Floor Statements

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor in support of the Equal Employment for All Act, a bill I introduced today with Senators Blumenthal, Brown, Leahy, Markey, Shaheen, and Whitehouse. This legislation would prohibit employers from requiring prospective employees to disclose their credit history as part of the job application process. It makes sure that hiring decisions are based on an individual's skill and experience--not on past financial problems. This is also about basic fairness. Let people compete for jobs on the merits, not on whether they have enough money to pay all their bills.

Many people have bad credit because they hit hard times. They got sick, their husband left or their wife died or they lost their jobs. These are tough events under any circumstances, and they often put a real financial strain on a person. That strain sometimes results in late payments or an increase in the amount of money they must borrow.

The problems of bad credit were compounded following the 2008 financial crisis. Millions of people stumbled financially when shrinking home prices left them unable to refinance or to sell a home. Depreciated savings left people with a smaller financial cushion to survive fluctuations in their income. People lost their small businesses and found themselves mired in debt. For too many people, the fallout from the 2008 crisis also damaged their credit.

Much of America, hard-working, bill-paying America, has a damaged credit rating, and the impact of that bad credit rating lasts a long time. Negative information generally remains on a credit report for 7 years and, in some cases, it lasts even longer.

Most people recognize that one consequence of bad credit is that they are going to have trouble borrowing money or they are going to pay more when they borrow. But for many people, a damaged credit rating can block access to a job. After a terrible blow--a job loss, a death in the family, a divorce, a serious medical problem--many people are scrambling to get back to work or to pick up a second job or to change jobs so they can get back on their feet financially, but they are knocked back by damaged credit. Today, highly qualified applicants with bad credit can be shut out of the job market. This is wrong.

It was once thought a credit history would provide insight into a person's character and, today, many companies routinely require credit reports from job applicants. But research has shown that an individual's credit rating has little to no correlation with his or her ability to succeed in the workplace. A bad credit rating is far more often the result of an unexpected personal crisis or economic downturn than a reflection of someone's character or abilities.

The Equal Employment for All Act would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to put an end to these unfair and harmful practices. This would benefit millions of American families down on their luck, giving them a chance to rebuild their financial security. It will particularly help women, minorities, students, and seniors because these groups are disproportionately likely to be hit hard by bad credit ratings. For example, the economic fallout from a divorce often hits women's finances particularly hard. It only gets more difficult for women when they apply for good jobs for which they are fully qualified, but they are barred because employers insist on examining their credit history.

Another challenge with using credit reports during the job application process is that they are not always accurate. According to a February 2013 FTC report, 20 percent of consumers could identify at least one error in their credit reports.

Unfortunately, someone whose credit report has a significant error may have trouble learning about the mistake and, even if the mistake is identified, have trouble getting it corrected in a reasonable time.

According to the same FTC report, correcting credit report errors can be difficult to manage and the reporting agencies can be unresponsive. This means innocent job applicants are paying the price for a credit rating company's mistake.

This is only one more way the game is rigged. A rich person who loses a job, gets divorced or faces a family illness is unlikely to suffer from a drop in his credit or her credit rating. But for millions of working families, a hard personal blow translates into a hard financial blow that will show up for years in a credit report. No one should be denied the chance to compete for a job because of a credit report that bears no relationship to job performance and that can be riddled with inaccuracies.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis--a crisis that hammered middle-class families and from which millions of families are still struggling to recover--these practices should be stopped. It is time to give more families a chance to get back in the workforce and to get back on their feet.

Mr. President, I come to the floor in support of the Equal Employment for All Act, a bill I introduced today with Senators Blumenthal, Brown, Leahy, Markey, Shaheen, and Whitehouse. This legislation would prohibit employers from requiring prospective employees to disclose their credit history as part of the job application process. It makes sure that hiring decisions are based on an individual's skill and experience--not on past financial problems. This is also about basic fairness. Let people compete for jobs on the merits, not on whether they have enough money to pay all their bills.

Many people have bad credit because they hit hard times. They got sick, their husband left or their wife died or they lost their jobs. These are tough events under any circumstances, and they often put a real financial strain on a person. That strain sometimes results in late payments or an increase in the amount of money they must borrow.

The problems of bad credit were compounded following the 2008 financial crisis. Millions of people stumbled financially when shrinking home prices left them unable to refinance or to sell a home. Depreciated savings left people with a smaller financial cushion to survive fluctuations in their income. People lost their small businesses and found themselves mired in debt. For too many people, the fallout from the 2008 crisis also damaged their credit.

