Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 85, which was introduced earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 2; that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, there be a period of morning business until 11 a.m. with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the majority controlling the next 30 minutes, and the remaining time until 11 a.m. equally controlled and divided between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the final half; further, following morning business, the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.J. Res. 44, the 2-week continuing resolution, as provided for under the previous order; and, finally, upon disposition of the CR, the Senate resume consideration of S. 23, the America Invents Act.

Mr. President, Senators should expect the first vote of the day to begin at approximately 11 a.m. That vote will be on the passage of the 2-week continuing resolution. Additional rollcall votes are expected to occur throughout the day in relation to the amendments to the America Invents Act.

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

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Rules and Administration will meet on Tuesday, March 1, 2011, at 10 a.m., to conduct a markup of the Omnibus Budget for Senate Committees.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Lynden Armstrong at the Rules and Administration Committee.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison for their help here. Pursuant to the previous order, I call up my amendment No. 71.

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

I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 105 To Amendment No. 32

Mr. President, the Committee on Rules and Administration has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 112th Congress. Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Alexander, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Rules and Administration will meet on Thursday, February 17, 2011, at 3:30 p.m., to conduct its organization meeting for the 112th Congress.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Lynden Armstrong at the Rules and Administration Committee on (202) 224-6352.

Thank you, Mr. President.

First I wish to congratulate my good friend and hunting buddy, the Senator from Nebraska, for the great work he has done. It has been a pleasure to work with him. We have had parallel interests and his amendment hopefully will solve a problem that has arisen lately because of the full-body scanners that are being installed at airports.

As everyone knows, late last year the TSA began installing full-body advanced imaging scanners at airports across the country. These new scanners are better able to quickly and accurately detect explosives than the older scanners and would likely have thwarted the Christmas Day bomber before he had even gotten on the plane.

But from the get-go, legitimate questions popped up about the potential for privacy violations from the use of these scanners. What happens if a rogue TSA employee disseminates your full-body image? What happens if a fellow passenger or reporter takes pictures of body scan images with his phone and e-mails it to his friends or places the pictures on a Web site or in a newspaper? Are there safeguards to prevent such abuses? If it happens, what are the consequences?

Obviously, airline safety is our paramount concern. We can oftentimes, by carefully legislating, have our cake and eat it too--to make sure safety stays No. 1, but to also make sure, as the Senator from Nebraska and I are trying to do, that privacy is protected whenever possible. That is why Senator Nelson and I teamed up to work with TSA and privacy advocates to devise a sensible solution to the problem--a solution that would protect privacy without sacrificing safety.

The legislation we came up with, which Senator Nelson is now offering as an amendment to the FAA bill, strikes just the right balance. First and foremost, the amendment makes it a Federal crime to record and disseminate images from airport scanners. It provides a sentence of up to 1 year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000 per violation to anyone who is convicted of violating the law.

I should note the amendment not only covers the misuse of the original images recorded from the scanners but also photographs of scans taken by security personnel, airline employees, passengers, or anybody else.

Americans want to know when they take to the skies that every possible precaution has been taken for their safety. At the same time, they want to know that precautions have been taken to ensure their privacy. The amendment would offer the flying public that much-needed assistance.

Again, I applaud Senator Nelson, who is a member of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, for his leadership on this issue. I urge my colleagues to support the smart, practical amendment we are offering today, and I urge that it be passed as quickly as possible by this body.

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

Madam President, I too want to join in the accolades for our Senator from West Virginia, Senator Manchin. He is one fine guy. I got to know him when he was Governor and then campaigning, and he is doing a wonderful job here already.

To have passion about where you come from is noble. I think the great poets from Greek times on have written that, and nobody has more passion about where he comes from and his roots than Senator Manchin-- Joe Manchin. You can see it and feel it in everything he does, as we could in this speech today. So I too join in thanking him for coming here. America needs his perspective and his wisdom, and I know he will make a great Senator. We are already great friends, and so I thank him.

I also compliment my colleague, the senior Senator from West Virginia as well, Senator Rockefeller, for his kind remarks. He is a great leader. Joe and I have talked about how you cannot go wrong watching and imitating and emulating Senator Rockefeller. With the two of them, I believe West Virginia might have the tallest delegation in the Senate, not just tall in inches but in stature, ability to get things done, and passion for the State they represent. It is my honor to be here as well and to congratulate Joe on a very fine and introductory speech.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in strong, vehement opposition to the amendment offered by the minority leader, Senator McConnell, to repeal the health care reform law.

First, I would say to my good friend from Nevada, yes, we would like to work together to further reduce costs, but this bill does reduce costs significantly. The CBO has said in no uncertain terms that repeal would balloon the deficit by $230 billion in the first decade and more than $1 trillion in the second decade. That is because the law smokes out a good deal of the waste, the inefficiency, and the duplication that we all know is part of our system.

