Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, July 29, 2010, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Indian Gaming.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion on the floor of the Senate in the last couple of days about small business legislation and various things dealing with jobs, and clearly we need a lot of jobs in this country. We have gone through a very steep economic decline that has victimized lots of Americans. Because of that, we have a lot of people who are waking up in the mornings without work and wondering what to do next. They feel helpless and hopeless and are trying to get their feet on the ground. But they need some help from this Congress; that is, we do not create jobs, but we do create conditions under which jobs can be created by the private sector.

So I want to talk a little about the issue of what might give the American people some confidence because confidence is everything. If they are confident about the future, it means our economy can expand. If people are not confident about the future, our economy will contract. It is that simple.

There is no question that this country now, having gone through the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, has the largest Federal budget deficits we have ever had. In the last couple of years there have been enormous budget deficits. In fact, the budget was in deficit by $1 trillion by the end of June in this fiscal year.

But our colleagues--some of whom voted for all the war funding over these last years and voted for the big tax cuts to reduce the government's revenue, and all of those issues--are now rushing to the floor with everything but suspenders and proclaiming that now the deficit is a big problem.

Well, I will tell you why it is a big problem. It is a big problem because 10 years ago a lot of folks in here decided to cut the revenue steeply, and cut taxes mostly for wealthy Americans, and cut them in a very significant way. So the government had less revenue. They did that because they believed we

had budget surpluses that were going to exist for 10 years.

We had not had a budget surplus for 30 years in this country. We ran deficits for 30 years. Then, all of a sudden, at the end of the Clinton administration, we had a budget surplus of a couple hundred billion dollars. I am pleased about that because I voted for the economic plan that helped create that. We put that in place in the middle 1990s, and we got to a budget surplus.

When that happened, in the year 2000 we had a bunch of folks say, when a new President came into office in 2001: Do you know what? We have a budget surplus. We have a bunch of hotshot economists telling us we are going to have budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. We are going to have budget surpluses for the next 10 years.

Then Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said he could not sleep because he was worried we were going to have surpluses too large and we were going to pay down the Federal debt too quickly. That is right. I know it sounds like a joke, but the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board worried we would pay down our debt too quickly.

So the President came to town in 2001 and said: Let's have very big tax cuts, and I and others said: Let's probably not do that because at this point we don't know what is going to happen for 10 years. We had economists who could not remember their telephone number for 3 hours telling us what was going to happen for 10 years.

So they said: We are going to have 10 years of surpluses. Let's have very big tax cuts. So the President constructed very big tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and here we are. What happened as a result of that? Well, almost immediately we were in a recession in 2001. Then we had a terrorist attack against this country in September of that year. Then we were at war in Afghanistan and at war in Iraq and in a war against terrorists.

So we sent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad, and we rotated them in and out for 8 years and never paid for a penny of it because the President said: We are going to spend emergency funding, which means we do not pay for it; we just put it on the debt. We did that for a decade.

Now, all of a sudden, all the people who voted for the same things-- that is, tax cuts for the wealthy and deciding to send soldiers to war without paying for it--now we hear all this bloviation about how the debt is important. Well, yes, it is important. It was important when they voted to cut taxes for the wealthy as well. It was important when we decided to fight two wars and not pay for a penny of it. The fact is, it is unsustainable now, and we have to find ways to fix it.

It is interesting, yesterday, I came to the Senate floor because one of my colleagues came to the floor and said the priority is to eliminate the estate tax. That is the priority. He did not say that. He said ``eliminate the death tax'' because a clever pollster said: If you say ``death tax,'' it invokes a lot of passion. So we are going to eliminate the death tax--not understanding, apparently, or not caring, perhaps, that there is no such thing as a death tax.

When you die, there is no tax on your death. In fact, had I been on the Senate floor when my colleague mentioned that--I know my colleague is married--so I would have asked: God forbid something should happen to you. But if it did, tell me what would happen to your estate because I know the answer.

The answer is, his spouse would inherit the estate, no matter how large, tax free, because we have a 100-percent spousal exemption. So that Senator's death would have, obviously, been nontaxable.

So where is the death tax? We do not have a death tax. We never had a death tax. We have a tax on inherited wealth. That is what we have. So my colleague said, the most important thing at the moment, while we are deep in debt in the country--and with a growing debt and a need to control the debt--the most important thing at the moment is to get rid of the death tax, which means you want to provide tax breaks for billionaires.

I did not vote for the proposal in 2001 that put us on a course of changing our tax system with very large tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing the estate tax obligation so that it came down to having zero estate taxes in 2010 and then spring back to a higher estate tax in 2011. I did not vote for that. I thought it was about half nutty. But it passed. Enough people thought, apparently, it was OK, so they voted for it.

So now, last year, we had an estate tax that had an exemption of $7 million for husband and wife--$3.5 million each--and a 45-percent rate.

This year, the estate tax went to zero; that is, nobody has to pay any estate tax. So we have had four billionaires die this year. The late George Steinbrenner died, the owner of the Yankees. So his estate will not be taxed--well over $1 billion.

I have said, this is the ``throw mama from the train year.'' You know the movie ``Throw Mama from the Train.'' This is the year--if somebody has to go, I guess, especially billionaires, they get to pay no taxes this year. Then the estate tax is supposed to spring back to a $1 million exemption, husband and wife, and a 55-percent rate.

So my colleague and others now say the highest priority for them is to eliminate the death tax. This year, we will have lost about $15 billion in revenue because there is no estate tax. That is just this year. Over 10 years, it is a very substantial amount.

Who is going to benefit if you eliminate the estate tax? Well, if under last year's law you had to have $7 million in total assets to pay an estate tax, how many people would pay it? Very few, less than 1 percent. In fact, I think it is three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people would ever pay an estate tax. Now we are told the highest priority is to eliminate the estate tax, which means that America's billionaires are going to be given a tax break, and those who want to do it say we want to do that because they should not be taxed twice. Well, they are not taxed twice.

That estate, in most cases, has never borne a tax. Most of it is growth appreciation from stocks or bonds or property and has never borne the tax that most people have to pay.

A lot of people get up in the morning and put on their clothes and go to work, and they work at a manufacturing job all day--although there are fewer these days because we are moving those jobs to China--but they get up and go to work and then they come home and they have withholding on their paychecks and it says they paid taxes. They have to pay taxes for kids to go to school and to build roads and to pay for the police and to pay for the Defense Department and so on--the Centers for Disease Control. They have to bear a burden as an American citizen to help pay for the things we have together.

But if we eliminate the estate tax, we say to, for example, Bill Gates--when Bill Gates expires--that $50-some billion or $60-some billion of yours, most of which has never had any kind of a tax burden at all, we believe it ought to be tax free. That is the highest priority?

I used the word ``nutty'' before. Let me state again that is just nutty. What are you thinking?

Here is something I quoted yesterday from Will Rogers. Will Rogers, 80 years ago, had it right, and it certainly applies to some in this Chamber for sure. Will Rogers said:

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

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

Well--do you know what?--go back about 18 months and just figure out who got fixed up in this country, who got fixed up OK. Do you think the folks at the top of the economic ladder get fixed up? Yes, yes. In fact, the lowest unemployment rate in America is those at the top of the economic ladder.

There is a pretty low unemployment rate actually in the Senate, now that I think of it. We all get up in the morning and put on a white shirt and a suit and a tie, and we all eat three meals a day.

But the people at the bottom of the economic ladder--those 5 million Americans who have lost the manufacturing jobs, the people who are looking for jobs and cannot find them, when we are 20 million jobs short; the people who have been laid off, professional people who, in many cases, were laid off and have been searching for work for 2 years and cannot find it--they are the people who seem somehow forgotten.

So now we have a priority by some in this Chamber of saying we have to get rid of the death tax--a tax that does not exist. In a bill they filed that would only benefit largely billionaires in this country. It is unbelievable. It is just unbelievable.

I do not know, maybe the people who are out of work need to change their names. There are names that signify wealth, at least it sounds like they are from a family that inherited wealth. But it just seems to me to be something that is pretty much in sync with what Will Rogers said a long time ago in terms of what is happening here. The people at the top get fixed up pretty well, and the rest do not matter much. That is a pretty pathetic set of priorities, in my judgement.

Tribal Law and Order Act

Mr. President, I want to say a word about a piece of legislation the Senate has passed and the House has passed and ought to make all of us feel as if we have done something very admirable and something that is going to save lives. So let me do that in a very positive way.

The Tribal Law and Order Act, which we passed--I passed, along with a lot of help from the Indian Affairs Committee, and the Senate passed-- now the House has passed that legislation. That will now be signed by the President into law.

Why is that important? Well, let me give you an example. On the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation--that straddles North Dakota and South Dakota--the rate of violent crime is not double or triple the national rate of violent crime. That would be pretty tough to live in a neighborhood where you have double or triple the national rate of violent crime. It is eight times the rate of violent crime for the rest of the country.

Live in that circumstance. Be a young child going to school or be an elder trying to get along and live in a neighborhood, live on a reservation, live in a circumstance where the rate of violent crime is eight times the national average. The stories we have heard at the hearings we have held are unbelievable.

On the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation--it is almost the size of the State of Connecticut--they had nine full-time police officers to patrol over two million acres of land. It is not possible to do a good job with so few officers. In one area of that reservation, a violent sexual rape, a crime in progress, a robbery, and a call to the police might get someone there later that day, or it might be the next morning, or days later--nine police officers to patrol that land 24/7. That does not work.

We have passed a piece of legislation that I think is very good, the tribal law and order bill. It is bipartisan. I am proud of that. Senators Jon Kyl and John Barrasso worked with me to get this legislation through the Senate. Let me mention cosponsors Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Michael Bennet, Jeff Bingaman, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell, Mike Crapo, Al Franken, Tim Johnson, Joe Lieberman, Jeff Merkley, Lisa Murkowski, Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow, John Thune, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, Ron Wyden--so many. But there are so many who worked so long to try to respond to these problems.

The legislation deals with cross-deputization of law enforcement officers on Indian reservations and those off the reservation. We deal with the tribal court system and a wide range of provisions that we put in this legislation that are going to make a very big difference.

I have said on the floor previously that violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women has reached epidemic levels. We have heard it in the hearings and the testimony. One in three American Indian and Alaska Native women will be the victim of rape during her lifetime--one in three. That is an epidemic of violence.

We held 14 hearings in the Committee on Indian Affairs, which I chair, relating to public safety on Indian lands over the past 3 years. I had staff go across the Nation consulting with tribal governments and local law enforcement. Based on those consultations, we put together a piece of legislation that I think will make a very big difference. It strengthens the tribal justice system. It provides tools to law enforcement officers on the Indian reservations.

It will require the U.S. Attorney's Office to do its job. Violent crimes on Indian reservations are to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Offices, and in most cases those offices are many, many miles away from a reservation. Crime on Indian reservations becomes just a part of the backwater of work in those offices. We have information that 50 percent of murder cases on Indian reservations are declined for prosecution. They call them declinations. Think of that. In 50 percent of the cases, there is a declination of prosecution for the charge of murder. Nearly three-fourths of the cases for sexual assault are declined to be prosecuted. That is not fair, it is not tolerable, and we shouldn't stand for it.