Much of America, hard-working, bill-paying America, has a damaged credit rating, and the impact of that bad credit rating lasts a long time. Negative information generally remains on a credit report for 7 years and, in some cases, it lasts even longer.

Most people recognize that one consequence of bad credit is that they are going to have trouble borrowing money or they are going to pay more when they borrow. But for many people, a damaged credit rating can block access to a job. After a terrible blow--a job loss, a death in the family, a divorce, a serious medical problem--many people are scrambling to get back to work or to pick up a second job or to change jobs so they can get back on their feet financially, but they are knocked back by damaged credit. Today, highly qualified applicants with bad credit can be shut out of the job market. This is wrong.

It was once thought a credit history would provide insight into a person's character and, today, many companies routinely require credit reports from job applicants. But research has shown that an individual's credit rating has little to no correlation with his or her ability to succeed in the workplace. A bad credit rating is far more often the result of an unexpected personal crisis or economic downturn than a reflection of someone's character or abilities.

The Equal Employment for All Act would amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to put an end to these unfair and harmful practices. This would benefit millions of American families down on their luck, giving them a chance to rebuild their financial security. It will particularly help women, minorities, students, and seniors because these groups are disproportionately likely to be hit hard by bad credit ratings. For example, the economic fallout from a divorce often hits women's finances particularly hard. It only gets more difficult for women when they apply for good jobs for which they are fully qualified, but they are barred because employers insist on examining their credit history.

Another challenge with using credit reports during the job application process is that they are not always accurate. According to a February 2013 FTC report, 20 percent of consumers could identify at least one error in their credit reports.

Unfortunately, someone whose credit report has a significant error may have trouble learning about the mistake and, even if the mistake is identified, have trouble getting it corrected in a reasonable time.

According to the same FTC report, correcting credit report errors can be difficult to manage and the reporting agencies can be unresponsive. This means innocent job applicants are paying the price for a credit rating company's mistake.

This is only one more way the game is rigged. A rich person who loses a job, gets divorced or faces a family illness is unlikely to suffer from a drop in his credit or her credit rating. But for millions of working families, a hard personal blow translates into a hard financial blow that will show up for years in a credit report. No one should be denied the chance to compete for a job because of a credit report that bears no relationship to job performance and that can be riddled with inaccuracies.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis--a crisis that hammered middle-class families and from which millions of families are still struggling to recover--these practices should be stopped. It is time to give more families a chance to get back in the workforce and to get back on their feet.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to honor one of the great leaders in the history of Boston. It might seem odd to describe a man who is still with us today, alive and well, as a figure in history, but in the almost 400 years since Boston was founded, a history that is filled with names known across this country--Winthrop, Adams, Lowell, Lodge--in this 400-year history, few have done more for Boston than our mayor Tom Menino.

Looking back at his 20 years in office, it is clear how much Tom Menino has done for our city. Mayor Menino revitalized Boston. From the waterfront and Innovation District to Dudley Square and Roxbury, Mayor Menino led the resurgence of our neighborhoods, expanded parks and livable spaces, and created a city whose innovative potential is unbounded.

Mayor Menino worked for Boston. With firm convictions, he cautioned against predatory lenders, starting the ``Don't Borrow Trouble'' campaign long before the great recession. With political will and courage, he improved education for all our kids, creating full-day kindergarten and making Boston schools some of the best in the country. With foresight of the next frontiers, he fought for hospitals and scientific research, giving Boston the world's leading health care institutions. With fierce moral clarity, he stood firmly for equality-- equal opportunity for immigrants, equal rights and equal marriage for the LGBT community, equal pay for women.

Perhaps most importantly, Mayor Menino has been there for Boston. It is often said that more than 50 percent of Boston residents have met Mayor Menino personally. I do not believe this is true. I believe the number must be much greater. It seems as if the mayor attends every community event, every potluck dinner, every school play, and every soccer game. From Grove Hall to the North End, Bowdoin to West Roxbury, we know Mayor Menino will be there for us in our moments of greatest triumph--ribbon cuttings for new buildings and parks, World Series victories, a new Bostonian's citizenship, a child's graduation--and we know he will be there for us in our moments of great tragedy--the death of a loved one, terror in Copley Square.

