction of the price.

So it goes, day after day after day. It happened to be someone I sat next to on an airplane. This is about jobs then. It is about American jobs. I am thinking, as we are talking, we have lost 7.6 million jobs since the recession began; 7.6 million people had to come home and tell their family: I have lost my job, not because I am a bad worker, I lost my job because they are cutting back. Most of that is because of the recession. But going into the recession and even now coming out of the recession, when we still have most of those folks looking for work, we still have people getting on airplanes, finding ways to move American jobs overseas.

When you think about where we are and what our agenda needs to be in the Congress and in the country, jobs have to be right at the top. How do you put people back to work? How do you get the economic engine started? How do you stop the hemorrhaging of jobs to China, where you can find somebody to work for 50 cents an hour, working 12 or 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. The agenda has to have jobs and economic recovery right at the top, putting people back to work, getting the economic engine started.

Our agenda, of course, includes health care and climate change. I am the first to attest to the importance of both. Health care is a very important subject. The relentless climb of increasing costs year after year after year means families take a look at their bill and wonder: How on Earth can I pay the bill--it is 10, 12, 14 percent higher than last year--in order to provide insurance for my family? I can't drop the insurance. Yet I can't afford to pay for it either. Businesses-- small, medium, and large--are trying to figure out how to pay the increased cost. That is certainly important.

Climate change and global warming are both important, no question about that. We are going to have a lower carbon future, and we need to find ways to address it.

But the most important agenda, while standing in a very deep economic hole, the deepest hole since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the most important part of that agenda is trying to put people back to work, restarting the economic engine and putting people back to work with good jobs that pay well. That is what makes everything else possible. It is the menu and the success that has lifted so many people out of poverty, expanded the middle class in a manner that almost no one else was able to do. It is the way we succeed in this country, economic expansion and opportunity for the American worker.

While I think health care and climate change are important, my agenda is to put jobs right at the top, to try to understand we are in the deepest recession--or have been--since the Great Depression. The third quarter numbers of this year suggest there has been economic growth. But economic growth of GDP does not relate to people going back onto payrolls. For example, 263,000 people lost their jobs last month. That relates to the 7.6 million people total who have lost their jobs since the recession began.

The first priority is to start the economic engine, do the things that put together the policies that begin to start this big American economic engine again, get the economy back on track and create those jobs again.

I have indicated often that I taught a bit of economics in college. When I would teach the supply-and-demand curve and all the other things one teaches in economics, I used to say, by far, much more important than anything else in this book is to understand the American economy expands as a result of confidence. When people are confident about the future and they feel that confidence, they do the things that manifest confidence. They buy a suit, a car, a house. They take a trip. In other words, they are confident about their future. They are feeling good. They do the things that expand the economy. That is all about confidence. When they are confident and do the things that expand the economy, people work. The economy begins to hum along and the country does very well.

When they are not confident about the future, exactly the opposite happens. We have economic contraction. People don't buy the suit, the car, the home. They don't take a trip. We contract the economy. Confidence is at the root of progress. The question is, Standing in this deep economic hole, how do we restore confidence? How do we do that?

This President has only been in office 10 months. He inherited the biggest economic mess anybody has inherited since the Great Depression. That is a fact. We have a lot of people who want to blame the new administration for all the economic ills of the country. This President inherited the biggest economic mess any President has ever inherited since the 1930s. What do we do to restore confidence and what do we do to address this issue of the economy?

In my judgment, we do three things. One is financial reform. It seems to me the financial system went completely awry, and we had a carnival of greed, an atmosphere of anything goes, unbelievable gambling going on--they could have put a casino table in the lobby of some of the biggest banks in the country--the development of new financial engineering, things such as credit default swaps and CDOs, you name it. These folks steered this country's economy right into the ditch. If that is the case--and I believe it is--the first step to restore confidence is to reform the financial system to say this cannot happen again. We will not allow it. We have to fix it.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote the cover story for the Washington monthly magazine called Very Risky Business, in which I described even then that FDIC-insured financial institutions--financial institutions guaranteed by the Federal Government and the taxpayer, therefore--were trading on their own proprietary accounts and derivatives. I said then they might as well put a keno pit in the lobby of the bank. Fifteen years later, of course, the whole thing collapsed. The center poll broke, and the tent collapsed over all of it. Financial reform has to be the first step in developing some confidence in the American people that this will not happen again.

We need regulations. I know regulation is a four-letter word to some. It is not to me. If ever there was a demonstration that we need regulations, it is this carnival of greed that happened in the last decade or so, where we had regulators come to town who said: I intend to be woefully blind. I know I will get paid by the Federal Government. I know I am supposed to be a regulator, but I want to boast about not being able to watch. I want the market system to be whatever it is.

The fact is, this should demonstrate to us we need regulators who will keep a watchful eye on the market system so they can call the fouls. We need referees. That is what regulators are for. When someone commits a foul that injures the free market system, they

need to blow the whistle. We need effective regulatory authority. That is No. 1.

No. 2, deal with the issues we know are inappropriate. Never should an FDIC-insured institution be trading on unbelievably risky instruments on their own proprietary accounts. It is still going on today. We have to fix that.

No. 3, the issue of too big to fail. Have we not learned we can't have institutions that grow too big to fail without it being no-fault capitalism? I hear folks come and crow about the issue of the market system and free market capitalism. The fact is, when we have institutions that grow too big to fail, it means, when they steer the country into the ditch and they are about to go belly up, the American taxpayer is told: It is time for you to take some action. We intend to have you be a backstop for the biggest financial institutions in the country. We know they pay big bonuses. We know there are tens and tens of billions of dollars of bonuses being paid for failure, but we don't want you to pay attention to that, the fact that they lost a lot of money and paid big bonuses. We still want you to bail them out because they are too big to be allowed to fail.

This country should no longer allow that. At the very least, we have to address this question of too big to fail. That is no-fault capitalism, and it should not be allowed to continue to exist. Financial reform is essential to restore confidence by the American people. That has to lead the list.