That is the place where we have to continue to work together. Our country delivers the best health care in the world, but it is also the most inefficient. We spend 17 percent of our GDP on health care. The next highest spending country is only 10 percent. Under the reformed law, we will begin the first large step in keeping quality care but getting costs under control.

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: You know, you are right; we have to reduce costs, we have a better way and they offered a bill on the floor, well, then, maybe we would take a look at it. But they are silent. It is very easy to sit there and say repeal, but what would they put in its place?

The reason this amendment will be so easily defeated today is because a budget point of order says if you are going to raise the deficit $230 billion in the first decade and $1 trillion in the second, you better find out where that money is coming from. The other side is silent, not a peep about where that money would come from. So that makes one feel this is sort of for show. Let's wave the flag for some of our hard-core supporters who definitely want repeal, but there is nothing in its place.

The old mantra the other side seemed to have--some of them--of repeal and replace is gone. It is now repeal and we have nothing to replace it with. That does not meet with the favor of the American people. In fact, the number who are against repeal is growing. Only about one- fifth of those who say they want to see the law changed want full repeal. Only 20 percent of the public wants full repeal. If those numbers are correct, and I believe they are, that means almost certainly that a majority of Republican voters don't want full repeal.

The bottom line, Mr. President, and particularly in this area of health care, is that talking about deficit reduction is a lot easier than doing it. That fact is evidenced by the amendment my friend, the leader from Kentucky, will offer. That is why a budget point of order is the appropriate response, and that is why this will be defeated rather handily.

In later days maybe my colleagues will come up with parts of the bill they wish to change. We will be open to it. Today Senator Stabenow is offering an amendment to change the 1099 section of the law. She has worked with people on both sides of the aisle. I know Senator Johanns has been a leader, the Republican from Nebraska. We are going to pass that today. So the idea that we are unwilling to change any part of this law is belied by what we are doing on the Senate floor.

We want to work together. But somehow, when we get a repeal amendment--repeal the whole thing, no substitute, no answer to how to deal with the debt--one wonders what this repeal is all about.

Furthermore, why is the American public becoming more favorable to this law as we go through this debate? That is what the polling data has shown. Well, I would give two reasons. First, many of the horrors that were bandied about as the law was being put together are proving not to be true.

I will never forget that last summer someone came to me, a gentleman from Long Island, and he said: Senator Schumer, I am a Democrat. I have voted for you in every election, but I am not going to vote for you again.

I said: Why?

He said: I hate the health care law.

I said: What do you hate about it?

He said: I am going to lose my health care benefits on Labor Day.

I said: What is your profession?

He said: I am a New York City firefighter. He lived on Long Island, but he was a New York City firefighter.

Well, anyone who knows even a little about the health care bill knows that a New York City firefighter will not lose their benefits on Labor Day or any other time under this provision. But this poor man had listened to some talk radio and they had convinced him he was going to lose his benefits.

But that is all fading. I haven't spoken to the gentleman since. I don't know his name. I just met him at a summer street fair. But he has found his benefits are just as good today as they were on the day before Labor Day, so it is pretty logical to suppose he would have said repeal the law a year ago but wouldn't say so today.

But there is another reason, and probably an even more important reason, this law is gaining support as people learn about it, and we owe some thanks to our Republican colleagues because they have given us a second chance to make a first impression. Most who looked last year said the messaging--rightly or wrongly, falsely or truly--was done better by the opponents than by the proponents of the

law. But now, as people look at the law, they are learning about the many good things in the bill.

I daresay that most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to keep those good things. I would be quite certain that the vast majority of Americans would want to keep those things, and the polling data backs that up.

So when you say repeal, when you just use a hatchet and not a scalpel, you lose all the good things, many of which are in effect today. So I would ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who support repeal: Do you support increasing prescription drug costs for our Nation's seniors? Thanks to this law, the so-called doughnut hole-- which was created in the prescription drug plan of 2003 under George Bush--will be fixed. Seniors who fall into this doughnut hole--which says when they pay about $2,500 for drugs, the government will help them no longer--will now get a 50-percent discount on their medications. This first year that will amount to a savings of $550 for the average senior.

When you are a senior on a fixed income, $550 is a nice amount of change, and that will help a whole lot of people. The discount keeps increasing every year until the last crumb of the doughnut hole is gone.

I will admit that is a mixed metaphor because a doughnut hole, by definition, has no crumbs. But good try, staff. Excellent work, in any case. It sounded very good to me too.

But in these times, these savings aren't exactly chicken feed. They will make a huge difference for seniors. The average senior, when the doughnut hole is fully eliminated--crumbs and all--will save more than $2,000 a year.

How about the provision that helps young people? Every one of us knows of instances where young men and women get out of college or get out of high school and they go into the job market. Oftentimes those new jobs they are seeking do not provide health care. That happens quite often. It is a new job, it is a low-paying job, they are just starting out. I know--I have spoken to many young people like this, and their parents--there is a lot of anguish. Does that young person who maybe has a job that pays $25,000 or $30,000 a year pay $1,000 a month for health care for himself or herself? They cannot afford that.