Of course, Mayor Menino could not have done it alone. By his side for all these years he has had Angela Menino. Angela is a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother. To all of us in Boston, she was not just a first lady but a first friend. Angela championed causes that often went unheralded in the press, supporting women and children, employment and education, and fighting to end homelessness. Today we thank Angela as well for helping make our city into a warm and thriving community.

Almost 400 years ago, on a ship sailing from England to the New World, John Winthrop declared that the new city they would found, Boston, would be a ``city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.'' And if that experiment, our city, was to succeed, he said ``we must be knit together . . . we must entertain each other in brotherly affection . . . we must rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.''

For 20 years Mayor Menino has made Boston into a city that all eyes can see is a model for the country and for the world. He has succeeded because he knew all along that our fortunes depend on our work together--as one people, as one community, as one Boston.

On behalf of a grateful people, Tom Menino, we thank you for your hard work, for your service, and most of all for your dedication to making Boston a better place.

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

Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in urging support for S. 1610, the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2013. This is a bipartisan bill that will help homeowners across our country who are getting hit with the newly revised flood maps and increased flood insurance premiums.

I am very pleased to join colleagues on both sides of the aisle to call for this commonsense delay which gives FEMA time to get this right. I thank Senator Menendez who has been a tremendous leader, Senator Isakson, Senator Landrieu, who has gotten in there and gotten us all mobilized, Senator Cochran, many others of the cosponsors of this bill for their leadership and their commitment to work on this important issue.

I also thank my partner in all things, Senator Markey, for the work he has done on this bill and for giving me the chance to speak first here so we could get going. Families purchase flood insurance to prevent the loss of their homes. But now many families fear that the price of flood insurance could be just as devastating as any storm. You cannot protect someone's home by pricing them out of it. Yet that is exactly what is taking place around the country. Congress changed the National Flood Insurance Program to move toward a more market-based system that more accurately reflected the true cost and risks of flood damage.

This is a well-intentioned bill, but, unfortunately, homeowners are being blindsided by high rate increases and new flood zone maps. Many families are learning for the first time from news reports and letters that their mortgage companies are sending that they must purchase flood insurance. This is simply not an acceptable way of informing the public that flood insurance bills are skyrocketing.

When FEMA released these flood maps this year and last, they knew they were placing hundreds of thousands of homeowners into a flood zone for the very first time. It is critical that these maps be spot on and correct. But many people do not trust many of the new changes, and their concerns are growing by the day. In fact, a recent independent review conducted by coastal scientists at the behest of my colleague, Congressman Bill Keating, concluded that FEMA used outdated wave methodology better suited for the Pacific coast when they drafted new flood maps for Massachusetts.

They believe this resulted in FEMA overpredicting the flooding that could occur from once-in-a-century storms for much of our State. We need to pass this bill to give the government the time it needs to make sure that the maps are accurate, reliable, and reflect the best available scientific data.

We also need to make sure that hard-working families who play by the rules can afford these policies. The Homeowners Flood Insurance Affordability Act that I have proudly cosponsored will provide relief to homeowners who built to code and were later remapped into a higher risk area.

Furthermore, this critical bill will delay rate increases until FEMA completes the affordability study that was mandated by the Biggert- Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, and until subsequent affordability guidelines are enacted.

Homeowners are facing flood insurance premium increases that can cost $500, $1,000, even more per month. Most hard-working families and seniors do not have that kind of extra money on hand to spend on flood insurance premiums they never knew they were going to need.

FEMA has a lot of work to do.

In the meantime, these families should not be hit with high costs when they challenge the flood map and win their appeal. Our bill will help address this injustice and will allow FEMA to utilize the National Flood Insurance Fund to reimburse people who successfully appeal a map determination. It also gives FEMA the added financial incentive to get those maps right the first time.

I am pleased to join colleagues on both sides of the aisle in this call for a commonsense delay which will give FEMA time to get this right. I urge my Senate colleagues to support this much needed relief for homeowners. I thank Senator Markey for his leadership. I thank Senator Landrieu for her amazing leadership, and I thank all of my colleagues who are ready to move on something that is common sense and very much needed by families across this country.

I yield for my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Markey.

Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for efforts to stamp out sexual assault in our military, and I wish to begin by thanking the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from Maine for their extraordinary leadership in bringing us here to speak on this issue.

For over 20 years our military has said it has a zero tolerance policy toward sexual violence. Government agencies have put out 20 reports examining the problem and suggesting potential solutions. Yet, shamefully, incidents of sexual assault involving our military personnel continue at staggering rates.