We had a hearing with Chairman Herman Dillon of the Puyallup Tribe in Washington, who testified about the gang activity crisis on their reservation. There are 28 active gangs on that reservation, with members as young as 8 years old. The gangs are involved in drug trafficking, weapons sales, and turf wars where innocent bystanders are injured. This piece of legislation is going to increase the number of law enforcement personnel on reservations and provide better law enforcement training for those personnel.

I won't go through the stories we have heard, but they are unbelievable. There are a whole lot of victims out there living in Third World conditions on Indian reservations where they have inadequate health care, housing, and education. We have worked on all of those issues.

I am proud to say we passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act earlier this year. It is now signed into law. We did that this year. It is the first time in 17 years that the Congress has dealt with those issues.

Now we have passed the Tribal Law and Order Act. This is the most significant of policy changes and legislation affecting the first Americans that has been passed in decades. I want to say to my Republican and Democratic colleagues who worked with me to accomplish this that I believe lives will be saved because of this legislation. I believe this will make a profound difference across this country in addressing these critical issues.

We have had hearings about Mexican drug cartels now running drugs through Indian reservations. I just described the circumstances of gangs.

There is so much that needs to be done. Finally, at last--at long, long last--we start down the road of improvement by having passed this legislation. I talked to President Obama yesterday and mentioned the passage by the U.S. House of our bill. He campaigned on this issue. It was very strongly supported legislation, and I know he will take great pride in signing it.

Finally, with all of the competition and tension, sometimes, between the House and the Senate, let me say how much I appreciate the work the House of Representatives did on this legislation.

Let me make one final point about Indian policy as I complete my statement. There is one other issue that is out there that I think desperately needs to be resolved, and that is something called the Cobell lawsuit. It has been languishing for 15 years. Last December, there was an agreement reached between the U.S. Government and the Indians in the Cobell case. We were given 30 days in the Congress to approve the settlement, and it has not happened. We must, must, must find a way to make that happen soon.

I showed a picture of a woman living on an Indian reservation with oil wells that were hers that she could see from her house, and she lived in a very small house. Why is that the case? Because she didn't get the money from the oil wells she owned. The U.S. Government created trust accounts for Indians, and manipulated those trusts, stole from those trusts, lost the records from those trusts over 150 years, and that is what resulted in this lawsuit called the Cobell lawsuit. It has gone on for 15 years, and a good many Indians have died while that lawsuit has gone on who should have benefitted from that lawsuit.

There was a settlement agreement reached last December between the parties. We were given 30 days by the Federal court to approve the agreement, and now it is 6 months later and

nothing has happened. The first Americans don't deserve this treatment. I hope very soon that the Cobell settlement will be a part of a piece of legislation that is passed by the Senate.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

I apologize for interrupting the Senator. I didn't catch what she said about votes. Has there been a decision made about votes?

Well, that is actually fairly specific, though. It was sometime later about some things. I appreciate the Senator for responding to me.

I understand.

Mr. President, my high school English teacher always used to say: All right, let's review things. So let's review things just for a moment.

I have listened to some of this debate in the Senate today, and as best as I can tell, we have people standing, saying the deficit is a bad thing. I think there is general agreement about that in the Senate, and we have to do something about it. There is general agreement about that.

They say: We are going to make our last stand here on this deficit with respect to those who are out of work and who need extension of unemployment benefits. We were quick to give help to the wealthiest Americans, to the biggest investment banks that needed help. We gave hundreds of billions of dollars to those interests at the top of the economic ladder, who nearly ran the country right into the ditch. But those at the bottom of the ladder, who are out of work, who are unemployed, and who are having trouble, that is where they say they are making their last stand on deficits.

So let me try to understand this with a review. We are told the deficit is too high; that we cannot give help to the unemployed in the manner we used to give help to the unemployed. We always did that when there was an economic downturn. We have always done that. But, oh, by the way, what we need to do is to repeal the estate tax for the wealthiest individuals in America. I don't know. I took mathematics in a high school senior class of nine students, and I passed it at least. I can understand how things add up now and then. But I don't know how that adds up at all.

There are those coming to the floor of the Senate and having great apoplexy about giving help to the unemployed. By the way, some have even said: You give help to the unemployed, it just discourages them from work. Well, you know something, a guy told me the other day about a young third grader who was asked in his school--it was going to be his birthday--what he would like for his birthday; what kind of birthday present he would like. This little third grader said: A flashlight. The guy said: A flashlight? He said: Yes, so I can read at night. They turned off our electricity.

How many in this room would even understand having your electricity turned off and having a third grade son who can't read at night because there are no lights and asking for a flashlight as a gift? There is nobody in here who is unemployed--not one person in this room. This is a roomful of people who take their showers in the morning, not at night. They get up and put on a blue suit, a pressed white shirt and a tie and come to work--all fully employed--and we talk about the unemployed.

We are short 20 million jobs in this country. There are millions of people out of work. Five million manufacturing employees alone have lost their jobs in the last 9 years. As we ran into this deepest recession since the Great Depression, a whole lot of folks--yes, at the lower end of the economic ladder and in middle-income areas--have lost their jobs and can't find another job. When they worked, from their paychecks they paid a small premium for unemployment insurance. They paid for that insurance, and now they can't get the extension of that unemployment insurance in the Senate. Why? Because the last stand on deficits is to take place with respect to restricting the ability of those who are out of work from getting the funds to extend their unemployment benefits. That is the last stand.

Did my colleagues make that last stand with regard to the big investment banks that ran into trouble? No, not at all. They rushed that aid in on a pillow. Can we help you? How much do you need? But now that it is the folks at the bottom of the ladder, all of a sudden we don't have the capability.

Some of my colleagues just complained about speakers who wanted to talk about the past. You know, if you don't understand the past, you are destined to repeat it. I understand that neither side is much of a bargain--Republicans and Democrats. This country deserves more from both sides. I understand that. But I also understand what has caused this problem. I was on the floor of the Senate in February of 2001. By the way, when President Clinton left office 2 months prior to that we had the first budget surplus in 30 years--over $200 billion in surplus. President Bush said: You know, we have these projected surpluses now for 10 years. Let's get rid of them. Let's give big tax cuts, with the biggest by far going to the wealthiest Americans.

I stood on the floor and said: Let's be a little conservative. What if something happens? They said: You know what, we are going to give these tax cuts, and the biggest cuts are going to the wealthiest Americans. If you made $1 million a year, that bill gave you, I think, $80,000 a year in tax cuts. So everyone on that side voted for it. Absolutely. Happy to vote for it, to reduce this country's income. What happened? Very quickly, we ran into a recession. Then we had a terrorist attack against our country on 9/11. Then we were at war in Afghanistan, then at war in Iraq, and this Congress appropriated massive amounts of money as it sent young men and women to war and did not pay for one penny of it--not a penny. All of it went right onto the debt.

Those who cry the loudest on the floor of the Senate these days, right now, are the very ones who voted to reduce this country's income with the biggest benefits going to the wealthiest Americans. Yet now they come to us and say: Well, you know, now we are making our last stand for the unemployed--to prevent the unemployed from getting what they should get. By the way, while we are on the floor, they say: Why can't we repeal the estate tax that will help the wealthiest Americans?

Let me mention the estate tax for a moment. First of all, my colleague said death tax. He knows, and I know, there is no such thing as a death tax. If my colleague should die, his estate is not

taxed. His entire estate goes tax free, under current law, to his spouse. It is true this year there is zero estate tax for anybody, and my colleague didn't mention that was created in an architecture of tax cuts in 2001 that many of us voted against.

By the way, that turns out to have been just fundamentally goofy. They created estate tax relief that goes down, down, down, and down to zero in this year and then springs way back up in 2011. We didn't do that. That wasn't us. That was the other side. Now what they say is that they would like to repeal the estate tax altogether because they think it is a tax on death. It is not. It is a tax on inherited wealth and they know that.

But this year, because there is zero estate tax, about four billionaires have died and not one penny of their estate will be taxed and most of their estates were never taxed. They were growth appreciation of stocks and various assets never subject to a tax. Most people have an income and it is subject to a tax. They help send kids to school with that tax, pay to build roads, pay for police, pay for defense. But that runup in tax for the billionaires or that runup in income, I should say, has never borne a tax to support anything. My colleagues say: You know what, I want to make sure it doesn't ever bear a tax. Let's have the little folks pay a tax. Let's have the rest of the folks pay a tax but not the people at the top.

What an unbelievable irony that on the very day that we have people digging in the heels of their cowboy boots and saying we are making our last stand to prevent the unemployed from getting unemployment compensation they deserve--on the very day that they say we can't do that--they come to the floor of the Senate saying: But what we have to do as a priority is to relieve the richest Americans, the wealthiest Americans, of the obligation to pay estate tax. If there is any narrative that tells the American people whose side they are on, this little vignette describes it completely, in my judgment.

Let me mention that the reason it is important to understand how we got to this point is, we will never get out of it unless we understand that. A lot of my colleagues have been perfectly content for most of the decade standing on this floor deciding that we will ship men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight, but we will not pay for the cost of a penny of it. They have been perfectly content to do that. I have come to the floor of the Senate to say: You know what, sacrifice works a number of ways in this country. If we are going to ask young men and women to sacrifice their lives, to go 12,000 miles away and strap on body armor in the morning and risk their lives by going in harm's way, perhaps we could ask the American people to provide the money to pay for it.

I have proposed that in the Senate. President Bush, at one point, said: You all do that, and I will veto the bill. My colleagues were content to say: Let's spend the money and put it all on the deficit. We will send kids to war and they can come back and pay the bill. That is how we got here. The second portion of how we got here is about 10 years ago we passed what was then called financial reform. I voted against that as well. That said to the biggest financial institutions in this country: Katy bar the door. Do whatever you want. We will not watch. We are taking away the protections that existed since the Great Depression. We will not look and we will not care.

As a result, we saw in recent years unbelievable speculation and gambling. It was not business, it was just flatout gambling. We saw the creation of exotic instruments--CDOs, derivatives, credit default swaps, naked credit default swaps, and the like--and we saw unbelievable, rampant gaming going on as opposed to thoughtful investing in this country's future. As a result, this country nearly had an economic collapse.

It is important for us to understand how that happened because we had regulators come to town who were supposed to regulate, and they boasted about being business friendly: Don't worry, we will not look. There is a new sheriff in town and this sheriff doesn't have a weapon. So don't worry about it. Then we saw a decade go by in which this country's economy nearly collapsed. So that is how we got where we are. It is important for people to understand that.

They say: Let's not review the past, but let me review one final point. When President Obama walked through the White House door, had he gone to sleep for 12 months, had he done nothing at all, he would have had a $1.3 trillion budget deficit because that is what the previous President left him--$1.3 trillion on autopilot.