On the other hand, to go without health care insurance--yes, they are young and healthy but God forbid they have an accident, go to the hospital, come up with some unusual and rare and expensive disease. What are they going to do? This keeps lots of young people and their parents up at night. This new bill solves that problem because you can stay on your parents' health care insurance, should they have it, until you are 26. By then you are in the labor force a little bit longer and the likelihood of your employer giving you health care is somewhat greater. Do my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to take that away? If so, what are you going to put in its place? What are you going to tell the young people, 22 and 23 and 24 and 25 and 26, to do?

Then there is another provision that I think is worth keeping-- preventive medicine. We all know one of the big problems with our health care system as opposed to some of the others in some of the other western countries is we do not do enough prevention. So instead of a disease being nipped in the bud, making the patient healthier and costing the system a whole lot less, it waits and waits. Those of us who put this health care bill together realized that and said early detection saves not only lives but billions of dollars. In this health care bill Medicare will provide a free wellness checkup once a year for every senior citizen. If there is a little bit of illness, they can nip it in the bud.

We all know the earlier you detect cancer or heart disease or diabetes or emphysema, the better chance of curing it and the less expensive to cure it. This is going to save billions of dollars. Just giving certain tests at these wellness checkups will save people themselves money but, more importantly, save the Medicare system money, a lot of money. It is important for the people to save their money too, of course. This makes a great deal of sense.

A mammography can find breast cancer before it metastasizes. A simple blood test can find prostate cancer before it spreads. What are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle going to say to seniors? What are they going to say to the Medicare system, which is trying to get more effective by getting involved in early detection and prevention? Forget it? That is what you are doing when you vote for repeal. You have nothing in its place.

How about the small business tax credit? My dad was a small businessman. He had a little exterminating business. I know how small businessmen struggle. My father truly never became happy until he left the business. Now, praise God, he is 87 and he is a much happier guy than he was, even at 60, struggling in that business. One of the dilemmas that small business people face is the high cost of medical care for their employees. They want to provide it, A, because they want their employees to be healthy, B, because they like most of their employees, and C, because they want to keep the employees from going somewhere else if they are good--but it costs so darned much. Here is what is in the bill. If you are a small business that makes less than $1.2 million and you have 25 or fewer employees, you get a 35-percent credit, going up to 50 percent in 2014. That is a huge help to small businesses that are already providing health care for their workers, and a great incentive for small businesses that are not already to do so. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses in my State alone will benefit from this. What, my friends on the other side of the aisle, are you saying to those small businesses? What are you saying to their workers? Go at it alone? Because you want to repeal it but you have nothing--nothing--to replace it.

There is one more provision I want to speak of. There are so many good things in this bill. No matter how much you don't like some of the bad provisions--and I know that is genuinely held by some of my colleagues--to just repeal it and get rid of the good stuff makes no sense, in my judgment. We have all heard the horror stories of insurance companies--when you go to them after you, your spouse, your kid has an illness and you say: Thank God, I have insurance--the insurance company deliberately, or maybe not but anyway they say: Mr. Smith, you did not check off that little box on page 17. You did not dot that I or cross that t. You are not covered.

We all know the intent was to cover it. We all know the insurance company was happy to take the premiums even without that dotted I or crossed t or checked box when the family was healthy and money was coming in. But now all of a sudden they say bye-bye. This bill does not allow that to happen.

The kinds of rescission I talked about are banned. What are we saying, not just to the families who have experienced this but to every American family with insurance who worries about this? What are we saying to them? Again, you have nothing in its place because you are repealing, not replacing, even though people said early on that is not what they are doing.

I have one more point before I conclude. We are willing to work with you. The Stabenow amendment on the floor of the Senate shows that. I would have drafted it a different way and there will be a Levin amendment that I would prefer. But either way we are going to address the 1099 issue. Many people on your side of the aisle, many people on our side recognize that was a mistake. Not every bill is perfect. We are not digging in and saying we have to have the bill exactly as written and exactly as drafted. But you are doing the inverse--you are saying we have to have no part of this bill because if you wanted to retain parts of it you would have had an amendment on the floor saying take these parts out and keep these parts in. But you are not. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. But it is a lot easier to tear down than create, as we learned when we did the health care bill. But you have an obligation, unless you believe there should not be a health care system or we ought to go back to the system without any changes in the law that we have, which nobody liked. It is not fair.

In conclusion, No. 1, this bill reduces the deficit. The repeal increases the deficit and there is no money there to make up for those funds that the bill would bring in by cost cutting and by

fees. No. 2, there are lots of good things in the bill that probably my colleagues would support but they get rid of them with no replacement-- nothing. Nothing for the seniors, nothing for the 21- to 26-year-olds, nothing for the people who are treated poorly by their insurance companies. And, No. 3, we want to work with you. There are some changes we could work together on in the bill, not only 1099 but walking farther down the road of reducing the inefficiencies in the system, the high cost, the waste, by still preserving good care for the people who get it. That is something that would lend itself, particularly in these times of high deficits, to bipartisan support and working together.