Data from the Department of Defense indicates that thousands of men and women serving in the military are subject to these horrific experiences every year. More than 20 percent of women serving in the military have reported unwanted sexual contact at some point during the course of their military service.

Perhaps most shameful, about half of all female victims in a 2012 DOD survey indicated they did not report these crimes because they believed such reports would simply be ignored.

This is an outrageous situation. We have called on the military over and over to solve this problem, and they have failed. Simply once again calling on the military to reform will be an exercise in futility. Worse, it will be a breach of trust with the men and women who are future victims of sexual predators lurking in the military.

These are important steps forward that we take today. There are a number of extremely strong provisions to address sexual assault included in this year's National Defense Authorization Act which will move us in the right direction. These provisions are designed to crack down on sexual assaults, to better protect and advocate for victims, and to change the climate within our military to one that ends this despicable conduct.

The bill includes provisions to promote the prosecution of these cases by eliminating the statute of limitations on certain sexual offense cases and by limiting the ability of commanding officers to modify court-martial findings in sexual offense cases.

The bill requires the provision of a special victims' counsel to provide legal support for servicemembers who are victims of sexual violence at the hands of other members of the military and take steps to limit the potential for victims to be mistreated by defense counsel.

There are other important steps forward in this bill. As the Senate debates the Defense bill, we will consider additional provisions to prosecute and eliminate sexual assault. I support those efforts as well.

The issue of sexual violence within our Armed Forces is very personal to me. All three of my brothers served in the military. My oldest brother was career military and flew 288 combat missions in Vietnam. I know the unbelievable sacrifices our military men and women make for this country and the sacrifices their families make to support them.

Yet, in spite of those sacrifices, we as a nation have consistently refused to take sufficient steps to ensure that our military men and women are protected from sexual violence on the job. Tolerance for sexual assaults demeans the sacrifices that millions of brave men and women have stepped forward to make on our behalf. We owe it to our servicemembers, and to their families, to change the culture in our military that remains far too tolerant of this abuse. We owe it to our servicemembers, and to their families, to do everything in our power to stamp out these incidents.

No matter the outcome of this week's amendment votes, this year's Defense Authorization Act will make significant strides toward finally making the military's zero tolerance policy a reality.

I am proud to support these efforts, and I promise that so long as these crimes continue to occur, so long as victims are fearful to come forward, so long as justice is denied to victims, we will be right back here next year and the year after that and the year after that, doing everything we can to end sexual assault in the military.

The brave men and women serving in our Armed Forces have no intention of giving up on us, and we have no intention of giving up on them.

I yield my time.

I thank the Senator from Louisiana for the question, but most of all I thank her for her energetic leadership on this issue; she will help us find the right way forward.

I am here today because of what I am hearing from families in Massachusetts. I also thank the Senator from Mississippi. This is something that is hitting us all around the country--this change in the flood maps. So I am here today to support my colleagues' bipartisan efforts to help homeowners across the country who are getting hit with newly revised flood maps and increased flood insurance premiums.

Families purchase flood insurance to prevent the loss of their homes during a natural disaster, but now many of these same families fear that the price of flood insurance could be just as devastating and could actually cost them their homes.

I understand why Congress changed the national flood program to more accurately reflect the true costs and risks of flood damage, and I agree that over time we need to move to a more market-based system for setting flood insurance rates, providing we adequately take into account the affordability concerns for working families. But that is not what is happening right now. These new maps and rate increases are having as big an impact as a big storm.

When FEMA released these flood maps earlier this year and last, they knew they were placing hundreds of thousands of homeowners into a flood zone for the very first time. Yet there was inadequate warning to homeowners. Many have started receiving letters from their mortgage companies and are learning for the first time that they must now purchase flood insurance. We have heard about the costs--$500, $1,000 a month, even more. Most hard-working families and most seniors don't have that kind of extra money on hand to spend on flood insurance premiums they never knew they needed.

One Massachusetts resident wrote to me and said:

I have owned my property for over 33 years. Twelve years

ago I built a house according to the codes at the time.

Recently, flood maps were redrawn, putting my home in a new

flood zone and out of compliance. The implementation of the

Biggert-Waters act is going to raise our flood insurance to

$10,000 or more per year. I follow the rules, and now the

rules are changing, leaving me few options to comply.

The Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act that I have cosponsored along with Senator Landrieu and so many others will provide relief to this homeowner and to others who built to code and were later remapped into a higher risk area. This critical bill will delay rate increases until FEMA completes affordability studies mandated by the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act and until subsequent affordability guidelines are enacted.

There is a second problem with FEMA's actions. The reclassifications have taken place in some areas without a careful and complete analysis, but for those who believe they haven't been correctly classified, it is a tough challenge to get their flood zone status changed.

I received another letter from a Massachusetts constituent who lives in Brockton. She was informed that her only way out of this mess was to pay more than $1,000 for an engineer to come and conduct an elevation study of a nearby brook. Now, let's be clear. She had to spend this money even though the city of Brockton and the nearby Army Corps of Engineers have no record of the brook ever flooding. If her appeal is successful, she is still out $1,000 due to FEMA's mistake.

Then I will just say I am pleased to join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in calling for this commonsense delay which will give FEMA time to get this right. I thank Senator Landrieu for her leadership, and I thank Senators Menendez, Isakson, Cochran, and all the cosponsors of this bill. Time is running out. We need to get this done.

I yield back.

Mr. President, today the Senate passed the Drug Quality and Security Act. I am proud to have worked together with Chairman Harkin, Ranking Member Alexander, and all of the Senators on the HELP Committee from both sides of the aisle over several months to develop this law, which will create commonsense oversight of the pharmaceutical compounding industry and the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Some politicians use the word ``regulation'' as if it were a curse. Certainly no one wants bad regulations or over regulation, but the impact of failing to regulate when public safety is at risk can be dangerous and even deadly.

We have an example just how deadly right in front of us--and an example of what happens when Congress fails to regulate. It starts with compounding pharmacies.

Compounding pharmacies serve individual patients who need specialized drugs. Without these customized products, some of our most vulnerable patients would not be able to get the precisely formulated medications they need. But customers have no way to evaluate the safety or purity or cleanliness of the compounded medications they receive. That is what regulations are for.

For too long, bad actors in this industry have taken advantage of lax State enforcement and confusion about Federal regulations. The consequences of too little regulation and too little enforcement were brought into sharp focus last year when a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts, the New England Compounding Center, was identified as the source of a widespread fungal meningitis outbreak that sickened 751 people and killed 64. I wish NECC were an isolated case, but companies like it have engaged in shoddy practices for years practices that have caused sickness and injuries and even death.

There have been many attempts to fix the law and require FDA oversight in this area. In 2007 Senator Kennedy worked with Senator Roberts to develop bipartisan legislation that would have addressed this issue. If that effort had succeeded, we might have been able to spare many people great suffering. Sixty-four people from just one incident would probably be alive today. But the industry lobbyists beat back their efforts. The result? People got sick and people died.

This issue is of particular importance to Massachusetts, and I am proud to have worked with my colleagues on the HELP Committee throughout my first year in the Senate to shape earlier versions of this legislation. Throughout the bipartisan development process and the public hearings and votes in the HELP Committee, I pushed for a bill that would subject compounding pharmacies to strong FDA oversight. Those efforts, and negotiations with the House of Representatives, have produced the Drug Quality and Security Act. The bill strengthens current law and establishes tough, new regulations that will keep us all safer.

The compounding provisions of this bill are not the final word in what is needed. I believe the FDA should have more authority to inspect the records of compounding pharmacies, and we have included in the bill a GAO study that will assess the impact and effectiveness of this new law and tell us if more work is needed. But this bill is big step forward in making people safer, so I support it strongly.

This legislation has another feature that will help make drugs safer. It creates an important new oversight system to ensure we have a secure supply chain for our pharmaceutical products. Today, we can track a gallon of milk in the grocery store all the way back to its producer, but we can't verify the origins of a prescription drug on the shelves of our pharmacies. Counterfeit or illegally imported drugs can be integrated into the supply chain, and currently there is no detection mechanism. This bill ensures that we can trace a particular drug from its manufacturer all the way to the pharmacy. It will allow consumers to buy prescription medications with greater confidence that the drugs are safe, legal, and free of counterfeit or substandard ingredients. It will allow patients to have greater confidence that the pills in the bottle from the pharmacy are exactly what their doctors have ordered-- nothing more and nothing less.