Having said all that, let me say this. This deficit, in my judgment, is unsustainable. It cannot continue. We have to diffuse it. This is a timebomb that will destroy this country's economy inevitably at some point. We can't have a government the size and cost of which is such that the American people are either unable or unwilling to pay for it. You can't do that. So we have to fix it, and we have to fix it together. But if we don't learn from what happened, if we don't understand the past decade of what happened--going from a $200 billion- a-year budget surplus to the largest deficits in history and to a near economic collapse--we are destined to repeat it.

Again, it seems to me that everybody here are people of good faith. I don't come here suggesting that there are people of bad faith here, but there are some people with bad judgment here, for sure. All you have to do is look at the record. Those who say: Let's don't look at the record, I guess they do not want the record to be understood. I think the only way we get out of this unbelievable deficit and debt trap is to understand what has caused it. I will tell you this for sure. We are not going to get out of this mess by having people come to the floor of the Senate and say that one of the biggest problems in the country is the death tax, when no such tax exists. What an unbelievable spoof. Death tax my eye. We have a tax on inherited wealth and the only people who have been paying it are the people at the upper income levels.

We have had a $3\1/2\ million-a-year exemption for the husband, and a $3\1/2\ million exemption for the wife. That was last year's exemption. That means you don't pay a penny unless you have $7 million clear, husband and wife. How many families have that? But that is not enough, my colleagues say. In the middle of all this economic trouble we face, in the middle of wars and a near economic collapse, what is their priority? Get rid of the so-called death tax, which doesn't exist, or perhaps I can rephrase it for them: Get rid of the tax on inherited wealth for the wealthiest of Americans.

These are billionaires' best friends, I guess. I have nothing against billionaires. I guess I wish I was one. But when billionaires die, they, I think, ought to expect to be able to contribute something to this country. It is unbelievable to me. I hope people have listened to this discussion today and understand that their priority is to eliminate the estate tax, the tax on inherited wealth, which would only apply to the wealthiest Americans. It is unbelievable to me.

I have seen other unbelievable things, some of which have led to this current economic trouble. I hope perhaps in calmer times and perhaps more sober times we can discuss the best of what both parties have to offer this country because I think both parties do make a contribution.

We cannot wait much longer. This is not something we can delay, it is not something we can decide to postpone. This country is in trouble. We have a deep Federal budget deficit. It comes from the steepest decline in the economy since the 1930s. As a result of that decline, we have victims at the bottom of this economic ladder who have not had work, in some cases for 2 years. They wake up in the morning feeling helpless and hopeless, wondering, How on Earth can I find a job? What do I tell my family today?

This Congress, in my judgment, ought to at least pay as much attention to those folks at the bottom of the economic ladder as it has paid in the last 2 years to the interests at the top of the economic ladder. We shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars toward those at the top--the most comfortable pillows to make them rest, the medicine to calm their nerves. But when it comes to the people at the bottom, Will Rogers had it best. Here is what Will Rogers said 80 years ago and it applies today in this Chamber. Will Rogers said: ``The unemployed here ain't eating regular but we'll get around to

them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK.''

Let me say this. A whole lot of other folks got fixed up at the top of the economic ladder, at the top of this country's economy. A whole lot of folks got fixed up and it is the case that the unemployed here ``ain't eating regular,'' and this Congress, this Senate ought to care about that. It is part of our responsibility. Then let's get about the business of having a real debate, a thoughtful rather than thoughtless debate about all of the issues that affect us, such as spending and taxing, and let's use real terms, not things like ``death taxes'' that come from a pollster who decides they want to fool people. Let's use real terms in serious discussions between adults and try to figure out how we fix what is wrong with this country to put this country back on track.

This country deserves better. It is the first generation of Americans, I think, that believes its kids are not going to do as well as they did. We have to change that. This country has a lot to offer with a good future if we make some good decisions going forward.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, my understanding is that all time has now been used.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I yield back our time.

Mr. President, last week I received notice from a North Dakota constituent about a funeral that was held on Friday. The funeral was for Syl Metzger from Langdon, ND. Reading about the life of this extraordinary man reminded me again about how much we owe to people we seldom thank.

Syl Metzger was not a politician or a business executive or celebrity. But he was a hero. He was one of what Tom Brokaw called the ``greatest generation.'' He was one of those young Americans who seven decades ago was called on by his country to put on a uniform, pick up a rifle, and wage the fight for freedom half way around the world.

Syl Metzger landed on the beaches of Normandy during the D-day invasion. He fought in the campaign in northern Europe, including the Battle of the Bulge. The fights that he and his fellow soldiers waged have become legendary.

Following the Second World War, all across our country those young soldiers returned home and lived down the street, up the block, or out on the farm, and seldom spoke of their experiences in World War II. They became the members of the community who you could count on to do things. They built homes, schools, and communities and became the glue that made America work. Because they knew the horrors of war and the pain of losing fellow soldiers in the battlefield, they perhaps more than any other Americans treasured the freedoms that they had risked their lives to save.

Now with the passage of time those young soldiers have become older Americans, in many cases reaching their ninth decade of life. Every day across this country, friends and neighbors gather in the sanctuary of a local church to say goodbye to a relative or an old friend. In many cases, only then do they remember and celebrate the heroic commitment of service to our country by those American patriots.

It was Syl Metzger's son who informed me of his father's death. I had met Syl Metzger only once last fall when he and a group of World War II veterans came to Washington, DC, on an Honor Flight to see the World War II Memorial. So our lives touched only briefly. But when his son sent me the e-mail about his funeral, it reminded me again that he and his fellow soldiers did things for our country that touched all of our lives. Yet we seldom understand the magnitude of their sacrifice and the benefit of their courage that was a gift to all Americans.

God bless the memory of Syl Metzger and the rest of the ``greatest generation.'' America says thank you.

Mr. President, I will vote for the conference report on financial reform. Before I describe why I think it is essential to vote in favor, let me compliment Senator Dodd. We have had some differences on some issues, but that is not unusual. What is unusual is when a piece of legislation this complicated, this consequential, and this large gets to this point so we will have a final vote and it will go to the President for signature. It is going to make a difference. It is not all I would want. I would have written some of it differently. But there are provisions in this legislation that will prevent that which happened that nearly caused this country to have a complete economic collapse. That was the purpose of writing the legislation.

This bill on financial reform establishes a new independent bureau, housed at the Federal Reserve Board but not reporting to it, dedicated to protecting consumers from abusive financial products and practices. It puts in place systems to ensure taxpayer funds will not be used for Wall Street bailouts in the future. It creates an advanced warning system, looking out for troubled institutions to make sure we understand who they are and where they are, those whose failure would threaten financial markets and the economy. It imposes some curbs on proprietary trading and hedge fund ownership by banks. There are a number of things that are salutatory and important.

The vote this afternoon is a starting point, not an ending point. I make the point by showing the headlines that exist in the newspapers these days about the fact that there will be substantial amounts of work done to try to curb activities even in the executive branch with respect to rules and regulations which are now essential.

I ask the Senator from Connecticut, my understanding is Republicans have 10 minutes. I began the process because the Republican Senator was not here to claim that. I will be happy to cease at this point, if he wishes to take his 10 minutes, and then complete my statement, or I could complete my statement with more time.

Probably 7 more minutes or so.

I appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Nebraska.

We all understand why this legislation is trying to prevent this from ever happening again. I have shown this on the floor many times. This was from a credit company called Zoom advertising mortgages. We ran up to a near collapse of the economy with companies advertising this: Credit approval is just seconds away. Get on the fast track at Zoom Credit. At the speed of light, Zoom Credit will preapprove you for a car loan, a home loan, a credit card, even if your credit is in the tank.

Then it says: Zoom Credit is like money in the bank. We specialize in credit repair and debt consolidation. Bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit? Who cares?

We wonder how this country got in trouble. Today on the Internet this exists. Nothing has changed. Speedy, bad credit loans. If you want to get a loan, you have bad credit, go to the Internet to this site. I am not advertising for them because clearly it is probably a bunch of shylocks running this operation. Bad credit, no credit, bankruptcy, no problem, no downpayment, no delays. Come to us, if you want money. Unbelievable.

This is on the Internet today. It describes why we have to pass this legislation and what we are trying to do to protect the American consumer and why regulations that come from this are so important. Easy loan for you. Instant approval. Regardless of your credit score or history, approval is guaranteed.

This sort of nonsense is not good business. It is not a sensible way to do things. It is what nearly bankrupted this country.

Wall Street Journal, July 14, let me read the first sentence: Shirley Davis, 66 years old, retired phone company administrator, lives in Brooklyn, NY, is more than $33,000 dollars in debt, earns $2,400 a month, filed for bankruptcy last month. Shortly before that, she ripped open an envelope from Capitol One Financial Corporation which pitched her a credit card, even though it sued her 4 years ago to recover $4,400 she owed on a different credit card from the same bank.

She is quoting now from the letter from Capital One:

At some point we lost you as a customer, and we would like

to get you back.

Mrs. Davis said she was stunned. ``Even I wouldn't give me a credit card at this point.''

It is still going on. It is why passing this conference report is so essential.

Would I have written it differently? Yes. I would have restored part of Glass-Steagall. Ten years ago that was taken apart. Those protections were put in place after the last Great Depression, and they protected this country for 70 years or so. It should have been put back together.

I would ban the trading of naked credit default swaps. That is betting, not investing. I would have done that.

I would have imposed more aggressive curbs on proprietary trading by

banks. If the taxpayer has to underwrite you as a commercial bank, you ought not have a casino atmosphere in your lobby.

Having said that, what was done in this legislation is a very substantial beginning. It is not an ending, No. 1. No. 2, the regulatory agencies now have to do a lot of work to make this bill work, to make this bill effective, to stop what happened from ever happening again.

Finally, I believe there will be an additional need to legislate in the future to address some of the things I mentioned.

I believe the work done to get to this point in a Chamber in which it is very difficult for us to accomplish anything is a success. I commend my colleague, Senator Dodd from Connecticut, and others who worked on this legislation in a thoughtful way to try to decide how we can stop this sort of thing. We all understood it. We heard these things on the radio and television. Massive loans, they would securitize them. They would trade the securities back up in derivatives and credit default swaps. Everybody was making money on all sides, but they were building a house of cards that came down and nearly collapsed this entire country's economy.

A lot of people, as I speak today, are still paying the price. They got up this morning without a job, millions and millions of them. They can't find work. They are the victims of this cesspool of greed we have watched for far too long. This legislation has great merit in advancing solutions to these issues. That is why I will vote yes. Is it perfect? No. Is it an end point? No. It is a starting point in a process that is very important.

I hope in the months ahead those who are charged with creating the regulatory environment to fix this, to implement this legislation, will get it right because they have the opportunity the way this is written to get this right if they are smart and effective and want to protect this country's economy.