Today, simple repeal, again, it may feed some red meat to the minority in this country. It is a small minority, if you believe the polling, who say repeal it. But the responsible job of a legislator, whether you agree with this bill or disagree with this bill, is not to repeal but to improve. That is not happening today.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I have come to address two amendments that are before us. First, I wish to salute my colleagues Senator Rockefeller and Senator Hutchison and all of those on both sides of the aisle who have brought this FAA bill before us. It is something that is needed. It is something that is long overdue. It is sad that in America we don't have a GPS system--and just about every western country does-- even Mongolia does; Tibet does not--to move forward and modernize our airports. It is important for jobs. It is important for travelers' convenience, but I would say most of all it is important for America's productivity. When people sit and wait on a runway, when planes are delayed or flights canceled, the amount of output that our country loses is enormous. We are losing much more than France or Germany or England because they have these systems. It is about time we put them in.

I will make one more point about it. There are some who say, Let's go back to the 2006 level of spending. In 2006, the budget did not have a GPS system. Certainly we have to cut where there is waste, but just an across-the-board, roll-the-clock-back approach doesn't make much sense. Technology advances, the world advances, and we cannot march backward. There are certain things we need to keep this country strong, and the President talked about some of those in his address. Investments--and transportation has always been one since the days of the Erie Canal, which caused my city, New York City, to become the largest city in the country and it still is, praise God.

But I came to talk about the two amendments that are here before us. It is sort of a ``do and don't,'' in my opinion. We had a long debate on the health care bill. We all know how long it was. The American people decided--the majority did not want to repeal the bill. In fact, 80 percent don't. Even those who want to change it, the majority say, Don't repeal it, just change it. That is the point here.

Senator Stabenow is offering an amendment to change something in the bill that very much needs changing. The change in the reporting requirements to 1099 put an onerous obligation on small business people. My dad was a small businessman, and I know how small business people struggle. To ask them to file paperwork every time they bought something new, even at low cost, is a bit over the top. So I am glad we are repealing that. No one is claiming ownership. It is going to pass in a bipartisan way.

None of us on this side of the aisle is saying the health care bill can't be improved, but just repealing it without putting anything in place creates a number of problems. One problem, which we will see tomorrow when the actual vote is called, is it would increase the deficit by $260 billion in the first decade and $1 trillion in the second, because the health care bill actually does cut some costs, and we know there is a tremendous amount of duplication, inefficiency, waste in our health care system. It is the best in the world. It is also probably the least efficient in the world. Our goal and our job is to keep that quality of care for people but at the same time reduce the inefficiencies that cost the government and cost businesses. So it does reduce the deficit.

When our colleagues are calling for repeal, when Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, calls for its repeal, he is going to increase the deficit. So we have all this talk: ``We have to reduce the deficit,'' and then the first move the other side makes, whether you like the health care bill or not, is to increase the deficit. Why wouldn't they propose $260 billion in other cuts to at least keep the bill deficit neutral?

The second point I would make is this: Repeal says get rid of everything. It is simple, it is easy, it is quick. It is wrong. There are many good things in this bill supported not only by the majority of Americans--the vast majority--many of which are supported by the majority of Republican voters who were polled, but even supported by many Members on the other side of the aisle. I have heard them speak. Even the new freshman class that is coming into the House--very militant--says, But I am not for repealing this, or I am not for repealing that. So why can't our colleagues on the other side of the aisle at least acknowledge there are very good things people like?

When they say repeal, do they want to repeal the provision that makes it easier for senior citizens to pay for prescription drugs? That is the so-called doughnut hole that says after you--and this comes from the Medicare bill that George Bush put forth, not from this health care bill, but they didn't have enough money to pay for it. So they said that after $2,500, seniors would have to pay prescription drug costs on their own. Any of us who buy prescription drugs--I do; I am taking one for my back because my back went out yesterday--knows how expensive they are. You get up to $2,500 when you are a senior citizen and need eight medications--one to lower your blood pressure, one for diabetes, one for cholesterol, you name it. When you get up to that number, our seniors in my State and I am sure in the Presiding Officer's State and in any one of the other 48 States, are having real trouble paying for prescription drugs once they reach that doughnut hole, once they reach the level after which Medicare no longer pays. Well, in the health care bill, we deal with that. We reduce their costs 50 percent in the first year. That saves the average senior citizen--and this is not chicken feed--$550. By the time it is fully implemented, we save them $2,400 a year. They want to repeal that? Well, when they vote for repeal, they are voting to repeal it.