I commend my colleagues for stepping up to the challenge and showing that it is possible for Congress to do what is right--pass commonsense reforms that protect patients and consumers from harm. This is one of the basic functions of government: making sure that markets work by ensuring that no one cuts corners that the customer can't see or that put someone's family at risk. When all the manufacturers have to follow the same standards of cleanliness, when all of them have to account for where they got the chemicals they used in their products, the playing field is level and the customer is free to make good, independent decisions. This is how government should work--through actions to improve public health and public safety through smart, fair, and reasonable regulations that will improve the lives of all Americans. I hope that the Drug Quality and Security Act will do just that. I am proud to support it.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the retirement crisis in this country--a crisis that has received far too little attention and far too little response from Washington.

I have spent most of my career studying the economic pressures on middle-class families--families who worked hard, who played by the rules, but who still found themselves just hanging on by their fingernails. Starting in the 1970s, even as workers became more productive, their wages flattened, while core expenses such as housing and health care and sending their kids to college kept going up.

Working families did not ask for a bailout. Instead, they rolled up their sleeves. They sent both parents into the workforce. But that meant higher childcare costs, a second car, and higher taxes. So they tightened their belts more, cutting spending wherever they could.

Adjusted for inflation, families today spend less than they did a generation

ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases. When that still was not enough to cover rising costs, they took on debt--credit card debt, college debt, debt just to pay for the necessities.

As families became increasingly desperate, unscrupulous financial institutions were all too happy to chain them to financial products that got them into even more trouble--products where fine print and legalese covered the true costs of credit. These trends are not new. There have been warning signs for years about what is happening to our middle class.

One major consequence of these increasing pressures on working people--a consequence that receives far too little attention--is that the dream of a secure retirement is slowly slipping away.

A generation ago, middle-class families were able to put away enough money during their working years to make it through their later years with dignity. On average, they saved about 11 percent of their take- home pay while working. Many paid off their homes, got rid of all their debts, and retired with strong pensions from their employers. And when pensions, savings, and investments fell short, they could rely on Social Security to make up the difference.

That was the story a generation ago. Since that time the retirement landscape has shifted dramatically against our families. Among working families on the verge of retirement, about a third have no retirement savings of any kind and another third have total savings that are less than a year's annual income. Many seniors have seen their housing wealth shrink as well. According to AARP, in 2012, one out of every seven older homers was paying down a mortgage that was higher than the value of their house.

And just as they need to rely more than ever on pensions, employers are withdrawing from their traditional role in helping provide a secure retirement. Two decades ago, more than a third of all private sector workers--35 percent--had traditional defined benefit pensions--pensions that guaranteed a certain monthly payment that retirees knew they could depend on. Today that number has been cut in half. Only 18 percent of private sector workers have defined benefit pensions. Employers have replaced guaranteed retirement income with savings plans, such as 401(k) plans, that leave the retiree at the mercy of a market that rises and falls and sometimes at the mercy of dangerous investment products. These plans often fall short of what retirees need and nearly half of all American workers do not even have access to those limited plans. This leaves more than 44 million workers without any retirement assistance from their employers.

Add all of this up--the dramatic decline in individual savings and the dramatic decline of guaranteed retirement benefits and employer support in return for a lifetime of work--and we are left with a retirement crisis, a crisis that is as real and as frightening as any policy problem facing the United States today.

With less savings and weaker private retirement protection, retirees depend more than ever on the safety and reliability of Social Security. Social Security works. No one runs out of benefits and the payments do not rise or fall with the stock market. Two-thirds of seniors rely on it for the majority of their income in retirement, and for 14 million seniors--14 million--this is the safety net that keeps them out of poverty. God bless Social Security.

And yet even Social Security has been under attack. Monthly payments are modest, averaging about $1,250, and over time those benefits are shrinking in value. This puts a terrible squeeze on seniors.

With tens of millions of people more financially stressed as they approach retirement, with more and more people left out of the private retirement security system, and with the economic security of our families unraveling, Social Security is rapidly becoming the only-- only--lifeline that millions of seniors have to keep their heads above water. And yet instead of taking on the retirement crisis, instead of strengthening Social Security, some in Washington are fighting to cut benefits.

Just this morning the Washington Post ran an editorial mocking the idea of a looming retirement crisis. To make sure no one missed the point, they even put the words ``retirement crisis'' in quotation marks.

No retirement crisis? Tell that to the millions of Americans who are facing retirement without a pension. Tell that to the millions of Americans who have nothing to fall back on except Social Security. There is a $6.6 trillion gap between what Americans under 65 are currently saving and what they will need to maintain their standard of living when they hit retirement. Mr. President, $6.6 trillion--and that assumes that Social Security benefits are not cut. Make no mistake, there is a crisis.