Second, the issue of fiscal policy and deficits. It is not irrelevant to understand we are running very large budget deficits that are unsustainable. It is relevant for this administration to point out that when you have a steep economic downturn, the deep recession we have experienced, you have a dramatic loss of revenue coming into the Federal Government, hundreds of billions in lost revenue. You have a very substantial amount of increased expenditures because there are economic stabilizers, such as unemployment compensation and other things, that when times are tough, they kick in and it costs more. So you have less revenue and higher cost. The fact is, this administration inherited this unbelievable fiscal policy of deciding let's cut taxes for the highest income Americans and then we will go to war and not ask anybody to pay for one penny of it. We will charge it all. We will charge all of it for 8 years.

This country is in a big hole. The fact is, we can't allow that to be a sustainable policy. We have to change it. The President knows it, so does the Congress.

If we are going to restore confidence by the American people in what we are doing, there needs to be a plan to address these very large budget deficits. We cannot continue to provide a level of government the American people are either unwilling or unable to pay for. That is a fact. In my judgment, with respect to this agenda of No. 1, financial reform; No. 2, addressing fiscal policy and deficits, we must develop together a plan to tame these Federal budget deficits and get this fiscal policy back on track. That is a fact.

While I am talking about it, let me also say budget deficits are unsustainable, especially in the outyears. I understand you run big deficits in the middle of the deepest recession. Your revenue is down, expenditures are up. I am talking about in the outyears. This is unsustainable, and we must come together on a plan to address it.

The other side of the deficit issue is the trade deficit. Trade deficits are unbelievable. We also have to respond to the trade deficits. That relates to what I had described about the fellow on the airplane going to move American jobs overseas. I have talked about this on the floor, but this chart shows the trade deficits we face. You can make a case on budget deficits that that is something we want to repay to ourselves. You can't make that case with trade deficits. These are moneys we will have to repay to other countries. Last year we had an $800 billion merchandise trade deficit. This is an avalanche of red ink that will have to be repaid. It weakens the country. This gets worse every single year.

The most important part of that is the trade deficit with China. Nearly one-third of this trade deficit is with China. This deficit increases year after year after year after year.

I have told forever on the floor--and I will again, ever so briefly-- the story of Huffy bicycles. The first book I wrote, I wrote extensively about these products: Huffy bicycles; the little red wagons, the Radio Flyer; the Etch A Sketch--gone to China. They are all made in China. Huffy bicycles were made in Ohio.

All those folks who made Huffy bicycles and were proud of their jobs then lost their jobs. They all got fired. This bicycle still exists. You can still buy it. It is made in China. The brand is owned by the Chinese, and from $11 an hour in Ohio that was paid to workers making the bicycle--$11 an hour--this job went to China, where they have paid them 30 cents an hour, and have worked them 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. The question is this: Should Americans be asked to compete with that? Can they compete with that? The answer is: No, of course not.

If I might show a couple other points about what causes these trade deficits. As shown on this chart, 98 percent of the cars driven in South Korea are made in South Korea. Everybody understands why that is. South Korea wants it that way. They do not want American cars in South Korea, so virtually all the cars in South Korea are made in South Korea.

As shown on this chart, here is our bilateral automobile trade with South Korea. Last year, they sent us 730,000 cars to be sold in the United States. We were able to sell them 4,000 cars. Think of that: 730,000 Korean cars put on ships to be sold in the United States, and we were able to get 4,200 American cars into South Korea. It is going to be much worse with China, by the way.

My point is very simply, we have these giant trade deficits growing and growing and growing, combined with a fiscal policy deficit that is record high, and this is unsustainable. It is unsustainable. So we have to deal with financial reform, and we have to deal with deficits-- fiscal policy deficits and trade deficits.

Then, finally, the issue is jobs. When I talk about restoring the economic strength of this country, it means talking about: How do you put people back to work? It is interesting to me that the Wall Street firms are reporting record profits, they are going to pay record bonuses, and so they have healed. They are all fine. It is just those 7.6 million people who lost their jobs. They are still out there looking for work, and they ought to be plenty angry about what is going on. So the question is, How do we create jobs and keep jobs here? I want to talk about that for a moment.

It seems to me the issue of job creation--my colleagues Senators Warner and Corker have an idea that I have embraced that makes a lot of sense, and that is, job creation in most cases is a result of small and medium-sized businesses that have an idea and are running a business and putting people to work on Main Streets, and yet they are the very ones that cannot get lending. You need lending when you are in business. You need loan funds to finance your inventory and to expand, and so on. The very people who cannot get business loans are the very ones who would be creating the jobs.

So this Congress, without my vote, voted for $700 billion in TARP funds to provide a pillow and some aspirin and some soft landing for some big financial firms in the country that ran the country's economy into the ditch. My colleagues suggest--and I agree--that we probably ought to convert just a portion of that--just a portion of that--to create a mechanism by which we would have a bank of small business loans that would be available to small and medium-sized businesses.

There is no excuse not to use some of those funds for the right purpose. If you believe they were appropriated for the wrong purpose-- that is to help out the biggest firms that steered us into the ditch-- how about helping out Main Street businesses that would create some jobs?

Second, I think we ought to finally consider--and we have talked about it for a long while--creating an infrastructure investment bank, and over a period of 30 years float the bonds that allow you to rebuild the infrastructure in this country that will put massive numbers of people back to work. We can do that. If you create it the right way with an infrastructure investment

bank, you are not going to blow a hole in the Federal budget deficit, but you are going to put a lot of people back to work.

The issue that has been used previously during chronic eras of unemployment, which I think we should consider, is the issue of the new jobs tax credit. We did that in 1977 and 1978. The new jobs tax credit, it was reported, provided up to 2.1 million new jobs in this country. I think we ought to consider that.

Finally, we ought to end the disincentive for creating jobs by getting rid of these pernicious tax breaks that say: If you fire your workers and lock your plant and ship the whole thing overseas, we will give you a big fat tax break. Yes, that exists in tax law today. We cannot get it changed. It is outrageous, in my judgment. So let's provide some incentives for people to hire employees in this country and end the disincentives by getting rid of tax breaks for those companies that ship their jobs out of the country.