Thanks to those who put this together. I intend to cast my vote as yes.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, sometimes on the floor of the Senate, good friends disagree--perhaps not as often as some would think, but on occasion that is the case, and it is the case today, when I observed and listened to a presentation by my colleague from New Jersey on the subject of Cuba. I am sure we do not disagree about some parts of this subject; that is, I do not like the Cuban Government. I want freedom for the Cuban people. We, I assume, both believe that and believe the imprisonment of political prisoners in Cuba--who languish in Cuban jails for exercising their right of free speech and who are doing that in dark cells--is wholly unfair and we should as a country do everything we can to try to bring the vestige of freedom to the Cuban people. I understand all that. I support that strongly.

I have been to Cuba. I have spoken to Cuban Government leaders. I have spoken to dissidents. I have spoken to people on the streets of Cuba. And I want Cuba, an island 90 miles off the shore of our country, to be a free country.

Let me describe how long Cuba has had Communist rule and, by the way, how many Presidents we have had during that Communist rule and, therefore, the embargo that has been leveled against Cuba all these years. Let me describe how many Presidencies that embargo has existed through. The Presidencies begin with John F. Kennedy and go through this administration. That is 10 Presidencies.

We slapped an embargo on the country of Cuba and punished the American people in the process by saying: We are going to limit your right to travel to Cuba. And we were going to shut off all commerce to Cuba, including, by the way, most of these years, a restriction on sending food and medicine to Cuba.

The embargo has not seemed to work very well. It is now 50 years old, and it still exists. Well, what has happened as a result of the embargo? We have now a debate about what should happen with respect to our relationship with Cuba at this point. My colleagues say: Well, don't do anything that would reward the Cuban Government. Far from it. I have no interest in rewarding a government that I substantially disagree with, a government that I believe throws innocent people in jail. I have no interest, nor do the people who support the bill Senator Enzi and I have now offered in the Senate, with 40 Senators cosponsoring it--we have no interest in rewarding the Cuban Government. That is not the issue. But we do believe the restriction on the American people's rights--the decision by a government that says: We are going to tell the American people where they can and cannot travel--we believe that is inappropriate. We do believe that ought to change.

So what I would like to do is talk about a couple things, including, No. 1, lifting the travel ban to Cuba and making it easier to sell food to Cuba.

I was the person who changed the law 10 years ago that allowed for the first time just a crack in this embargo that allows us to sell food into Cuba if it is paid for with cash. I think it is immoral for a countty to use food as a foreign policy weapon. I do not think food ought to be part of any embargo. I think that is immoral.

By the way, using food as a part of an embargo just hurts poor, sick, and hungry people. Do you think the Castro brothers have missed breakfast or lunch or dinner because we had an embargo on food shipments to Cuba? Hardly. So 10 years ago, I got the law changed. In fact, it was the Dorgan-Ashcroft amendment. I got the law changed. That allowed us to begin selling food into the country of Cuba. That was the first opportunity to make any changes at all in this embargo.

Now the question is travel to Cuba by the American people. Should we continue to say to the American people: You have no right to travel to Cuba. We do not like the Cuban Government, so what we are going to do is restrict the rights of the American people? We have been doing that for 50 years, and it is time--long past the time--for it to change.

Let me describe a letter that came recently to the House of Representatives.

By the way, the reason this issue has now come to the forefront is the Agriculture Committee of the House of Representatives just passed a bill that lifts the travel restrictions on the American people to travel to Cuba. It also makes some changes in the conditions under which agricultural goods can be sold to Cuba, which is very important to do as well because even though 10 years ago I got the provision enacted into law that allows the sale of farm products for cash into Cuba, in 2003, as a runup to the 2004 election, President Bush tightened all of those provisions and actually changed a rule so that in order for Cuba to purchase goods from our country; that is, agricultural commodities, they had to pay in cash before the commodities were even shipped. Well, that never happens in a transaction. You pay cash when you get the goods. But President Bush was attempting to restrict the sale of agricultural products to Cuba. So we need to fix that as well.

But the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee has now passed a bill lifting the travel ban. That means this issue is going to be front and center here in the Senate. Senator Enzi and I have the bill-- it is bipartisan--that would lift the travel ban to Cuba, and we have 40 Senators who are cosponsors.

Let me read to you a letter that was sent to the U.S. House of Representatives by 74 Cuban human rights leaders, dated May 30, 2010, just a month and a half ago. They said:

The supportive presence of American citizens, their direct

help, and the many opportunities for exchange, used

effectively and in the desired direction, would not be an

abandonment of Cuban civil society but rather a force to

strengthen it. Similarly, to further facilitate the sale of

agricultural products would help alleviate the food shortages

we now suffer.

The current Cuban government has always violated this right

[to travel] and in recent years has justified its actions

with the fact that the government of the United States

also restricts its citizens' freedom to travel. The passage

of this bill would remove this spurious justification.

This is not from me or the cosponsors of my bill; this is from 74 Cuban human rights leaders.

As to the issue of lifting the travel ban--the one we have slapped on the American people in order to punish somebody else; we have punished the American citizens because we are upset with somebody else--here are people who support lifting the travel ban: a political prisoner, Marcelo Rodriquez from Cuba; Guillermo Farinas, a hunger striker in Cuba; Yoani Sanchez, one of the leading political bloggers in Cuba; Oscar Chepe, a former political prisoner; and Miriam Leiva, founder of the Ladies in White.

One of my colleagues recently had a poster I saw about the Ladies in White. The founder of the Ladies in White supports lifting this travel ban. They are not soft on Castro or soft on a Communist government. They just believe this travel ban should be lifted because it will be beneficial to their interests as leaders in human rights in the country of Cuba.

The sacrifices of those whom I have shown here in photographs, the sacrifices they have made in Cuba--sitting in dark prison cells, hunger strikes, and more--I think give them great credibility when they speak out on what is the best way to promote democracy in Cuba.

I indicated that I got a law passed that allowed us to sell some food into Cuba for cash. Since that time, U.S. farmers have sold $3.2 billion worth of food to Cuba. I mentioned that in 2003 the Bush administration decided to dramatically change that to try to restrict the sale of agricultural products to Cuba, and they succeeded in some respects. We need to change that as well. It makes no sense to do what they did in 2003.

But let me try to describe what was done in 2003 so that everybody understands what happened. The President, trying to get tough in 2003, eliminated the people-to-people visits program with Cuba; eliminated secondary school education travel with Cuba; restricted family travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans; restricted amateur athletic travel; prohibited gift parcels with clothing, personal hygiene items, soap- making equipment, and so on; restricted religious travel; and then also imposed the cash-before-shipment rule in order to restrict the sale of agricultural commodities to Cuba. So that is where we have been with respect to what happened in the previous administration.

President Obama has taken some unilateral actions since taking office. He has removed the restrictions on Cuban Americans who want to visit Cuba for family visits, and he has authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to sell their services in Cuba. I think he should go further immediately, and I think he has the capability to do that by restoring people-to-people visits to Cuba, permanently restoring the original definition of the term ``payment of cash in advance'' so that farmers can continue to sell agricultural products to Cuba. And especially, we need here in the Congress to pass S. 428, which is the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act.

The American people have the right to travel almost anywhere they wish. They could travel to Russia in the middle of the Cold War. In fact, we sent our philharmonic orchestra, in 1959, right at the height of the Cold War, to play music in Communist Russia. They were not restricted. There is no travel restriction with respect to Russia.

The New York Philharmonic, in 2008, went to North Korea. And if you want to get a lump in your throat and feel really proud, go get the recording, the DVD, watching the New York Philharmonic play a concert in North Korea. It is extraordinary. But they were not prohibited from traveling to North Korea because you can travel to North Korea.

You can travel to the country of Iran. This picture is from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is the office down in the bowels of the Treasury Department that determines how they are going to enforce the travel ban to Cuba. They say:

All transactions ordinarily incident to travel to or from

Iran . . . are permitted.

So let's review. You could travel to Russia in the middle of the Cold War. You can travel to Iran right now. You can travel to North Korea right now. North Korea is a Communist country. You can travel to China right now. China is a Communist country. You can travel to Vietnam right now. Vietnam is a Communist country. By the way, with respect to China, I am cochair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China. We have the world's most complete database of political prisoners held in China. There are very serious problems in China with respect to imprisonment of innocent people who are now sitting in the dark corners of cells in the farthest reaches of China, political prisoners, and we don't decide because of that we are not going to allow travel or trade with China or Vietnam. We have decided that engagement through travel and trade is the most productive way to move those countries toward greater human rights. It is only with Cuba that our country has decided it is not a strategy that works at all. What works is punishing the American people.

So what we have done is decided we are going to punish the American people who wish to travel to Cuba by tracking them down--by diverting somewhere around 25 percent of the resources in the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is a little office in the Treasury Department that is supposed to be working on tracking financing by terrorists. Instead, about a quarter of their time, I am told, is used to try to track American tourists who are being suspected of vacationing in Cuba. When they track them down, they get after them. They want to levy a big fine.

I have described previously, and I will again, because my colleague who presented used a lot of posters to show what the circumstances are, but here is what the Office of Foreign Assets Control says with respect to travel to Cuba by an American citizen:

Unless otherwise authorized, any person subject to U.S.

jurisdiction who engages in any travel-related transaction in

Cuba violates the regulations.

So what does that mean? What are the consequences? Well, it means we are punishing the American people saying: We restrict your right to travel. So Carlos Lazo, a man whom I have met and who went to Iraq to fight for his country and who won a Bronze Star because he was brave and was a great soldier, came back to this country after having served his country in uniform, was awarded with great fanfare a Bronze Medal for bravery, and then was told, when he was informed--he had two sons living in Cuba and his older son was sick--you have no right to travel to Cuba to see your sick child. Unbelievable. In fact, I even forced a vote in the Senate on this question.

Sergeant Lazo, back from Iraq, with a sick son in Cuba was told: You have no right to travel. Unbelievable. Yet that was the case.

I have shown this photograph many times, but it is useful to describe how unbelievably foolish these policies are. This is Joan Scott. The Presiding Officer knows Joan Scott as well. She went to Havana to distribute free Bibles on the streets of Havana. For that, her government tracked her down and tried to fine her $10,000. For going to Cuba to distribute free Bibles, this government is going to track its citizens down to try to fine them $10,000.

I have met Joan Slote as well. She was riding bicycles in Cuba. She joined a Canadian bicycle tour and took a bicycle trip to Cuba. This government of ours tracked her down and tried to fine her $10,000. By the way, this woman, I think, made $1,100 a month in Social Security, and her government decided to try to attach her Social Security payments. What was her transgression? What was her crime? She took a bicycle trip to Cuba as an American citizen.

I don't think there needs to be said very much more about this. This is the most unbelievable policy with respect to Cuba. I have been to Vietnam, I have been to China--both Communist countries. We decided engagement through trade and travel is constructive. It works. It is why I assume the legislation Senator Enzi and I have offered is cosponsored by Senator Lugar, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Dodd, the chairman of the Banking Committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. They are part of the 40 Senators who have cosponsored legislation saying to our government: Would you stop

punishing the American people because you are upset with somebody else, and would you stop being so unbelievably inconsistent?