The call to cut Social Security has an uglier side to it too. The Washington Post framed the choice as more children in poverty versus more seniors in poverty. The suggestion that we have become a country where those living in poverty fight each other for a handful of crumbs tossed off the tables of the very wealthy is fundamentally wrong. This is about our values, and our values tell us that we do not build a future by deciding first who among the vulnerable will be left to starve.

Look at the basic facts. Today Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus. If we do nothing, Social Security will be safe for the next 20 years and even after that will continue to pay most benefits. With some modest adjustments, we can keep the system solvent for many more years--and we could even increase benefits.

The tools to help us build a future are available to us now. We do not start the debate by deciding who gets kicked to the curb. We are Americans. We start the debate by figuring out how to create better efficiencies, how to make small changes that will make the system fairer, how to grow the pool of those who contribute, and how to rebuild the system that every single one of us can rely on to make sure there is a baseline in retirement that no one falls below.

We do not build a future for our children by cutting basic retirement benefits for their grandparents. No. We build a future for our kids by strengthening our economy, by investing in education and infrastructure and research, by rebuilding a strong and robust middle class in which every kid gets a chance and the most vulnerable have a strong safety net.

The most recent discussion about cutting benefits has focused on something called the chained CPI. Supporters of the chained CPI say it is a more accurate way of measuring the cost-of-living increases for seniors. That statement is simply not true. Chained CPI falls far short of the actual increases in costs that seniors face. Pure and simple, chained CPI is just a fancy way to say cut benefits.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has developed a measure of the real impact of inflation on seniors. It is called the CPI-E. If we adopt it today, it would generally increase the benefits for our retirees, not cut them. Social Security is not the answer for all of our retirement problems. We need to find a way to tackle the financial squeeze that is crushing our families. We need to help families start saving again. We need to make sure more workers have access to better pensions. But in the meantime, so long as those problems continue to exist and as long as we are in the midst of a real and growing retirement crisis, a crisis that is shaking the foundations of what was once a vibrant and secure middle class, the absolute last thing we want to do is cut Social Security benefits. The absolute last thing we should do in 2013, at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors, is allow the program to be dismantled inch by inch.

Over the past generation, working families have been hacked at, chipped, and hammered. If we want a real middle class, a middle class that continues to serve as the backbone of our country, then we must take the retirement crisis seriously. Seniors have worked their entire lives and have paid into this system. But right now more people than ever are on the edge of financial disaster once they retire. The numbers continue to get worse. That is why we should be talking about expanding Social Security benefits, not cutting them.

Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Begich from Alaska, Senator Sanders from Vermont, and others have been

pushing hard in that direction. Social Security is incredibly effective. It is incredibly popular. The calls for strengthening it are growing louder day by day.

The conversation about retirement and Social Security benefits is not a conversation just about math. At its core this is a conversation about our values. It is a conversation about who we are as a country and who we are as a people. I believe we honor our promises. We make good on a system that millions of people paid into faithfully throughout their working years. We support the right of every person to retire with dignity.

I yield the floor and 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 as if in morning business.

Madam President, it hasn't been even a month since the end of the Republican shutdown of the government, and they are already back at trying to paralyze the government again.

Yesterday, the Republicans blocked an up-or-down vote on the nomination

of Nina Pillard to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This filibuster comes just 1 week after Republicans filibustered the nomination of Patricia Millett to the DC Circuit, and less than 1 year after Republicans filibustered Caitlin Halligan, who eventually just gave up and withdrew her nomination.

Republicans now hold the dubious distinction of having filibustered all three women that President Obama nominated to the DC Circuit. Collectively, these women have diverse experiences in private practice, in government, and in public interest law. Between them, they have argued an amazing 45 cases before the Supreme Court and have participated in many more. All three have the support of a majority of Senators. So why have they been filibustered? The reason is simple. They are caught in a fight over the future of our courts--a fight over whether the courts will be a neutral forum that decides every dispute fairly or whether the courts will be stacked in favor of the wealthy and the powerful.

Every day in Congress we deal with the influence of powerful groups and their armies of lobbyists. But in our democracy, when we write laws, sometimes we can push back on that power. In our democracy we have tools that can be used in the legislative process--tools such as open debate, public opinion, and political accountability, tools that can help the people win these fights. I saw it happen up close in the 2008 financial crisis when we were able to get a strong consumer financial protection bureau despite the efforts of the large financial institutions to kill it.