There is a lot to do. I have described some big issues that, for me, would represent the top of the agenda. I know that is not the agenda we are on at the moment, and I understand that the play gets called, and we all run toward the same goalposts. But the facts is, this country, in my judgment, will not have the kind of economic recovery we need unless we put at the top of the agenda, as we move forward, the issue of financial reform, which my colleagues are working on in the Banking Committee. It is urgent we get that done. In my judgment, that should have been at the front of the agenda: the issue of fiscal policy, deficits and trade policy deficits and, finally, the issue of jobs.

I want to mention that there is one additional issue that has been kicked around, and that is climate change. As I said when I started this presentation, I do not think climate change is irrelevant at all. I think it is important. For me, it would not lead the set of issues that would require us first to put the economy back on track.

But with respect to the issue of climate change and energy, part of having confidence in the future is also having some energy security. Energy security and national security, in my judgment, go together in many ways. Because if tomorrow, God forbid, we had an interruption in the pipeline of oil that comes to this country, our economy would be flat on its back. About one-fourth of the 85 million barrels of oil that are taken out of this planet every day, has to come into this country. We have a prodigious appetite for energy. But the problem is, 70 percent of our nation's oil comes from other countries. Seventy percent of the oil we use comes from other countries.

We have a real energy security issue and we need to work hard to be less dependent on other countries--some of who do not like us very much--for the oil we need to run this American economy.

We wrote a bill about 4 months ago in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a bill that deals with all of the energy policies that would make America more energy secure and provide greater national security as a result. The Senate Energy Committee's bill, in my judgment, should be on the floor of the Senate before the climate change bill. It does all the things in the matter of policy, that you would do to address climate change.

The Senate Energy Committee's legislation maximizes the use of renewable energy, so you can produce electricity where the wind blows, and the Sun shines, and move it through a modern transmission system to the load centers where the energy is needed. The Senate Energy Committee's bill does the building retrofits and efficiencies, which are the lowest hanging fruit in energy. For the first time in history, it establishes a renewable electricity standard of 15 percent. It opens up the Eastern Gulf for offshore oil and natural gas production.

The Senate Energy Committee's legislation does all of the things you would do to take significant steps toward addressing climate change. The bill maximizes the production of renewable energy--it moves in exactly the right direction. Retrofitting buildings--it does exactly the right thing. The increase in the renewable electricity standard is exactly the right policy.

So I would say to those who are pushing very hard that we need to have climate change on the floor of the Senate. The fact is, it is much more important, in terms of public policy to move this country in the right direction, to bring the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee's bill on the floor. The Senate Energy Committee's bill includes a whole series of investments to make coal development, which is the most abundant resource in this country, more compatible with our need to address a lower carbon future.

Carbon capture and sequestration from coal development is very important. Carbon capture, beneficial use all of these investments require money, and we put some of that money in the Senate Energy Committee's bill so we can continue to use that resource as well.

The Senate Energy Committee's bill makes sense and, in my judgment, it ought to have a priority to come to the floor of the Senate after financial reform and deficits and jobs. Because all of that, I think, is necessary to address the very serious economic questions that face Americans.

Let me conclude by saying, I mentioned a few moments ago that we have these very large Federal budget deficits, and I think it would be useful to say that while there are expenditure cuts we should make--and there are plenty I have suggested; I think we should tighten our belts--there are other ways to begin to reduce the Federal budget deficit; and that is, to ask those who are not paying their fair share to pay some.

I want to describe that by showing a chart. This is a chart from a company that is part of their financial report. But I am doing this only to say this is a just a representation of many companies. But this one says: The United States Government is this company's largest single customer. The government operates in segments and supplies nuclear power systems, and so on. We are active in government-sponsored operations and research.

All right. So who is this company? This is a company that decided, in filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, to say:

[The company] is a Panamanian corporation that has earned

all of its income outside of Panama.

It is not really a Panamanian corporation. Well, it is legally now. But it used to be an American corporation that decided to do what is called an inversion; that means disavowing your U.S. citizenship and saying, as a corporation: I don't want to be an American citizen anymore. I want to be a citizen of Panama. So that is what this company did.

All right. We decided some while ago, if you want to decide not to be an American citizen, as a company, then do not tell us you want to keep doing business with the American Government. The only reason you want to invert and get rid of your American citizenship is to avoid paying U.S. taxes. So we say, if you do not want to pay U.S. taxes--do you know what?--you ought not get business from the Federal Government.

Well, this company did not like that so much. This company has 2007 revenues that were sheltered now because they inverted to Panama--2007 revenues--of $2.6 billion.

It has taken the government a little longer than it should have to shut off these companies that inverted from doing business with the Federal Government. But now we have an understanding that one of the Federal agencies quietly approached the Appropriations Committee and asked to insert a clause in an appropriations bill which says that the contracting ban, which I have described, can only be administered consistent with U.S. international trade agreements. That was done because there is discussion of a trade agreement with Panama, and so with respect to the trade agreement with Panama, the contracting ban would be limited to not affect this company that inverted to Panama.

Isn't that interesting. Actually, we have people in government trying to help the company get Federal business once again, despite the fact that this company moved away to Panama as a legal address in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. And it is not just this company.

Some long while ago, probably 2 years ago, I brought to the floor of the

Senate--and many of my colleagues have since used this--this picture. When you talk about everybody paying their fair share, this is a picture of a little four-story building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands. It is called the Ugland House. This is actually the original chart I used about 2 years ago. There was some enterprising reporting by a reporter named Evans from Bloomberg. Mr. Evans from Bloomberg actually did the reporting on this.