How about this one: There are countless American families who have kids in their early 20s. They get out of college, they get a job, let's hope. It is hard to get a job these days. By the way, we should be focusing on job creation, not on repealing this bill, and the FAA bill does that, as I mentioned. They have a dilemma. These jobs are new, they are not paying top dollar, most of them, and they don't come with health care. What are these young people to do? They can't afford health care themselves--$800, $900, $1,000 a month. They are not making that much money, but they know, God forbid, if they get into a car accident or they get a serious disease, how can they be without health care? It is a dilemma that has plagued American families from coast to coast, from North to South and East to West. The health care bill corrects it. Here is what it says, very simply: Any young person 21 to 26 can stay on their family's health care plan. It is a great idea. It is very popular. I wish to ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are going to vote for repeal, are they for taking away the benefit of young people 21 to 26 to stay on their family's health care plan if they wish? I doubt it.

How about this one: We all know preventive medicine saves billions, so in the health care bill every senior citizen on Medicare gets a wellness checkup free once a year to encourage them to go in. Why? Not because we want some giveaway, but the statistics show overwhelmingly and without doubt conclusively that when senior citizens get a preventive care checkup, not only are they healthier, but it saves the Medicare system billions and billions of dollars. God forbid someone has a melanoma. Before the melanoma gets into the lymph nodes, it is a simple operation rather than thousands and thousands of dollars and months and months of agony and illness. Do they want to stop those checkups? When people get a colonoscopy or any of these other preventive exams, including mammography, it saves the taxpayers much money. The recipient is healthier. That is why we put it in the bill. Do they want to repeal those? Do they want to tell every senior citizen, You don't get that wellness checkup which will save billions? I can't believe they would want to do that, I say to

my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

How about this one: Small businesses. Small businesses are not required to have health care now, and under our bill, if they have under 50 employees, they won't be required to. But some of them provide health care for their employees. Some do it because it is a good way to retain a good, young employee, or a good middle-aged or a good older employee. Some do it because the employer is just a good guy or gal. Well, what we tell them is, if you have a business that makes less than $1.2 million and has fewer than 25 workers, we will give you a 35- percent tax credit for that health care. It is a great thing. Hundreds of thousands of businesses in my State of New York will benefit. It started January 1. What does it mean? It means, A, more people get health care; B, it means businesses have more money to spend on job creation, small businesses, because some of their health care costs are being defrayed; and C, it may mean a small business that wasn't going to provide health care for its workers can now. Do my colleagues on the other side want to get rid of that tax credit for small businesses, the mainstay of America? I don't think they do.

How about this one: We all have heard of people calling their insurance company and saying my wife, my husband, my daughter, or my son has gotten this terrible illness and it requires an operation that costs a whole lot of money. Then you get a call back from the insurance company and they say, You know what, your policy doesn't quite cover this. Or when you signed it, you were supposed to check this little box and you didn't. You are out. If you don't dot every I and cross every T--they usually let you get away with it because they are collecting your money, but not when somebody has a serious illness that might cost them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. Now the insurance company calls you and it is basically, Tough rocks, Jack. Under our bill, that can't happen anymore. And when the insurance companies decide to raise their rates dramatically, there is an insurance commissioner in the State and Federal authorities who can say, You have to show us that you needed to raise the rates as much as you did. Do my colleagues want to get rid of that and let insurance companies rule the roost? I don't think so.

There is so much in this bill that is good, that is supported by the overwhelming majority of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.

There is so much in this bill that moves us forward. If you think there are things that should not be in the bill, come talk to us. Madam President, 1099 is a bipartisan effort. Senator Stabenow has been out front. Senators Klobuchar, Cantwell, and Nelson sent a letter to Speaker Boehner saying: Please get us a 1099 bill. Senator Johanns has done a good job. It is bipartisan.

We are not saying everything is perfect in this bill and that it can't be improved. We are saying: Let's work together in a bipartisan manner to make it better. But the other side is saying: Just repeal it--repeal the good things, the things they don't like, create a huge hole in our deficit, and leave us with nothing. The slogan was going to be ``repeal and replace,'' but we have only heard the first part of that. Where is the ``replace''? I will tell you why there is no replace. It is hard to take this huge, unwieldy, inefficient health care system and shape it up. That is why it took us so long, and that is why it created a great deal of controversy. I will be the first to admit that. But I don't see a substitute.

If you wanted to be fair and you were being straight with the American people about actually improving people's health care, you would have a replacement on the floor, and then we could compare the repeal of what you want to what you propose. We will wait. Maybe we should have a clock--the first day without repeal and replace, the second day, and so forth. I have a feeling we are not going to see a replacement. Do you know what that would say? That this is just political, throwing out some red meat, but don't dare show a replacement because, guess what, to replace is hard, and you really don't have a solution for replacement.

I urge that we vote strongly against the McConnell amendment. I urge my colleagues on the other side to rethink it.

I look forward to hearing the remarks of not only the chairman of the Commerce Committee, who is head of the FAA bill, but also the No. 2 person, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee on which I serve, who has made so many invaluable contributions to the bill, on the cost- cutting side, in terms of the 80 and 85 percent rule and all the other things we have done.