Don't tell us that trade and travel is a constructive way to deal with Communist countries and then tell us that dealing with Cuba 90 miles off our shore requires us to punish the American people by restricting their right to travel.

I say again: What right does this government have to tell an American citizen where they can travel? They can go to North Korea, Iran, China, Vietnam, but not travel to Cuba. That is obscene. It makes no sense to me. Aside from we ought to stop doing stupid things, aside from just that notion, we surely ought to decide that it is not in the interests of this country to have its government telling people how, when, and where they can travel.

I wish to finish by just saying this again. I don't deny there are substantial human rights abuses in Cuba. I have been there. I have talked to the dissidents. I have talked to the Cuban people who have come to this country who know of, who have seen, who have watched the unbelievable lack of human rights that exist in that country. So that is not the point. The point isn't to deny the charts that people show on the floor of the Senate showing abuse. I could bring to the floor of the Senate, as chairman of the commission that deals with China, dozens of photographs of Chinese prisoners held in the darkest cells in the farthest reaches of China who have done nothing but are suffering. But we have not decided as a country that we will restrict the American people's right to go to China because that exists in China. We have set quite the opposite policy. We believe the best way to promote a march toward greater human rights in China and Vietnam and elsewhere is through trade and travel. That is the construction that this country has taken for a long while, except with respect to Cuba. In that circumstance, we say, no, we must, we must, we must prevent Americans from traveling to Cuba.

I say, again, 74 leading Cuban human rights leaders have signed a letter sent to us from Havana, Cuba--74 of them--and have said: Lift this travel ban. This travel ban makes no sense. You want to help Cuba? You want to help the people of Cuba? Lift this travel ban.

I also would say again, if I can find the chart that I had, the very brave citizens in Cuba who have spoken out and who are widely recognized, who have suffered: Marcelo Rodriquez, Yoani Sanchez, Guillermo Farinas, Oscar Chepe, and Miriam Leiva, all of them have suffered in Cuba. All of them believe this travel ban ought to be lifted.

I hope this Senate pays some attention to that and finally sees we can't do two things at the same time: No. 1, stop punishing the American people because we disagree with another country's government and, No. 2, do smart things that allow us to find ways to push and move that government toward greater human rights for its citizens.

Lifting the travel ban will accomplish both because there are 40 of us in the Senate who have sponsored and cosponsored legislation to lift that travel ban. When we have the opportunity for that vote in the Senate, I believe we will prevail at last--at long last--and we will prevail, and it will be constructive public policy for this country to have done so. Certainly, it will have lifted the yolk of oppression by a government that restricts the rights of its own citizens--I am talking about our government--that will lift the yolk of oppression that has existed for some 50 years by a government that tells its citizens where it can and cannot travel.

I don't want to hear any more about a government that tracks down a guy from the State of Washington whose father was a minister in a small church in Cuba, who immigrated to this country, and his father died and his father's last wish was that his ashes would be strewn on the church property in Cuba where he was a minister. So his son carried out his father's wish. He went to Cuba and took his father's ashes to the church where he once served and deposited them on the lawn by that church. For that his government tracked him down and attempted to levy a very substantial fine on that young man from the State of Washington.

I am tired of those stories. Those stories are an embarrassment about public policy gone wrong, and we need to fix it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 20, the Senate resume consideration of the House message to company H.R. 4213; that the motion to reconsider be agreed to and the Senate then proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 4213, with amendment No. 4425.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 3 and 4, treaty documents 111-1 and 111-3; that the treaties be considered as having advanced through the various parliamentary stages up to and including the presentation of the resolution of ratification; that any committee reservations and declarations be agreed to as applicable; that any statements be printed in the Record; further, that when the votes on the resolutions of ratification are taken, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask for a division vote on each of the resolutions of ratification.

Mr. President, I understand that H.R. 5712 has been received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

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

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for such time as I may consume.

Madam President, the to-do list in the Congress, and especially in the Senate, is long and difficult. We have witnessed all of this year a determined minority to act as a set of human brake pads. The minority has tried to stop almost everything in the Senate, including providing extended unemployment benefits for those who are out of work during the country's deepest recession since the Great Depression. It is unbelievable to me.

It seems to me everyone should understand that when we are in a deep recession, as we have been--and we are coming out of it--that is the time to extend unemployment benefits because it is necessary to do. Yet it, too, has gotten caught in this trap of saying no to everything.

I wish to go over just a bit of the to-do list in the Senate. First and foremost, there is no question that one of the most significant challenges facing this country is debt and deficits. Everybody understands that. The question is, How do we deal with it?

The President is criticized for describing what he took over, but it is pretty important. You go to a rental car dealership and they want you to look around and see what the car is like before you rent it, right? This President ran for President, but when he took over this economy, had he done nothing, not lifted a finger, the Federal budget deficit was going to be $1.3 trillion. On the first month of his Presidency, the economy he was left with had 680,000 people losing their jobs in that month.

This economy was in steep decline. That is what he inherited. It is not my taking a half hour to describe what was wrong in the previous 8 years, it is stating the obvious. What do we try to do about that?

Well, the President has created this commission to try to address the deficits and debt that have come from this steep economic decline. When a country is experiencing a very deep recession, there is less revenue coming in. We were losing about $400 billion in revenue that we used to get. And then we have higher expenditures going out because we have the economic stabilizers that we pay for in order to help people during times of economic distress. So we had these unbelievable Federal budget deficits. That is not surprising. That will happen when there is a very steep economic downturn.

But we can't, it seems to me, go into this with a structural imbalance, as we had, and then have a deep recession and have deficits explode and then not have a plan to deal with them. So the question is for all of us--the President and the Congress--what do we do?

The President has created a high-level bipartisan commission to say: All right, come up with a set of recommendations by the end of this year of what we can do. What are the range of issues with everything on the table? Yes, discretionary spending, military spending, entitlements, all of it. What is the menu necessary to put this country back on track?

In 2001, President Bush proposed very large tax cuts. I voted no on the floor of the Senate, and I said the reason I am voting no is that I don't think we should provide 10 years of very large tax cuts just because we had a surplus the last year of Bill Clinton's Presidency. We had a budget surplus--the first budget surplus we had in 30 years. They estimated that not only would we have a budget surplus that year, but we would have surpluses for the next 10 years.

I said: Let's be a little conservative. What if something happens? What if we don't have the surpluses?

They said: Don't worry about that; let's give large tax cuts--and the bulk of it, by the way, went to the wealthiest Americans. Without my vote, that passed. It did a lot of strange things.

Among the tax cuts was a cut in the estate tax that took the estate tax over these 9 years down, down, down, and down so that this year we have a zero estate tax. Think of that. The estate tax in this country this year is zero. We have about 400 billionaires in America. I believe four of them have died in this year. This is the ``Throw Mama From the Train'' year, as the title of the movie goes. This is the year when, if you have a lot of money and you are going to go, this is the year, I suppose, and those who are related to you might think there is divine providence here.

Let me put up this chart. In today's newspaper, it says George Steinbrenner, the colorful owner of the New York Yankees, died. I didn't know George Steinbrenner, but he was quite an extraordinary man, I am sure--a successful businessman and a controversial owner of the New York Yankees. But he was also a billionaire. Today, the Washington Post talks about the fact that this year the estate tax is at zero, so his estate will have no tax obligation at all.

Let me just observe that for the largest estates, most of the wealth comes from the appreciation of assets over the years and has never been taxed. So it has never had to bear a tax to send kids to school or build roads or provide for police or provide for our defense needs-- none of it. We have had four billionaires die this year. And we have this goofy process, which the previous administration created, to go to a zero estate tax this year and then spring back to an estate tax next year. It is just nutty.

Do you want to know how to reduce the Federal budget deficit? How about fixing a few of these things. That ought to be on the to-do list. It is embarrassing, it seems to me, for those who

understand fiscal policy and understand there is a responsibility for all Americans not just to be glad they are Americans, but also to participate in the things Americans have to participate in together, that that includes paying some taxes, yes, and some estate taxes. It is embarrassing that we have a zero estate tax for the wealthiest Americans at this point. That makes no sense to me.

We have a proposed extension of the tax cuts for middle-income workers that comes from the 2001 tax bill that President Bush pushed through this Congress. One of my colleagues was on a show this Sunday and said: Well, we want to also give a tax cut to the top 2 percent of the American income earners. The moderator of the show said: That is going to cost 680-some billion dollars in lost revenue. How do you pay for that?

My colleague, who talks about the Federal budget deficits a lot and the need to deal with them, said: We don't have to pay for tax cuts.

It seems to me basic arithmetic books allow us to add 1 and 1 and get 2--from time to time, at least. So we are going to deal with the Federal budget deficits by extending income tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans? We are going to deal with the Federal budget deficits by having a zero estate tax obligation for somebody who dies and has a billion or billions of dollars?

What about the notion of going to war twice, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not paying a penny for it? We have all of these gatherings to say goodbye--particularly in the National Guard--to a National Guard unit that will be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. We say Godspeed and be safe. When they come home, we say welcome home. We do everything except pay the bill. We send them to war, have them strap on ceramic body armor in the morning, walk in harm's way and get shot at. But this Congress doesn't have the courage to decide that we ought to pay for wars we are fighting. All of it has been piled on the debt.

Some of us stood in this well and said let's pay for it, and we were told if we do that and try to pay for it, the President will veto it because we are trying to raise revenue. That is right, raising revenue to pay for the cost of sending America's men and women in uniform to fight for this country. It used to be essential, not optional. It was the moral and responsible thing to do. All of this has been charged and added to the debt. So the soldiers go fight and come home, and they will pay the bill as well. That makes no sense to me.

I have described at great length the tax avoidance going on in this country. I described that some of the highest income earners get to pay 15 percent carried interest. They get to pay some of the lowest tax rates, and that is not enough. Some of them are running them through tax haven countries and are playing deferred compensation games in order to avoid paying anything. They want all that America has to offer except responsibility to pay their taxes.

That is true with some very large American corporations as well. The company that was drilling out in the gulf--the licensed company drilling for BP--Transocean had, I believe, 1,200 employees in Houston, TX, and 12 employees in Switzerland. What was the deal there? Well, they moved their home office to Switzerland, despite the fact that they just had a dozen employees there and they had 1,200 in Houston. Why did they do that? To avoid paying taxes, I assume.

There is a to-do list. Maybe we can shut down some of these schemes. How about an estate tax for estates worth billions of dollars, or paying for the cost of war as our soldiers are asked to go fight it? Cutting spending--some come out here and talk about cutting spending. I support that--in the right way. We have a lot of areas where Federal agencies can tighten their belts. By the way, it is one thing to talk about it, it is another thing to do it.