This little white building on Church Street in the Cayman Islands was home to 12,748 corporations. They are not there. That is just a legal address, a figment created by lawyers, to say, if you run your mail through a mailbox in this building, you can avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Isn't that wonderful? I think it is unpatriotic. It is going on all the time. By the way, since I first used this chart, my understanding is, there are now not 12,000 corporations using this address; there are 18,000 corporations. Isn't that unbelievable?

My point is, when you talk about the need for fiscal policy reform-- yes, let's cut some spending; let's tighten our belts--let's also ask some interests who decided they want all the benefits that America has to offer but they do not want to pay taxes, let's ask them to become tax-paying citizens, corporate tax-paying citizens once again. There is a lot to do, and I am convinced we can do it if we have the priorities straight.

Yesterday, it was interesting to me to hear that Warren Buffett purchased the Burlington Northern Railroad.

Berkshire Hathaway, the company owned by Warren Buffett, purchased Burlington Northern Railroad. He said he is betting on America. I know Warren Buffett. I have known him for years. I like him. He is a good guy. In fact, he is one of the smartest investors perhaps in the history of our country. He is betting on America. That is probably a pretty good bet. I don't know the details of his purchase of this railroad company, but it is probably a pretty good bet to bet on this country.

I mentioned previously that we had Warren Buffett to speak to our caucus some while ago and somebody asked him the question: What do you think the economy will be like in 6 months?

Warren Buffett said: I don't have the foggiest idea. That is not the way I think. I don't know what is going to happen 6 months from now or 16 months from now, but I will tell you this: I know what the economy is going to be like 6 years from now. It is going to be great.

He said: America always pulls itself up. Look at the couple hundred years of history, at the creativeness, the inventiveness, the ambition of the American people. It is just innate in the soul of the American people and its culture to just keep moving forward.

He said: This country is going to do fine. I don't know whether it is going to be 7 or 10 or 15 months or 5 years, but, he said, I believe this country is going to do well.

So I kind of smiled yesterday when I saw that he had purchased a railroad and said: I am betting on America.

I think this Congress should bet on America too, but America needs some help from this Congress. America needs a lot of help to deal with the issues I have just described. I believe we can do that, but it is not going to happen unless we have some cooperation. We have gotten cooperation on nothing. By the way, just for interest's sake, we are now in this lengthy period, and we have had to burn 30 hours postcloture in 2 days, ripening cloture on everything, even on noncontroversial things, because there are people who don't want this institution to work. It doesn't make any sense to me. There ought not be two teams here; we all ought to be pulling for the same team.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, there is a lot going on in public policy in Washington, DC. However, today is Friday and the Senate is not voting, so there is not much happening on the Senate floor. But there remains a lot of work to do between now and the end of this year to try to put this country back on track and fix a number of things that are wrong.

If the coming weeks are like recent weeks, we will have very little cooperation in this Chamber, which is regrettable. You would think if ever there is a time for cooperation, it is when the country is in a very deep economic hole. This country saw, a year ago, its economy fall off a cliff. Unbelievable unemployment: Over 7.5 million Americans have lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost hope. This has been the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

I understand everybody can take and look at this and see things differently. Our colleague Senator Byrd used to tell about the caterpillar that would climb up on a clump of grass and look around and say: I see the world. And then a squirrel would alight on the same identical spot and say, after gazing around: I see the world. And an eagle, flying over the identical spot, taking a look, would say: I see the world. They all were in the same spot but all had a very different view--the caterpillar, the squirrel, and the eagle. Senator Byrd's point was, you can have a different view depending on exactly how you see things, and I understand that.

I have great respect for my colleagues who have different views. I would only say this: that when the country is in trouble, it seems to me there ought not to be two teams. There ought to be one team; that is, our team working to try to figure out: How do we get out of this? How do we restart the economic engine, get America moving again, and put people back to work again?

There is no social program in this Congress that we work on or that we create, no social program that is as important as a good job that pays well. That is what allows everyone to be able to make a living and take care of their families, and so on. So the question for us is, What is the agenda? We are where we find ourselves. So what is the agenda from here forward?

The President has described the agenda of saying that, obviously, the economy is very important, health care is very important, and energy and climate change are also very important. That represents the agenda. My colleague Senator Reid, the majority leader, is trying to move legislation that includes other things, including the appropriations bills that we are required to move. We have not gotten a bit of cooperation on anything, not even the noncontroversial issues do we get cooperation on. In each case, we are required to file cloture, wait 2 days for it to ripen, then have a vote, and then wait 30 hours postcloture while they object to anything else happening on the floor. So we are in a situation where there is no cooperation on anything, which I think is pretty remarkable and pretty disappointing. The majority leader is trying very hard in those circumstances to still move things and get things done.

My own view of the priorities is pretty simple. I think health care is important, and I think energy and climate change are important. In my judgment, both rank behind the issue of the economy and trying to restart the economic engine and putting people back to work. I think that is the most important priority for the Congress and the country. It makes everything else possible, and without it very little is possible. You cannot have millions of people out of work without understanding it is a priority to find a way to expand the economy and put them back on payroll. Last month, 263,000 Americans lost their jobs. Think of each case of someone coming home from work saying to their spouse or to a loved one or to a family member: I have lost my job today. No, it is not because I am a bad worker. It is not because I did not do a good job. I had sterling references and sterling performance appraisals. They just decided my job was going to be gone.

Yesterday, by the way--after last month, 263,000 people coming home to say: I have lost my job; and that adds up now to 7.5 million Americans who are unemployed--yesterday, we discovered that the economy grew by 3.5 percent in the third quarter. Well, that is good news. But it is news that is tempered with the understanding that we do not have just one economy, we have a couple of economies. We have an economy in which some are doing very well, with very high incomes, very large bonuses, and significant profits, mostly on Wall Street. I will talk about that in a moment. And then others are still struggling to figure out: Where can I find a job? How on Earth can I get back on a payroll to begin to provide for myself and my family?

Even as that was happening, I was on an airplane last week, and I sat next to a man, and I said: Where are you headed?

He said: Well, I am going to Thailand and Singapore and China.

I said: What are you going to do there?