With that, I will be happy to yield the floor so that we might hear my distinguished colleague, the senior Senator from West Virginia, speak for a few minutes.

Madam President, first I thank both our leader, Harry Reid, and our minority leader, Mitch McConnell, for their leadership and guidance. They are walking out together, and that is a good metaphor for what has happened today. I thank my colleague, Lamar Alexander, as well. Under the two leaders' authorization, we talked and, of course, in constant touch with them, worked out this agreement.

I rise to speak in support of the bipartisan agreement on Senate rules reform. It is an important step forward in changing the way we do business in the Senate.

Last year, the Rules Committee held six hearings on the filibuster. We heard about the history of the filibuster and what happened and how it had gone out of control. Those hearings were requested, actually, by a member of the Rules Committee, Tom Udall, the Senator from New Mexico, and it is why we embarked on the hearings. And I very much appreciate his suggestion that we do that.

At the hearings, Democrats brought up that the majority was no longer able to move forward to consider bills by filibusters on motions to proceed, and Republicans argued that they were too often blocked from offering amendments by the majority filling the tree. Both sides had legitimate complaints. What couldn't be disputed was that, in many ways, the Senate was broken. It had become harder and harder for the body to consider, debate, and decide on legislation and nominations that it is supposed to take care of.

It is true what Senator McConnell said--that we had a very productive session. But that doesn't gainsay the fact that there were 74 filibusters and that many issues that should have been decided weren't decided, and that the Senate, to many, may not be functioning in the way it used to, with debate being stifled by both the majority and the minority, and so we resolved this.

When I first came to the Senate 12 years ago, a senior Senator pulled me aside and said the role of the majority is to set the agenda. They put bills on the floor and they are debated. And the role of the minority is to offer amendments to change the legislation. We are not doing that much anymore. What usually happens is we offer a bill, and the minority says, we don't want it. They may say, we don't want it because Democrats have refused to allow unlimited amendments; whereas we think they do not want it because they may just want to gum up the Senate. But whatever the reason, both sides have legitimate complaints here and we are trying to resolve some of those. So clearly, the time for change has come. I believe the reforms we are adopting today give us a very good chance to go back to the way of operating where we had real debate on bills and amendments and votes on bills and amendments.

This won't happen overnight, and both sides will still use the procedural tools available to them on the most important issues. But we hope it will work well enough to get us back on track. Leaders Reid and McConnell in the colloquy they will put forward--which Senator Alexander and I participated in framing--will do two things, in addition to the changes that we will make. One, each will say we should use the motion to proceed to block bills from coming to the floor infrequently, and the majority will say we should use filling the tree to block amendments that might come forward on those bills infrequently.

Obviously, we are going to have to watch to see how this works over the next several months. And, obviously, there will be times when each side decides they have to use the right that the Senate gives them to block things. But the presumption will be that in the usual course of business we will not do that; that they will be the exception, not the rule.

A second thing that will be stated by both leaders is whoever is in the majority next Congress will not try to change the rules by simple majority in

this Congress or next. Some on our side were worried if we didn't try to invoke the constitutional option, should the other side get the majority--and I don't personally think we have to worry about that or that it will happen anyway, but should that happen, then they might invoke it and do something else, so why not do it now? Well, both leaders have agreed they will not do that. Without leader support, it is virtually impossible for it to get done.

So that is a significant change, and when the colloquy is presented in the Record, we will see both leaders have agreed to that. I want to thank them for providing strong leadership and guidance throughout this process.

I became convinced, working with my good friend, the Senator from Tennessee, and having plenty of conversations with my friend and Leader Harry Reid, and a few with Senator McConnell, that everybody wanted to come to an agreement here. Everyone wanted to see the Senate work better, and that made me feel pretty good regarding what we did here.

Second, I want to recognize the many Senators from my party who worked tirelessly to identify the momentum for change, and at the head of the list, of course, are Tom Udall, Jeff Merkley, and Tom Harkin. They worked very hard on these issues. Two of them are newer in the Senate--freshmen--and one has much more experience than I do in the Senate, Senator Harkin, and they all worked hard to see that we changed the rules.

While the changes aren't everything they would have liked or I would have liked, certainly the changes we are getting, not insignificant at all, are because Tom Udall started pushing this idea when he got here to the Senate. I think his predecessor, Clinton Anderson, had done some of this, and Jeff Merkley and Tom Harkin joined in the cause early on and actually brought us to the point where the inertia of not doing anything would no longer govern and we would get together to get something done.

There were other Senators who played a very important role: Senator Lautenberg, with his proposals; Michael Bennet, Mark Udall, and Al Franken all had proposals and all played a very significant role here and can feel very good about the changes we have wrought.

I particularly want to thank Senator Klobuchar for leading the working group of Senators who spent hours reviewing and refining. Without all of them, I don't think the agreement would have been possible.