Some years ago, when I came to the Congress, there was $46 million allocated to build a new Federal courthouse in Fargo, ND. I said I thought that was outrageous. Yes, it is in my State, but I thought it was outrageous. I cut it to $23 million--from $46 million to $23 million--in half--and the courthouse got built for $19 billion. That was in my State. I was critical of spending in my own State.

I have come to the floor recently critical of what is being proposed to be spent on the small northern border ports of entry, which I think is an excessive amount of money. Yes, those are in my State as well. I think we all ought to take a hard look at Federal spending and look at where we can and should begin to make some cuts.

Finally, when we talk about deficits--we talk a lot about budget deficits. But nobody talks much about the trade deficit. This morning there was a story: Trade deficit jumps to $42 billion, economists downgrade growth forecasts. I wrote a book about this several years ago. I described in that book, in great detail, what is happening: shipping jobs overseas, going in search of low-wage countries where they can move their production in order to produce and sell the product back in our country. All of that ratchets up this unbelievable deficit. We have had trade deficits in recent years, with $700 billion and $800 billion in merchandise trade deficits. The budget deficit is money that we are going to owe to ourselves. We cannot make that case with the trade deficit. We owe that to other countries, and we are going to repay that with a lower standard of living in our country someday.

This is not just about deficits, it is about jobs. When we run these kinds of deficits and see plants and factories closing in this country--5 million factory workers have lost their jobs because we see this unbelievable drain of jobs leaving our country in search of lower wages elsewhere. We have to address this, and we have to address it in the right way. I will talk about that at some point, on another day. It is not rocket science to understand that debt is debt and deficits are deficits. We have to address these issues.

Now, one other point on this economy. I was on a program the other day on CNBC. They said: What about this notion that because of what you are doing on promoting additional regulations on Wall Street and other issues, you are antibusiness--you Democrats in Congress and the Democratic administration are antibusiness?

I have heard a couple of CEOs say that. I said: You know, it is byzantine to me. If you want to run a big company in this country and do business here and look at something that is antibusiness, look at Wall Street and see what they did. See the cesspool of greed they created with a bubble of speculation that was unprecedented in the history of this country--selling and buying things that had no value, wagering rather than investing, using exotic instruments such as credit default swaps and much more, and planting loans out there for homeowners who could not repay them--giving a $780,000 home loan to somebody making $18,000 a year, creating liars loans, saying: Come and get a loan from us, and you don't have to disclose your income. It is called a no-doc loan. Come and get a loan from us, and you don't have to disclose your income or pay any principal the first year--or come and get a loan from us, but don't tell us your income, don't pay any principal the first year, or any interest, and we will make the first 12 payments for you.

Then what would they do, Countrywide mortgage? They would take these loans, pay big bonuses to the people who put the loans out there--the brokers--and wrap them into securities and sell the securities up to hedge funds, investment banks, and they were all making massive profits. Then we had others who would look at these securities and make credit default swaps--wagers on whether these bonds would be good.

What was going on in this country is unbelievable. The whole thing was a house of cards, and it came collapsing down. Now we decide we are going to put regulations in place to say: You cannot do that anymore. You damn near ruined this country's economy, and we won't let you do it anymore.

One of the top manufacturing CEOs in this country said it is antibusiness--the administration is antibusiness. It is not antibusiness to put into place effective, tough regulations to say: Do business the right way. If you do what you have been doing, we are going to put handcuffs on you because it almost ruined this country's economy.

It is not antibusiness to insist that business be done in the right way, when in the basement of the SEC four companies came in to get the SEC, in

the last decade, to change the rules so they could go from 12 times leverage to 30 times leverage, and they did it with almost no notice from everybody, with all these handshakes that go on.

When that goes on and regulators say: You know what. Don't worry. It is going to be a new business-friendly place. We won't look. Do what you want. We don't care--when that all happened and it caused the near collapse of the American economy and our way of life, we have a right, it seems to me, without being called antibusiness, to say there needs to be effective regulators and regulations to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote the lead story for the Washington Monthly magazine, and the title was ``Very Risky Business.'' That was the lead story in the Washington Monthly magazine that I wrote 16 years ago.

What was it about? It was about banks in America trading derivatives on their own proprietary accounts. I said then that we just as well put a blackjack table in their lobby. That is just gambling. We ought not allow it. We know who is going to pick up the bill--the American taxpayer.

It was 11 years ago on the floor of this Senate that I stood up and opposed repealing the laws from the Great Depression--Glass-Steagall and others--that were put in place to protect our country, that separated banking from securities and prohibited certain practices that led to the Great Depression. Then, all of a sudden, it is time to modernize; that is old-fashioned. The proposal to repeal those laws went through here like a hot knife through butter. Eight of us voted no--eight of us. I stood on the floor of the Senate and said: I think within a decade we are going to see massive taxpayer bailouts. I did not have a crystal ball; I just felt this was an unbelievable mistake.

The fact is, we have a right and a responsibility to put together effective regulatory mechanisms that will prevent this from happening again. I understand there are interests out there that will howl so loud, you will hear them coast to coast. It does not matter. This is about what is best for the American people, what is best for this country's economy to expand and create jobs once again.

The to-do list, as I indicated, is fairly lengthy. I have not touched a number of issues. The most important point, obviously, is to find a way to create new jobs.

As I indicated, it is like a bathtub where you have a faucet and a drain. The faucet is, we need to try to create conditions in which new jobs will be created. How do we do that? We give people confidence about the future. It is hard to have confidence when you take a look at the economic circumstances of this country right now. If people are confident, they do things that manifest that confidence and the economy expands. That is our responsibility to do.

Even as we try to provide more confidence, that means tackling tough issues that will give people a feeling that they can expect a better future, can make investments, can hire people. That is part of the faucet--to put new jobs into this economy. We also need to plug the drain. Every single day, we have jobs leaving for China and elsewhere in search of cheap labor. I have spoken about that many times as well. As I said, I have written a book about that.

We need to work on all of those issues, and jobs has to be issue No. 1. It is the most important issue. It makes everything else possible for the American people. Right now, as I speak, there are millions and millions of people who are out of work. Million Americans have lost their jobs just in the manufacturing area in the last 8 years. We are short somewhere perhaps in the neighborhood of 18 to 20 million jobs in this country. We have to get the engine moving again. We have to get opportunities to expand jobs all across this country. There is a lot to do to make that happen.

Madam President, while I am on the floor, I wish to make a point about another piece of public policy I have worked on for some while.

The House of Representatives last week passed legislation through the Agriculture Committee that would lift the travel ban that is now imposed on American citizens to Cuba. I have been to Cuba and have met with the Cuban Government, dissidents, people who have been in prison. It is 90 miles off our shore.

There is an embargo on Cuba and a travel ban to Cuba. This chart shows the ten U.S. Presidents under which this embargo has existed. As one can see, a fair number of Presidents have come and gone while this embargo and travel ban to Cuba has been in place.

The problem with it that I see is this: This embargo is and has always been Fidel Castro's biggest excuse.

Your cities are falling down, your economy is in trouble, things are awful in Cuba.

His response: Yes. That is because this 500-pound gorilla has had its fist around our neck with an embargo for 50 years. You try to run this country.

It is his biggest excuse.

Cuba is a Communist country. I have no interest in doing anything that is helpful to the government at all. I do have an interest in trying to help the Cuban people.

Deciding to tell the American people: We will restrict your right to travel; we are going to infringe on your freedom; our government says you cannot travel, American citizen, to Cuba--I think that is unbelievable. By what right does our government say you cannot travel to Cuba?

Let me show where Americans can travel. It is perfectly appropriate, if you can get a visa, to travel to Iran, according to the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the Treasury Department.

OFAC, by the way, in the basement, the deep bowels of the Treasury Department, are supposed to be tracking money to terrorists. But about a fourth of their resources are devoted to tracking American citizens who are suspected of vacationing in Cuba. Think of that. In a world beset by terrorist threats, we have folks who are trying to figure out: Are there American citizens who have gone to Cuba whom we can track down and against whom we can levy a $10,000 fine?

You can go to Iran, OFAC says. That is not a problem. You are an American citizen and you want to go to Iran, that is OK.

If you are an American citizen and you would like to see Kim Jong Il while he is still in office, you can go to North Korea. That is not a big deal for OFAC. If you want to go to Communist North Korea, no problem at all.

You want to go to China, a Communist country? Not a problem. You want to go to Vietnam, a Communist country? That is no problem. I have been to both, by the way. Why have we said that about Vietnam and China? Because we have a very specific policy with respect to that issue. We have said we believe that engagement through trade and travel is the most effective way to move both China and Vietnam toward greater human rights. Let me say that again. Our official policy--Republicans and Democrats--has been that we believe the most effective way to move China and Vietnam--Communist countries--toward greater human rights is through trade and travel through engagement. Engagement. The only outlier to that is Cuba, which is 90 miles off our shore. And Fidel Castro pokes his finger in our eye every chance he gets.

We decided some while ago--many Presidents ago, actually--to put together an embargo, which has not worked at all, which includes restricting the American people's right to travel. Then in 2003, leading up to the elections in 2004, President Bush made this even tighter. He eliminated people-to-people visits in 2003; eliminated secondary school education travel; restricted family travel to once every 3 years; restricted amateur athletic travel. Essentially, he tied it very tight. The upshot of that was, I guess they all felt good that they were going to tighten restrictions around Cuba and tell those Cuban Americans who felt that is the right thing to do that this was something the administration was going to do to be helpful to them.

Here is what the Office of Foreign Assets Control says about travel to Cuba. I just described that North Korea is fine and travel to Iran is fine, China and Vietnam are fine. They say:

Unless otherwise authorized, any person subject to U.S.

jurisdiction who engages in any travel-related transaction in

Cuba violates the regulations.

Let me describe some of these notorious violators our government has tracked down and tried to levy a $10,000 fine against. This is Joni Scott. I have met Joni Scott. She is holding a Bible in this picture. The reason Joni Scott is holding a Bible is this young woman went to Havana to pass out free Bibles. An American woman went to Havana to pass out free Bibles. What happened to her? Did the Cuban Government get ahold of her somehow and give her a bad time? No, no. The American Government did. The American Government tracked her down and tried to levy a fine because she was suspected of traveling to Cuba. Isn't that something? It is unbelievable.

Here is another woman I have met. This is Joan Slote. She is a bicyclist. She is a grandma in her midseventies. She joined a Canadian group to bicycle in Cuba. Her government then tracked her down and not only tried to fine her $10,000 but tried to attach her Social Security payments and take them away--this from her government. It is unbelievable.

Then, finally, SGT Carlos Lazo, whom I have described before. He fled Cuba and then went to Iraq and fought for America and was awarded a Bronze Star. He then came back to America after having fought for his country. He had two sons in Cuba, one of whom was sick, and his government--the American Government--told this Bronze Star medal winner, a very courageous soldier coming back from the war, that he was not able to visit his sons. They restricted his right to travel.