He said: My company buys products from suppliers and we are trying to move our network of suppliers to Singapore and Thailand and China so we can dramatically reduce the cost of products we buy.

I said: But that is moving those American jobs overseas, isn't it?

He said: Yeah. It is not something I like to do. It is something I think our company has to do. We decided we have to buy cheaper products, so we are going to look for the China price.

He was going to be gone 2 weeks. I assume by now he has been in Thailand and Singapore and China, arranging to have those who are now employed in this country have their jobs be shipped to another country where they pay a fraction of the wages. Maybe those workers don't know it yet. I assume they do not. But they probably will in a few weeks. That is part of the story, as well of what is happening in this economy.

As I said, I think health care is very important. It is 17 percent of this economy. I think it is important for us to try to figure out: What do you do about health care? How can you put the brakes on circumstances where health care--which, by the way, is not just some option, some luxury, but a necessity for most Americans--how can you put the brakes on a health care system that says to most American families, when they open the mail and find the bill by the insurance company: Oh, by the way, the coverage you have is now going to cost 10 percent more or 12 percent more or 18 percent more--year after year after year--and people say: Well, I can't afford that. I can't afford that coverage. How do you put the brakes on those kinds of cost increases? How do you expand coverage so more people can afford health care coverage?

There are a lot of priorities. But I have been at odds with the President and others, believing that the first priority--by far, the first priority--and the first exclusive priority ought to be to find a way to restart this economic engine. We have to get that done. I am not saying health care should not be done. I am saying, in my judgment, the ability to restart this economic engine and put people back on payrolls trumps everything else.

I want to talk about the issue of two economies because some people will say: Well, that has already started. I give the President credit. The fact is, he has proposed a series of things that have pumped some life into this economy. Without it, we probably would not see the kind of opportunities that are going to come from the bottoming out of the economy and then the beginning to rebuild opportunity. I give the President credit for that. But we have a long way to go.

We have two economies. One economy is doing very well, and one not so well. Let me describe the one that is not doing so well in the words of Will Rogers. Will Rogers, a long time ago, said:

The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we'll get

around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK.

It sounds just like Will Rogers, doesn't it: The unemployed ain't eating so well, but we'll get around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK.

The question is, What about all those folks who ``ain't eating so well'' in Will Rogers' description?

Let me describe why, in my judgment, the economy is, by far, the most urgent priority. As shown on this chart, here is the rise in unemployment and underemployment from 2007 to 2009. We all know it. It has gone up, up, and up. And behind those statistics are unbelievable stories of pain. Not everybody is experiencing this.

Here is a September 11, 2009, Steven Pearlstein column in the Washington Post:

It's been a year since the onset of a financial crisis that

wiped out $15 trillion of wealth from the balance sheet of

American households, and more than two years since serious

cracks in the financial system became apparent. Yet while the

system has been stabilized and the worst of the crisis has

passed, little has been done to keep another meltdown from

happening.

Business as usual on Wall Street.

``A Year After Lehman, Wall Street's Acting Like Wall

Street Again.'' That is the title of an article in the

Washington Post, dated September 8, 2009.

It's been 12 months since Lehman Brothers failed, setting

off a chain reaction that came horrifyingly close to

destroying the world's financial system. . . .

Even though some once-iconic names have vanished and others

are shadows of their former selves, Wall Street hasn't

changed all that much. It still operates on the principle of

taking care of itself first, really big and important

customers second, everyone else last.

That is an article by Allan Sloan.

Two economies: The folks who are still losing jobs; and then:

Bailout helps fuel a new era of Wall Street wealth. Many of

the steps policymakers took last year to stabilize the

financial system, reducing interest rates to near zero,

bolstering big banks with taxpayer money has helped set the

stage for this new era of Wall Street wealth.

To continue this discussion, the New York Times, Graham Bowley:

Even as the economy continues to struggle, much of Wall

Street is minting money and looking forward to hefty bonuses.

Los Angeles Times, September 14:

The Financial Meltdown: Crisis has not altered Wall Street.

Bellwether firms led by Goldman Sachs Group are churning

out mouth-watering profits. Risk-taking and aggressive

securities trading are mounting a comeback. And

compensation--the lifeblood of Wall Street--is pushing back

toward pre-crisis levels.

Certainly the greed on Wall Street has not changed and will

never change, said Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale

Securities.

The key part is ``risk-taking and aggressive securities trading are mounting a comeback''--the very things that put this economy in the ditch.

Why do I go through all of this? I do it for this reason. The Federal Reserve Board had a strategy. They committed trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds to try to prevent the economy from falling into an abyss. I am not here to criticize them for that. They did what they believed they had to do in order to provide some foundation for this economy

Now, Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Fed, testifying before the Congress, a joint House-Senate hearing said:

Transparency is a big issue.

Transparency is a big issue for the Fed.

So the Federal Reserve Board decided for the first time in its history to allow direct lending to investment banks. The Federal Reserve said investment banks could get direct loans, and they did. Now we see--for example, two companies that got TARP funds--troubled asset relief program funds--and undoubtedly went to the Fed for loans and now, by the way, are paying, I think, a total of about 50 people an average of $18 million each in bonuses.

Let me say that again: Companies that got TARP funds very likely went to the Fed, to the Fed window, to get direct loans and are now paying about 50 people an average of $18 million apiece.

So when one of them comes home and the spouse says: Honey, how much money are we making? The spouse says: $1\1/2\ million a month--$1\1/2\ million a month. Pretty unbelievable, isn't it? Anybody here make that, do you think? I don't think so. They are making $1\1/2\ million a month. These are the companies that got themselves in deep trouble, needed a bailout by the American people, and needed direct lending by the Federal Reserve Board.

So now the question is, Should we have a right to see who the Fed gave money to? Well, some folks took the Federal Reserve Board to court, and here is the Bloomberg Report:

The Fed last year began extending credit directly to

companies that aren't banks for the first time since it was

created in 1913 and it has refused to divulge details about

the companies participating in those 10 lending programs.