I would make one other point, and this is a disappointment to me, so I will make it for myself. One idea championed by the reform-minded Senators I thought made eminent sense is the talking filibuster. It didn't change the balance in the Senate, it simply said that if you were going to filibuster, you had to stay on the floor and talk. You couldn't just be there and object.

The American public understands when a Senator wants to filibuster a bill, that Senator should be required to stand up and talk on the Senate floor. I strongly support the talking filibuster. We sometimes call it the Jimmy Stewart talking filibuster, because everyone recognizes that from the movie. I believe it would pull back the curtain on the kind of filibusters we have now. We wouldn't change the rule of 60, but the filibustering Senator and his supporters right now don't even have to show up or talk for a vote. This talking filibuster is one change I hope the Senate will adopt in the future because it makes good sense and we should do it.

I don't believe we should eliminate the filibuster altogether, but we need to make it real. The talking filibuster proposals would do that, and I hope someday we will make the talking filibuster part of the Senate rules, and I will vote for that resolution that will be on the floor later today. Of course, it will need two-thirds to pass.

Finally, I wanted to thank Senator Alexander. He and I have been friends before this, but we worked together being here throughout the holidays, vacations, and recesses, and he was creative, he was flexible, as always, he was congenial and, as usual, he was smart. His concern for this institution helped bring the minority and the majority together, and I very much appreciate Senator Alexander's role.

Senator Reid outlined the other parts of the bipartisan proposal--the end to secret holds, which will be done by rule; the end of reading of amendments filed for at least 72 hours, also done by rule; and the third proposal is to limit the number of executive nominations--there are so many. About 30 percent of the total we propose to eliminate. He and I, and Senators Lieberman and Collins, who have the jurisdiction in their committee, will introduce a bill that we hope to move quickly. We have gotten the agreement from the House that they will move the bill, and we should eliminate confirmation on so many of these positions that shouldn't require confirmation, such as members of part-time boards and commissions, officials who handle legislative or public affairs, and things such as that, and I want to thank Senators Lieberman and Collins for that.

Finally, as chairman of the Rules Committee, I believe there is more we can do. I want to see our efforts at reform continue. I wish to continue working on the streamlining of confirmation of nominations, both executive and judicial, and our Rules Committee will continue to look at that.

Change doesn't come often or easily to the Senate, but we are here because many Members worked hard on reform, and both parties, continuing the feeling of bipartisanship that began in the lameduck and I think has continued through the State of the Union speech, are continuing again today. I hope our efforts will make a difference. I hope the Senate will function better, and I am very hopeful that with these changes, both formal and informal, they will.

We know there are still sharp differences within our body on issues, and those won't disappear. On certain bills, both sides will use every procedural tactic that makes the Senate a different body than the House, but hopefully, on most, we won't.

In conclusion, while those of us who wanted reform in the Senate didn't get everything we wanted, the Senate will be a significantly better place for the changes we are enacting. As a result of this agreement, there should be more debate, more votes, fewer items blocked by a single Senator or small minority of Senators. Make no mistake about it, this agreement is not a panacea, but it is a very significant step on the road to making the Senate function in a better, fairer way.

Again, I thank all of my colleagues who participated in this effort.

Madam President, I am the last speaker after this very good debate, which was preceded by months and months of serious discussion. I think every one of us is better for going through this process. We understand the Senate better. We have deeper feelings about this hallowed institution, about what it has done, what it can do, and what is wrong with it as well. I think every one of us agrees that the Senate needed to be fixed, and we also agree that we did a lot last year, despite the fact that it was broken. We had different paths to fix it, but fix it we must and fix it we will.

I will say this: Obviously, there are going to be some rules changes and some statutory changes. But a lot of what will make this work is the agreement--informal but serious--between Senators Reid and McConnell, which Senator Alexander and I were part of. I say to my colleagues, hopefully, we are opening up a bit of a new era, where bills are allowed to come to the floor, except under extraordinary circumstances, where amendments are allowed to be added to those bills, except under extraordinary circumstances, and there is vigorous debate.

I ask my colleagues to forbear--it is easy for any Senator to stand up and bollix up the whole works. The spirit of the new agreement says think twice, or maybe three times, before you do, because that was the path that led us to the dysfunction.

I, too, want to salute my colleagues, Senators Harkin, Udall, and Merkley for the great job they did. Senator Wyden and Senator McCaskill and Senator Grassley will have a dream of theirs enacted into the rules momentarily. This has been a fine debate. I don't think the talking filibuster cuts against anything my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said. I am going to proudly vote for that provision, and maybe--miracle of miracles--it will get two-thirds. But at least there will be a vote, and maybe we can work toward that in the future.

I also do believe that the proposal to not invoke the constitutional option for this Congress and next Congress gives us some time to figure all this out, without closing the door on it forever, because some on our side, I know, were worried about that.