Here is the point. The point is, the U.S. House of Representatives, through the Agriculture Committee, has now passed legislation that eliminates the restrictions, eliminates the things done by the previous administration to try to stop shipment of food to Cuba. I believe we have the votes in the Senate to move that position as well.

I actually offered the amendment about 10 years ago in the Senate that is now law that opened for the first time the ability to ship food and medicine for cash to Cuba. I just felt it was immoral. I think it is immoral to use food and medicine as a weapon, and that is what we are doing, including food and medicine as part of the embargo. I offered the amendment. It is now law. We shipped a couple billion dollars' worth of food to Cuba, all paid for in cash. But the previous administration decided to change the rules and required payment before shipment as opposed to payment when the goods transferred. That was an effort to try to shut down agricultural sales to Cuba. The House has changed that. We would do that as well. It is important to take this action. I was pleased last week when I read what the House of Representatives did. I think it is the right thing to do.

Here are pictures of who else believes we ought to lift the travel ban. Marcelo Rodriquez does. He is a political prisoner in Cuba. Yoani Sanchez does. She is one of the leading political bloggers in Cuba. Guillermo Farinas, who has staged several hunger strikes in Cuba, believes we should lift the travel ban. Oscar Chepe, a former political prisoner, and his wife Miriam Leiva, the founder of Ladies in White, believe we should lift the travel ban.

They are among 74 Cuban human rights activists who sent a letter to the House of Representatives saying they believe we ought to lift the travel ban.

I have visited with the folks in Cuba who are political dissents. They do not like their government. They are doing everything they can to get a new government, a better government. But they also believe this embargo and the travel ban does not serve their interest.

I believe that at some point, when it is appropriate, we will be able to do in the Senate what the House Agriculture Committee has done; that is, lift the travel ban and undo some of the detrimental things that were done as well in the tightening in 2003.

I and Senator Enzi, along with 38 other cosponsors--that is 40 Senators--have cosponsored legislation that would lift the travel ban to Cuba. I believe when we have the opportunity, Senator Enzi and I will offer that bill here on the floor, and I believe we will have the votes to pass it in the Senate.

Once again, it is unthinkable to me that we have decided we are going to try to punish the Cuban Government by restricting the rights of the American people. And we have done it for almost 50 years. By what authority, by what justification do we believe the Federal Government ought to tell the American people: You can travel wherever you want in this world. Go to Iran, go to North Korea, China, Vietnam. But you cannot go to Cuba. By what justification does the government have the right to restrict that right of the American people? The answer is, none, and it is long past the time we fix it. That is what I believe we will do in the Senate in the weeks ahead.

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

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

Madam President, in 2 minutes or so, let me talk briefly about the FAA reauthorization bill, which we have passed out of the Commerce Committee and out of the full Senate--it passed 93 to 0 here in the Senate. Senator Rockefeller and I, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and others, are working very hard to try to negotiate an opportunity to get a report that we can bring back to both the House and the Senate to get this done.

The reason this is urgent and so important is the modernization of our air traffic control system is long overdue and there is so much that is needed in this FAA reauthorization bill. It deals with safety issues. As chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee, I held a number of hearings on the Colgan crash in New York--the tragic crash that took the life of so many. So I wanted to make a point, because I know people are wondering what is happening on that legislation.

We had a meeting yesterday for over an hour. We are going to have another meeting this week. We had a meeting the week prior to the break last week. We are working very hard to try to find a way to bridge the gap. I think we are very close to being able to get something we can bring back to both the House and Senate. My hope is that early in this work period we can get this done. I talked to Senator Rockefeller late last night by phone after our meeting in the afternoon. So Senator Kyl and many others have been involved--Senator Warner.

This is a very big piece of legislation. Changing our air traffic control system, modernizing our system from a ground-based radar system to a GPS system is a big, challenging project, but we have to get at it. This bill has languished way too long. We have reauthorized it many, many, many times. Now it is time to get the legislation done and get it signed by the President.

We are working very hard, and I hope in the next week or two Senator Rockefeller and I and Senator Hutchison and others can come to the floor and report success and bring a bill to the Senate to vote on.

Kagan Nomination

Madam President, let me also finally say--I didn't mention it earlier--that the Kagan nomination is going to come to the floor during this work period, I am sure. I strongly support the Kagan nomination and intend to vote for her nomination. I think she is an awfully good nominee. I know many of my colleagues will be doing so as well. I fully expect her to pass the Senate quite easily. I would expect the nomination to be approved quite easily.

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

Madam President, I object.

Madam President, might I inquire of the Senator, we have been trying to move a 30-day extension of existing authorities for the FAA, which is essential and very necessary. Is the Senator holding that up? We have had objection from his side, and my information is that the objection was the Senator's. Is that accurate?

Madam President, I think this will be extended 30 days. Failure to extend the current authority for the FAA for the next 30 days while we finish the conference report will mean that 4,000 people at FAA will be furloughed, laid off. Don't tell me that promotes aviation safety. That is the worst possible thing we can do--to decide that we are not going to extend current authorities, and after July 4, 4,000 people will be furloughed at FAA.

With respect to what my colleague has just done, without consultation with anybody else, he decided to come to the floor of the Senate and talk about ``special deals'' and ``new taxes'' and so on.

Let me describe where we are. We have tried to keep the Senator's staff and him involved so that he understands where we are. In the event there is missing information, let me explain where we are.

No. 1, we passed an FAA reauthorization bill that includes modernization of the air traffic control system, very substantial safety provisions, far more than what the Senator suggests we adopt today.

As the Senator knows because he is ranking member on the subcommittee, we held a good number of hearings on the subject of the Colgan crash and the safety provisions that need to be done as a result of it. The things the Senator raises on the floor today include most of what I have suggested, among other things. I appreciate the cooperation the Senator offered when he was at the hearings we held on these safety issues.

But following the passage of this bill by the Commerce Committee, we have not been able to appoint conferees in this Chamber. That is symbolic of how dysfunctional the Chamber is these days because we have objections even to appointing conferees. Notwithstanding the objections, Senator Rockefeller and I have been working with the House, and we have kept the Senator involved, trying to narrow down most of the provisions that differ between the House and Senate. There are 6 or 8 or perhaps 10 significant differences we are working on now, and the Senator mentioned a couple: the issue of the perimeter rule, slots at Washington National Airport, a FedEx issue, passenger facilities charge, and other issues.

I believe there is almost no dispute at all about the majority of the safety provisions that both the House and the Senate will include in the bill when it is complete. We had hoped it would be complete this week. That is not going to be the case.

Shortly after we return, I fully expect to have a conference report on the floor of the Senate that will include all of these safety provisions and more, I should say--many more--because, as the Senator knows, I chaired the hearings that helped develop these very procedures.

It would have been nice to have gotten some notice about what the Senator chose to do today. I do not think it is appropriate to try to leverage an extension for 30 days for the current authorization of FAA, which, if not extended, will result in 4,000 people being furloughed at the FAA. To try to leverage passing a portion of the FAA reauthorization bill that we are now negotiating with the House and we are very close to concluding does not make any sense to me.

No one cares more about these safety issues than I do. I can speak at length--and perhaps I will--about the Colgan crash. I understand what happened in that cockpit. I read all the transcription. I read all the information available about it. I sat for hour after hour in hearings. What happened there is an enormous tragedy. Some of the things that caused it, in my judgment, will be remedied and can be remedied and some of it is already remedied as a result of the action by the new FAA Administrator.

I simply want to say to the Senator from South Carolina that I think it is very important that we extend for 30 days the current authority of the FAA and avoid the furloughs his objections would entail. If there is any way to quickly and immediately and dramatically injure safety in the skies in this country, it would be to decide to have that kind of furlough.

I did ask unanimous consent for a 30-day extension. I will do so again this afternoon and hope that my colleague will not object to it. I have worked with my colleague all along the way on these safety issues. I wish perhaps he would have consulted us in terms of coming to the floor today at 12:45 p.m. as a ranking member of a subcommittee and saying: I am going to take this on myself and do this, for whatever reasons he described.

I will be happy to yield without losing the floor, if the Senator has a question.

Madam President, I object.

Why don't we stop this sort of thing? It is unbelievable to me how dysfunctional this place is. I say to my colleague, we have worked on this issue for months and months. I wish it had been done in January, but it was not. But we are very close to getting this done the right way. We have a couple things we have to do together, and I hope we would not be debating this. We need to extend the authorities for the FAA--and do it now--for 30 days. I expect--and the Senator knows me because I have had conversations with Senator Kyl, the No. 2 person on his side. We all had conversations with the Senator from South Carolina and his staff. He knows we have been involved in finalizing at long last just the few remaining issues in order to get a conference report to the floor of the Senate.

I have talked with and met with the families of the victims on the Colgan flight many times. I do not know that anybody here has done much more than I have done to reach out to them, to hold hearings, to listen to them, to compliment them, to say to them: Because of what you are doing as families of victims, other people are going to have their lives saved because of aviation safety. I do not take a backseat to anybody in my interest and concern about that and what I have done about that.

I have not had the families of the victims come to me to say: Let's decide to object to extending for 30 days the FAA reauthorization or, by the way, let's decide to take this legislation apart and pull part of it out and leave some of the safety provisions outside the Senator's amendment.

What the Senator is suggesting is that we should pass legislation that came to us from the Senate with an amendment of his that takes a portion of the bill out that he decided he wants out.

This bill, by the way, passed the Senate 93 to 0. The Senator was not there that day, so he did not vote. But 93 Senators voted, and no Senators voted against it. We can get this done, but we are not going to get this done by coming to the floor without consulting anybody; let's take a portion of it and add it to a House provision and threaten to have the FAA not have their authority extended and they can furlough 4,000 people in the coming weeks--that is not, in my judgment, a thoughtful way to proceed.

My hope is that perhaps we, in a rational moment, can just decide: Let's do the right thing. We are in conference with the House--not a formal conference but a substantial number of meetings have gone on. We have another one at 5 o'clock this afternoon. My hope would be that the Senator from South Carolina would agree that there is the right way and the wrong way to do this business. We will get all those safety provisions done and more--much, much more--and we will not leave any safety provisions behind that were in the legislation that passed the Senate 93 to 0. It is going to take another week or so beyond July 4, and we will have this done.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3371 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Let me say that this is the 30-day extension of the FAA reauthorization bill.

Let me withdraw that request.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I object.

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

Madam President, I just told my colleague that the unanimous consent request I intend to read is a unanimous consent request that will extend for 30 days the existing authorities of the FAA. The House has passed it, has sent it to us, and is now awaiting action by the Senate. I personally do not intend to support amending it and sending it back to the House. I believe we ought to do what we should always do; that is, try to make things work, and the way to make things work is to give the FAA the extended authority they need while we finish the negotiations with the House.

I indicated that we have a meeting this afternoon. Senator Rockefeller and I have a meeting with the House counterparts this afternoon on these issues. We have had staff working for a long period of time. We are down to very narrow, in my judgment, or at least a few narrow differences that I believe we can resolve. It would be a shame, in my judgment, if we do not, just as a matter of courtesy, decide, yes, this is the right thing to do while we try to negotiate these final areas in that legislation.