All right. Some folks took them to court:

Court orders Fed to disclose emergency bank loans.

The point is, the American people were at risk. The American people, through the Congress, created the Federal Reserve Board. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board said transparency is a big issue. All right. Be transparent. Tell us, where did you put the money? Who got the money? How much? At what rates? What were the concessional rates?

The court says:

The Federal Reserve must for the first time identify the

companies in its emergency lending programs after losing a

Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The judge said the

central bank improperly withheld agency records.

Well, the problem is, the order was then appealed and a judge stayed the order. So at this point, we don't know the answer. So I and 9 of my colleagues wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to say: You know what. The American people deserve to understand, who did you give money to? What were the rates? What were the terms? We deserve to know that.

We sent a long letter to him. We got a letter back from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and he says: I don't intend to do that. That would compromise some firms. Oh, really? It will compromise companies if they tell us who they gave loans to for the first time in the history of the Federal Reserve Board? How about compromising the right of the American people and the right of the Congress to understand what they did.

The reason it is important is this: Are 50 people getting $18 million each, $1\1/2\ million a month, because they got concessional loans at the Fed? Is that how they are given these funds? Is that why? I don't know. Is it taxpayers' money? I don't know. We have a right to know, in my judgment. I think it is an outrage that we and the American people are having to demand from the Federal Reserve Board to turn over information when the Chairman of the Fed himself said transparency is important.

So here we are every day reading about these unbelievable bonuses on Wall Street, every day reading about it, and in many cases from companies that steered this country into a ditch with credit default swaps, subprime loans, you name it, securitizing everything with unbelievable wagering, and trading derivatives for their own proprietary accounts in FDIC-insured banks.

I wrote about that 15 years ago. The cover story of the Washington Monthly magazine was my cover story, and it was titled ``Very Risky Business.'' Derivatives were only $16 trillion then in the United States. But I said then, 15 years ago: You can't allow FDIC-insured banks to trade on their own accounts for derivatives. You might just as well put a Keno table in the lobby of the bank. If you want to gamble, go to Las Vegas, I wrote.

It is not a surprise that we saw this unbelievable, spectacular crash that hurt a lot of people but now appears not to have hurt those who engineered it in the first place because they are making record profits.

My point is pretty simple. It is that we have a right to know, and the Federal Reserve Board has a responsibility to tell us, what the facts are. The American people are plenty upset and have a reason to be upset about the two economies they see, one in which people are doing very well, making $1\1/2\ million a month in bonuses, and then others in which people are continuing to be told: Your job is gone. We are sorry. This economy isn't working quite right, so your job is gone.

Well, in my judgment, our first and most important responsibility, all of us, is to try to get this economic engine restarted and running well. This

President is trying very hard. My colleague, the majority leader, is doing everything he can. We need some cooperation to help make that happen. But I hope all of us are committed to understanding that we are on one team, and that team ought to have an identical goal; that is, to begin to restore our economic health, and even as we do that, to do financial reform that will make sure this can't happen again.

That is also coming in a while and is pretty controversial. I have some significant differences with some who are writing these things. I think the issue of too big to fail ought to be gone and done. We ought not have institutions that are too big to fail. If they are too big to fail, that is no-fault capitalism, and I am not in favor of no-fault capitalism.

I wish to mention that I have just talked about the two economies and what I think is the priority. I have had great angst. I have talked to a lot of folks who are probably tired of hearing from me to say: You know what. Health care is important, yes; but it doesn't rank No. 1 with me. Getting this engine started ranks No. 1 with me. Getting people back on payrolls, putting people back to work, getting jobs created, finding out how do you--especially with small- and medium- sized businesses who, by the way, can't get loans. Too many of them today are failing because they can't get credit anyplace.

The biggest economic institutions are out there buying and selling and trading and effectively gambling on their own proprietary accounts while not enough money is going out with respect to lending to small- and medium-sized businesses. Isn't it interesting that the Federal Reserve Board was a big old sponge to say: Come to us; we will now do direct lending to the biggest financial firms. How about opening that window to small businesses and medium businesses so they can go directly to the Fed? They will not do that. I suppose you can't do that. But why not? If you are doing it for the biggest, how about doing it for the folks on Main Street who are struggling, trying to get through this recession. That is what I mean by two economies.

Health Care Reform

Now, because we are on health care--we are going to have health care on the floor of the Senate very soon--I wish to make a couple of comments about it and then complete my statement. This is about priorities. Yes, health care is a priority. It doesn't rank above the economy for me but, nonetheless, it is coming to the floor.

The President said: I campaigned on it. It is important. We need to address health care.

I don't disagree. The question is, Are we going to sit around and just decide whatever happens, happens on health care? That seems to be the policy of a good number of my colleagues on the other side, to just say no to everything. If that is the case, what do we do when the next 10 percent increase in your insurance bill or the next 12 percent increase drives that business out of business because they can't afford to pay it or says to that family: Here is the bill, and I know you can't afford to pay it, so tough luck. You are without health insurance.

I met a woman a while back that 10 years ago had $600,000 in the bank, she told me. She owned a home, she had a job, and she had health insurance. She had pretty decent equity in her home. It is 10 years later. She is a quadriplegic, she has had unbelievable expenses with a health condition that has continued to deteriorate in a dramatic way. She needs an unbelievable amount of care. It is all gone. Her job, the $600,000 saved for retirement, the equity in her home, it is all gone.

By the way, yes; she was insured. But insurance policies in most cases have a cap, and most people don't know that, a lifetime cap. That means a good many people are one serious illness away from bankruptcy. So what do we do? Do we say to that woman: You know what. That is just tough luck. You live in this country and those are the rules. Or do you pass some legislation that maybe changes the rules a bit?

I have been trying now for I think 3 years to eliminate lifetime caps on insurance policies. The impact of it is very small nationally but can be critical individually to someone who is hit with a devastating disease. Nearly one-half of the bankruptcies in this country are a result of health care costs. Think of that. We are one of the few countries left to say: If you get sick, if something awful happens to you or a member of your family, you might well have to file for bankruptcy. Tough luck. It doesn't happen in many other countries.