Let us go forward in the spirit of comity that we have seen since the lameduck session. Let us go forward in a bipartisan way that we have worked on these rules changes and move forward in the next few months and try to legislate in the way many of us who have been here longer than a few years used to love, enjoy, and relish. If we can bring those times back, the Senate will be a better place for every one of us, no matter our party or ideology.

I thank all of my colleagues, including my colleague from Tennessee and the two leaders, who stepped to the plate, and the so-called young turks, some of whom have been here much longer than I have been, for importuning us to act.

I yield the floor.

direction of the 112th congress

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Illinois for his as usual right-on-the-money words about the President's speech. I anticipate eagerly the speech of my colleague from Rhode Island who graciously yielded to me.

I rise to commend President Obama on the pitch perfect State of the Union he delivered last night. His speech was smart and balanced, forward thinking, and unabashedly upbeat about the future of our country.

Fundamentally, the President spoke about the need to preserve the American dream, to bequeath its promise to the next generation as our parents bequeathed it to us. The American dream is very simple. It means there is a strong likelihood that you will be doing better 10 years from now than you are doing today and an even greater likelihood that your children will be doing better than you did.

Many people in America think that dream is in peril today. Some people even fear that America is in decline, that our greatest period of prosperity is behind us. To these purveyors of gloom and doom, to those who are sour and dour and think America and its government can't do anything right, the President sent a clear message: You could not be more wrong about America. We are and will remain the most economically vibrant, the most culturally vibrant country in the world, with the best system. We are the only country on Earth that tells a young man or woman, 12 or 13 or 14 years old, whether their family has been in this country 12 or 6 generations or whether they are a new immigrant, you can achieve the stars. No other country has that. That is a precious part of our birthright that remains alive and well today, as we see in the successes of so many.

It is true that we live in a much different world today than the generation that preceded us. The rules have changed, and it is tougher to get ahead. Unemployment is unacceptably high, and the competition for jobs is real. The middle class feels squeezed. But, as the President said, this should not discourage us. It should challenge us.

Last night, the President explained how we can rise to that challenge. He outlined how we can outinnovate, outeducate, and outbuild the rest of the world, tapping the creativity and imagination of our populous.

He urged us to invest in clean energy technology and other cutting- edge industries and challenged us to put a million alternative-fuel vehicles on the road by 2015. Thanks to the ingenuity of researchers such as those at the GM fuel cell facility in Honeoye Falls, NY, I believe we can achieve this ambitious goal. I am also hopeful we can take up and pass clean energy legislation in the months ahead.

The President also called on Congress to reform No Child Left Behind in order to restore America's global leadership in education. I am particularly pleased that the President enthusiastically endorsed a permanent extension of the $2,500 college tuition tax credit I authored 2 years ago. I would like it to be even higher, to go to $3,000 this year.

It is no secret that much of our Nation's infrastructure is in disrepair and that too many Americans do not have access to high-speed Internet or high-speed rail. For America to stay ahead of our foreign competitors, we need to improve the ways in which we transport people and information.

Since the days of Henry Clay, with the internal improvements, when our Nation builds infrastructure, economic growth follows, and this has clearly always been a government function. The

President clearly understands this fact and spoke to it last night.

The President did not just focus on growing jobs, the economy, and middle-class paychecks last night. He showed an acute awareness of the need to rein in Federal spending to get our Nation's fiscal house in order. I echo his call to consolidate or eliminate unnecessary government programs and to revisit and revise regulations that have long outgrown their usefulness. Of course, we need to find a balance, but I am confident that more can and will be done to make our government more agile and efficient.

The President had the right blend: Yes, cut out the waste, even eliminate wasteful and inefficient and duplicative programs, but do not throw out the baby with the bathwater or, as he said, do not throw the engine off the airplane when the plane is overweight. So the combination of growth, investment in our future, and innovation, with fiscal moderation and reining in waste, is just pitch perfect for the American people.

Lastly, I applaud the President for addressing one of the most critical matters facing the country: our broken immigration system. As you know, I have championed comprehensive immigration reform for some time, and the President seemed to endorse many aspects of the approach. He likes the approach, bipartisan, that Senator Graham and I put together. He has told us that on several occasions. So I look forward to working with him as well as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle as we map a path to comprehensive reform in the 112th Congress.

Some pundits and handicappers said Congress seemed subdued, even restrained last night. Well, if last night's speech did not seem like the usual partisan pep rally, that is because it was not. The President's speech was not meant to appeal to Democrats or Republicans or even Independents. It was meant to appeal to Americans. In that, the President succeeded overwhelmingly. The fact that we sat together side by side, Democrats and Republicans, was a fine fit with the President's appeal to the whole of America, not to one side or the other.

The address last night embodied so many of the values and ideals that unite us as Americans. It displayed the kind of optimism we relish, thrive on, and believe in. It was a great speech, a wonderful moment of comity. I expect this moment will not fade soon, and I hope so too.

I yield the floor for my colleague from Rhode Island.