This issue of safety, I indicated to my colleague--I guess the Senator was absent when the Senate voted on the bill itself. It passed 93 to 0. The Senator from South Carolina has been at the hearings. My colleagues have been at the hearings I have called on safety. The crafting of the provisions on safety are provisions I largely crafted in consultation with my colleague.

It seems to me to be Byzantine to be standing here and having my colleague come to the floor offering this without consultation with anybody. It does not make sense to do it this way. Let's finish this the way Congress should finish its work: negotiate with the House. We can do that in the next week or two, get a conference report, bring it here, and have a vote on it, and it will include all the safety provisions my colleague wants, which I helped create, and many more. That is the right way to legislate.

The wrong way to legislate would be for us to decide we are going to threaten to not extend the reauthorization of the FAA and have about 4,000 people laid off sometime over the Fourth of July weekend. These are people who work at the airports division, engineering facilities, and equipment division. It makes no sense to do this.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent--this is H.R. 5611, the FAA extension bill for 30 days--I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5611, which was received from the House.

Madam President, let me make a point very clearly. A number of the provisions dealing with safety that relate to the Colgan air crash are being implemented already by the FAA. Let me make that point, No. 1.

No. 2, in order to successfully do what we really need to do to promote aviation safety, we need to get the bill passed that promotes modernization of the air traffic control system. That is critically important. We are losing ground on those issues. We need to be able to move airplanes around this country and the world with GPS capability. It allows them to fly more direct routes, with a much greater margin of safety for passengers. The modernization of the system is critically important. We worked long and hard on that issue.

This comprehensive bill includes air traffic control modernization, safety provisions, and so many other provisions that are important.

My colleague, who is the ranking member on the subcommittee that helped produce this bill, knows and I know that we have to have a 30- day extension. That has to be done and will be done this week. I cannot believe my colleague would go home and decide: I don't care who is laid off. I will tell my colleagues how to quickly diminish safety in the skies, and that is to do that, to behave like that. That is a nonstarter, in my judgment.

It is also the case that we are not going to have somebody come to the floor without consultation and pull this provision, that provision, or the next provision out of the bill and say: By the way, I want unanimous consent to get this done. That is not serious legislating. It just is not. Everybody knows that.

It is time for us to start working together. This place is pretty dysfunctional these days. This is exhibit A as to why it is dysfunctional. My hope is that in the next couple of days, we can reach an understanding to fix some of the issues that affect the Senator.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I support the comments of and the legislation by the Senator from Louisiana. I think it makes a great deal of sense to strengthen small businesses. They are, after all, the job generators in this country. So I appreciated her comments. We don't always agree on every issue around here, but I am a strong supporter of her work as chairman of the Small Business Committee and of the legislation she has described.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the Senate floor briefly today because we are talking about extending unemployment compensation, unemployment benefits, to people who are out of work, and we are having a very difficult time doing that. These benefits are for people who worked on payrolls. They actually paid a little of their money in taxes to support an unemployment fund so if they lost their jobs they would be able to get some unemployment help. But in order to do that, this has to be extended by the Senate, and it has become increasingly difficult to extend unemployment compensation to those who are out of work.

I find that kind of inexplicable because for the folks at the top of the economic ladder, there is no problem in their getting what they want out of this Chamber. I noticed in the last 24 hours or so that one of my colleagues objected to something that was in the financial reform bill. He said: Well, you are going to impose a fee on the biggest banks. He said: I won't accept that. He said: If you do that, I won't vote for the bill. The biggest banks in the country shouldn't have to pay this fee.

I was thinking to myself: Why not? They drove the country into the ditch. They are the ones involved in the cesspool of greed, many of them, trading things on things they will get from people who never had it and making money on both sides, which created an

unbelievable orgy of speculation that ran the country right into the ditch. There is nothing wrong, it seems to me, with their having to pay a fee here or there.

But one of our colleagues said: I won't support that. All of a sudden, the conference committee got back together and said: How can we fluff up your pillow, big guy? Can we give you an aspirin, put you to sleep?

If you are at the top of this economic ladder in this Chamber, you can do just fine because somebody will make you comfortable. But what about the people at the bottom? What about the person who came home from work after 18 years on the job and said: Honey, I lost my job today. And they can't find another job? What about that family and that person? What about extending unemployment help for that person?

Things never change. Here is what Will Rogers said many years ago. He said:

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

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

Boy, if there was ever a description of the way things work these days, this is it. Old Will Rogers. And this description is as old as eight or nine decades, isn't it? The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we don't have time yet. We will get to them after everybody else gets taken care of. And who gets taken care of first? The folks at the top of the economic ladder.

I wonder, I just wonder what would happen with a bill to extend unemployment benefits if the only Americans who were unemployed were investment bankers? Do you think that wouldn't have been passed in a nanosecond, just like that? But, no, the unemployed are people named Smith and Jones and Adams and Johnson. They are the ones somehow at the bottom of the economic ladder who don't seem to matter to some people.

My hope is this Congress will have the good sense to do the right thing. During tough times, we have something called a safety net--that is the unemployment compensation--that helps people when they are laid off, when they are out of work and are having trouble and can't find another job. It is our responsibility to extend that. That is what we should be doing.

As Will Rogers said: Everybody else gets help. In the last 24 hours, the folks at the top of the economic ladder got help--the biggest banks in the country. Why? Because somebody said they needed some comfort--a bedtime story, a fluffed pillow, an aspirin, some comfort. They got their comfort. But we are still waiting to see if the people who lost their jobs and who are at the bottom of the economic ladder will get the help they were promised. I hope so. We will have a vote on that and we will soon see.

Energy Policy

Mr. President, I wanted to mention that yesterday a group of us went down to meet with the President on the subject of energy, and following that meeting a number of my colleagues spoke to the press. I did not. But because there were stories today about the representation of that meeting with the President, I thought I would at least offer my notion of what that meeting meant and what the consequences of it will or should be.

The meeting with the President, calling a number of Republicans and Democrats--about 10 or 12 of us--down to the White House, was to talk about energy and to simply try to evaluate what is achievable, what should be done with respect to energy. We know two things are making this country vulnerable: No. 1, we are way too dependent on foreign oil. We use one-fourth of the oil that is pulled out of this planet every morning. Every day we use one-fourth in this little place called the United States. Yet over 60 percent of that which we use comes from other countries. That leaves us far too vulnerable to others, and, by the way, some of whom are in very troubled parts of the world. We are far too vulnerable to others for our energy supplies. That is a fact.

The second something that is happening to this planet is called climate change. We don't necessarily know exactly what that is, but the wide consensus of scientists tells us we need to be concerned about it and we need to be taking actions to deal with it.

I appreciate the President's leadership on these issues and saying we need to move. We need to do some things here. But the discussion was, What is achievable?

What is achievable, in my judgment, from listening and participating in that meeting, is what I have always believed was achievable. The only thing achievable is that which will get 60 votes to come from the calendar of the Senate to the floor because it takes 60 votes on a motion to proceed to consider anything. I believe the only thing that can get 60 votes, based on not only the meeting yesterday but other discussions I have had, would be to bring the bill passed by the Energy Committee, which was bipartisan, to the floor of the Senate. That does not exclude anything else. That does not exclude anybody from offering climate change amendments, comprehensive climate change amendments. But we will never get to the floor unless we get to the floor with something that can get 60 votes, and I am convinced the only thing that can achieve that is the bipartisan Energy bill out of the committee.

The Energy bill itself is a bill that does reduce carbon. It does all the things I think it should do. Yes, it says we are going to continue to use the fossil energy--coal, oil, natural gas--but we are going to use that in a different way. We are going to decarbonize and take great pains to protect the planet as we do. We are going to build some nuclear. We are going to maximize renewables--solar and wind energy. We are going to do the biofuels, including biodiesel, ethanol, and geothermal. All of these sources of energy are important to our country's future.

All of these areas--conservation, including retrofitting buildings; the first ever renewable electric standard; building an interstate highway of transmission capability; high-voltage transmission so you can collect energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines and put it on a wire and send it to where it is needed in the load centers--all of that was part of the bill that was passed out of the Energy Committee 1 year ago this month. That is, in my judgment, what is achievable to get to the floor of the Senate, and then it is open for amendments. That does not exclude, by the way, any other amendments people wish to offer that can achieve the 60 votes, once it is on the floor, that can address climate change.

As I said before, there is something to climate change, as far as I am concerned. We would be fools not to recognize and fools not to address it. The question is not whether; it is when and how.

I said before that I would support capping carbon and I would support pricing carbon. I also said I will not support what is called cap and trade because I do not intend to give Wall Street a trillion-dollar carbon securities market to trade so they can tell us what the cost of our energy is going to be. But that aside, I really think it is important that we not end this year without doing an energy bill that advances this country's energy and national security.

Let me mention one additional item very quickly; that is, yesterday there was a hearing in the Armed Services Committee with respect to the nomination of General Petraeus to assume command in Afghanistan. I am not going to speak at length about this. I fully support General Petraeus and this nomination. I think the President has made an excellent choice. By the way, I don't think he had much choice but to replace General McChrystal, and replacing him with General Petraeus makes a great deal of sense to me.

I wish to say with respect to Afghanistan that I think it is long past the time for us to have a very significant discussion about Afghanistan. The President has indicated the potential withdrawal date beginning on July 1 of next year, 2011. But I think that even before that, we need to have a discussion in this country about what our role is in Afghanistan. What, in fact, is victory in Afghanistan? Are we fighting al-Qaida? Are we fighting terrorists in Afghanistan or are we fighting insurgents in Afghanistan? What about the Afghanistan Government and President Karzai? What is achievable?

Every day, we are sending young men and women to fight in a war, and many--I should not say ``many''--a number of them will lose their lives. We go on almost ``out of sight out of

mind,'' not thinking about it, not debating it nearly enough. What is it we are achieving? We have been at war for nearly 8 years, spending a great deal of money--lost treasure and lost lives. By the way, with respect to treasure, not a penny of it has been paid for.

I think it is time for us to have a good discussion in this country about what are we doing? How long will we do it? What is victory? What is achievable? Should we, in fact, be engaged in a long-term war against insurgents in that country? Where is al-Qaida? We know where it is in part: northern Pakistan. Where is al-Qaida? What is this--a war against terror or is it a war against insurgents?

My own view is that I think it is highly unlikely, no matter how long this country is in Afghanistan, that we will ever be successful in the rural tribal lands of Afghanistan. But my hope and my desire is to want the best for this country. I think the best will be achieved if we have a thoughtful, good, full, complete discussion as a nation about what our objectives are, how we achieve those objectives, and when, at last, at long, long last, we can bring troops home and be in a position where we are not saying America at this point is at war. We need to be addressing the terrorist threat across this planet, and that will take us a long while, but I think that is a very different circumstance than being engaged in the fight in Afghanistan as it currently exists.

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