Well, the question for me at the end of the day on health care--and I am one of those who hasn't signed up to anything. We have had five committees, I think, work on it. I have not been part of a Gang of Six. I have not been part of the Finance Committee or the HELP Committee, so I am a gang of one. Probably, we are going to have maybe 60 or 70 gangs of one who have never had a chance to offer suggestions or amendments on health care. To me, at the end of the day, if whatever is done on the floor of the Senate doesn't effectively and really--I am talking about really--find a way to put the brakes on health care costs, we will have wasted a lot of time and not passed legislation because that is not something I am particularly interested in supporting.

If we are not going to put the brakes on these dramatic cost increases, this is, in my judgment, a wasted exercise. We have to try to see if we can control costs and expand coverage. Even as we do that, there are some other things that are important to me. None of these pieces of legislation deal with the issue of prescription drugs. One of the fastest rising costs of health care is the cost of prescription drugs. I have often used this description which describes it better than I can, and I will ask unanimous consent to show these bottles I have in my desk.

This is Lipitor. It is made in Ireland. In Ireland they make Lipitor, the best-selling cholesterol medicine, I think, in this country, to control cholesterol. The same pill, put in the same bottle, made in the same plant, FDA-approved, by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the difference is the price. They put it in this bottle and ship it to Canada, and you pay $1.83 per capsule. In this bottle, to the U.S. consumer, it is $4.40 per capsule. The difference? No difference, 20 milligrams of Lipitor, the difference is price.

We get to pay the highest price in the world. It is not just the United States or Canada; it is Italy, Germany, France, you name it. We get to pay the highest price in the world for brand-name drugs. And it is just not fair. It is just not fair.

I intend to offer an amendment with my colleagues that tries to provide some fair pricing on prescription drugs. That will be important to me. The question of whether that is part of this will be important to me.

I know there is a tremendous push-back by the pharmaceutical industry. Let me be quick to say, I admire the pharmaceutical industry. They have produced lifesaving prescription drugs. They actually spend slightly more money on advertising and promotion than they do on research and development, which I think is rather strange. I have said many times that when you are brushing your teeth in the morning with the radio on or television on and you hear an ad that says: You know what you should do today? You should go ask your doctor whether the purple pill is right for you.

Every day they do that. It almost makes you feel like you want to find a doctor and say: Should I be taking the purple pill? Maybe you need Flomax or whatever. They advertise every single day and spend more money on marketing, promotion, and advertising than on research and development. A substantial amount of the research and development comes from the National Institutes of Health and then it is distributed to companies around the country that produce the medicine. Prescription drug prices have to be a part of this. I intend to offer the amendment with my colleague.

The reimbursement issues with respect to the smaller States, with the highest quality have received the lowest historical reimbursement dating back to when Medicare started. That is fundamentally wrong and has to change. There are a series of things that I think will need to be done on the floor of the Senate to address some of the issues with this legislation.

Finally, I will conclude by saying another part of this agenda that is being discussed is climate change. Some say

that we have take up climate change right now, because Copenhagen is coming up. We have to address climate change. My view is we passed an energy bill 6 months ago, in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that does exactly what you would do to address climate change. Including maximizing renewable energy and building the transmission to move the energy from places where it is produced to the load centers. The bill passed by the Senate Energy Committee also includes increasing building efficiency, which is the lowest hanging fruit. This legislation also includes a renewable electricity standard, which will be the first time in the history of this country that we will say that 15 percent of all electricity must come from renewable sources. I want that to be increased to 20 percent. The Senate Energy Committee's bill, in my judgment, should be brought to the floor ahead of climate change. You should take care of the policy changes that move you in the right direction first, and then bring climate change to the floor of the Senate and deal with the timetables.

Many of my colleagues feel that is an inappropriate approach. I think it is exactly what we should do. In my judgment, I don't think we are going to do climate change on the floor between now and the end of the year. If we don't get to climate change this year, nor bring the Senate Energy Committee bill to the floor, it means that we turned the corner this year without considering climate change legislation or the Senate Energy Committee's bill. That doesn't make sense to me. I will speak to that later. My colleagues are waiting to speak, so I will speak about that later.

I think, in the context of what is important, and how we should proceed, for me, with respect to energy and climate change. It is not that I oppose climate change legislation, although I do oppose the ``trade'' portion of cap and trade. I have no intention of creating a $1 trillion securities trading market on Wall Street, to have them trade on Monday and Tuesday with investment speculators, so we can find out the cost of our electricity on Thursday and Friday. I have very little confidence in the creation of a market to trade carbon securities. I believe there are other ways to do it.

It is not that I am opposed to climate change legislation, if it is structured properly. I think something is happening to our climate. We ought to take no-regret steps to address climate change. Senator Bingaman and I along with others have written an energy bill that ought to come before climate change legislation, that will advance our country's interests in addressing the policies needed to do to deal with climate change.

I will speak about energy at another time at greater length. Those represent some of my thoughts about the agenda. Again, on health care, I think a lot of people will come to the floor on health care, with a very open notion about wanting to vote on a lot of amendments. At the end of the day, saying: Is this something that advances our country's interests or doesn't it? I have not made that judgment at this point on health care. I will be a part of the people who make amendments. Then I will make a judgment. I will measure it two ways: Does this put the brakes on health care costs and is it paid for? Second, does it extend coverage to those folks who don't have coverage because they cannot afford it? If we do that, we will have done something good for the country. If not, there will be great difficulty in passing it on the floor of the Senate.

Madam President, let me thank Senator Feinstein and also Senator Alexander for the work they have done on this bill. I used to be the ranking member of this subcommittee, and I understand many of the issues in this bill. The breadth and scope of it is very substantial, and I think they have done a good job.

I want to mention two things that are very small parts of this bill but, nonetheless, I think important. One is the issue of something called hydraulic fracturing. The reason I mention it is, there is a lot of discussion about how important it is for us to become less dependent on foreign energy. We need to become less dependent on oil from places like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Venezuela and so on.

Madam President, about 70 percent of our oil comes from overseas. The fact is, we use a prodigious amount of oil.

The U.S. has about 5 percent of the world's population, but we use almost 25 percent of the oil. Seventy percent of it comes from off our shores from other countries, and 70 percent of all the oil we use is used for transportation. So we need to continue to develop resources at home if we are going to become less dependent on foreign energy.

There is a provision included in the Interior conference report related to hydraulic fracturing. This small provision requires a study by the EPA of hydraulic fracturing and drinking water. What I want to mention is this: In the subcommittee I chair on Energy and Water Development, I have continued to include research and development funding for oil and natural gas programs. We lead the world in unconventional oil and gas production, in part, because of this funding.

We are now discovering new fields in shale and tight sands reservoirs because we can use technologies that we

could not benefit from 5 and 10 years ago. Just think we now explore 2 miles beneath the surface of the Earth areas of shale and go into seams 100-foot thick. We have the ability to drill down 2 miles, make a big curve, and drill out 2 miles to reach the resource. So you have a 4- mile circuit with this one drilling rig and you go into a shale deposit more than out 2 miles out. To exploit the resource, companies use hydraulic fracturing by using water under high pressure. It allows them to break down that shale, and you have oil production.

The U.S. Geological Survey did a survey in North Dakota in an area called the Bakken shale. It is an area about 100-foot thick 2 miles down. They said using today's technology--today's technology--there is up to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in place. That is the largest assessment of recoverable oil they have ever found in the Lower 48 States. Think of that. But none of that resource would be available without the use of hydraulic fracturing.

By the way, this issue of hydraulic fracturing--water under high pressure to break that shale--we have been doing that for 60 years. There has been many studies, and there is simply no problem with it when properly applied. These studies show that it does not contaminate groundwater. In fact, the EPA itself did a study in 2004 and concluded there is no problem.

Well, some of our colleagues are concerned, and they have legislation to regulate hydraulic fracturing on a federal level. In the House Interior Appropriations bill, there was a requirement for the EPA to do a study. I would say the Senate did not have that requirement in its bill. I worked with other Senators and, but we requested that certain guidelines be in the study. Those requests were included in the conference report. I do not mind there being a study because I believe that it will demonstrate what we already know and what the EPA has previously discovered in their study. This issue of hydraulic fracturing is not a problem. We do need to continue to produce more energy in this country to make us less dependent on foreign oil and find ways to use more domestic natural gas. It is just a fact, and it will not continue unless we can continue the hydraulic fracturing that unleashes the opportunity of these oil and natural gas fields.

So that is a small piece of this very big bill, but I think one that is very important. I wanted to make that point.

I want to make one additional point, and this actually relates to the success of something we took out of this bill. I want to just describe it for a moment. Some things just sort of drive you batty about the way government works. Government gets big, and somehow it just leaves common sense behind from time to time. This was a circumstance where in a national park in North Dakota, the Badlands--the Theodore Roosevelt National Park--they have to thin the elk herd. There are too many elk-- about 900 elk. It can only handle about 250 or 300 elk. So you have to get rid of some elk; you have to thin the herd.

Like a lot of government solutions, the solution was, well, maybe we should hire Federal sharpshooters and then have helicopters we would hire to haul the meat out of the national park.

I said: I don't understand at all how you could think about that. There are plenty of people who are qualified hunters who would be happy to volunteer their time to thin the elk herd. You do not need Federal sharpshooters. You do not need helicopters. All you need is a barrel full of common sense.

So because we could not get that done, I put a piece in this Interior appropriations bill when we did it in the subcommittee, and all of a sudden everyone got serious about negotiating on how to do this. Kudos to the Interior Secretary and his staff. We have reached an agreement in principle now, and the Park Service has a proposal that it has set forth. My expectation is that this going to be solved in the right way. So we withdrew this provision from because we do not need it.

We have an agreement in principle, to use qualified North Dakota volunteers, deputized by the National Park Service, who will, under the guidance of the Park Service, thin the elk herd. We do not need to spend a lot of money doing it. All we need to do is just use some common sense, and that is exactly what we are doing.

I understand we have a circumstance where there is not quote, hunting, unquote, in national parks. So the first blush on all this was: Well, we can't do what you suggest, Senator Dorgan. We just can't do it. We are restricted.

Well, the fact is, we are going to use volunteers in a way that is consistent with both the law and common sense. We are not going to spend your money hiring sharpshooters. We are not going to spend your money hiring helicopters. We are going to do this the right way. It is not opening up a hunting season. It is just empowering qualified hunters, under the guidance of the Park Service, with the coordination of the State's game and fish department, to work as volunteers and do what we should just do. It is just a deep reservoir of common sense.

I am proud we have finally gotten that done. I know it is not the biggest issue in the world, but do you know what. There are a whole lot of folks in North Dakota who read about these ``sharpshooters'' and ``helicopters'' who said: Are you nuts? What are you thinking about? That is what got me involved. I understand, this does not meet the test at all. But now we have gotten it done, and we have the right solution.

So I want to thank Senator Feinstein and Senator Alexander. I thank the Interior Department for seeing a way to do this. There is a right way and a wrong way. They saw the right way to do it, and I think it will be helpful to the American taxpayer. It will get the job done by thinning that elk herd and saving some money and giving some folks an opportunity to volunteer to serve their government.

So I wanted to mention that today and thank the Senator from California.

Well, Madam President, I would only say that we have not discussed contraception for elk in the national park, but contraception was once suggested for skunks in a wildlife refuge, and the question was who was going to get close enough to the skunks.

But I think we have solved this issue in a way that is satisfactory and especially beneficial to the taxpayer. I appreciate the work of the Senator from California.

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Wednesday, November 4, 2009, at 2:15 p.m. in Room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Fixing the Federal Acknowledgment Process.

Those wishing additional information may contact the Indian Affairs Committee at 202-224-2251.