But the story doesn't end when Congress passes a law. Powerful interests don't just give up. They shift their fight to the courts because they know that if they can weaken or overturn a law in court, they turn defeat into victory. If they can break the courts by putting enough sympathetic judges in lifetime positions, a friendly judicial system will give them the chance to undermine any laws they don't like. That is already happening in the Supreme Court. Three well-respected legal scholars, including Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, a distinguished judge and conservative Reagan appointee, recently examined almost 20,000 Supreme Court cases from the last 65 years. The researchers concluded that the five conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are in the top 10 most procorporate justices in more than half a century. Justices Alito and Roberts are number one and number two.

Take a look at the win rate of the national Chamber of Commerce in cases before the Supreme Court. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, the national Chamber moved from a 43-percent win rate during the last 5 terms of the Burger court, to a 56-percent win rate under the Rehnquist court, to a 70-percent rate under the Roberts court. Follow this procorporate trend to its logical conclusion, and pretty soon you will have a Supreme Court that is a wholly owned subsidiary of big business.

The powerful interests that work to rig the Supreme Court also want to rig the lower courts. The DC Circuit is a particular target because that court has the power to overturn agency regulations. If a business doesn't like it when the agencies implement the will of Congress, they try to undermine those agencies through the DC Circuit.

In the next 5 years, the DC Circuit will decide some of the most important cases of our time--including cases which will decide whether Wall Street reform will have real bite or whether it will just be toothless. Swaps dealers, the securities industry, the Business Roundtable, and the Chamber of Commerce are all lining up to challenge the new rules that agencies have written to try to put some teeth into Wall Street reform and other laws. These big-industry players want business-friendly judges to help bail them out.

So let's be clear. Nine of the 14 judges on the DC Circuit who currently hear cases were appointed by Republican Presidents. The President with the most appointees on that court right now is Ronald Reagan.

This lopsided court has been busy striking down environmental regulations that stop companies from spewing mercury into the air we breathe, striking down investor protections that hold corporate boards accountable, striking down a requirement for employers to provide access to birth control under ObamaCare. Each of these regulations exists because Congress has passed laws telling the agencies to write them.

It is true that sometimes an agency may get it wrong, but these days the DC Circuit seems to be finding more and more ways to help bail out the businesses that never wanted to be regulated in the first place.

Republicans have noticed what is going on with this lopsided court. They would like to keep things the way they are, and they have not been subtle about it. Many Republicans have talked openly of their opposition to any new judges to fill the three vacancies on this court precisely because the new nominees will give the court more balance and fairness. Republicans may prefer a rigged court that gives their corporate friends and their armies of lobbyists and lawyers a second chance to undercut the will of Congress, but that is not the job of judges. Judges aren't supposed to make law. Judges aren't supposed to tilt politically one way or the other.

Republicans may not like Wall Street reform. They may not like ObamaCare. But Congress passed those laws. President Obama signed those laws. President Obama ran for reelection on those laws, while his opponent pledged to repeal them--and his opponent lost by nearly 5 million votes. It is not up to judges to overturn those laws or their associated regulations just because they don't fit the judges' policy preferences.

There are three vacancies on the DC Circuit, and the President has nominated three impressive people to fill those vacancies--including Patricia Millett and Nina Pillard. These nominees are not ideological. They have extraordinary legal resumes and have received bipartisan support from top litigators around the country. They are among the top legal minds of this generation.

This is how the President plans to push back against efforts to tilt our judicial system: by nominating judges who will be judges--judges who will be fair, judges who will be evenhanded, judges who will have the diversity of professional experience to understand and consider all sides of an issue.

I understand that Republicans may prefer to keep the DC Circuit exactly as it is. But article II, section 2 of the Constitution says the President of the United States nominates judges, with the advice and consent of the Senate. There is no clause that says, except when that President is a Democrat. Democrats allowed President George W. Bush to put four very conservative judges on the DC Circuit. All four are still serving, and one is Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

There are three vacancies in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The President of the United States has nominated judges to fill those vacancies. That is his job, and it is the job of the Senate to confirm highly qualified, independent judges. That is how our system works. That is what the Constitution demands.

Republicans these days do not seem to like that. They keep looking for ways to keep this President from doing his job. So far they have shut down the government, they have filibustered people he has nominated to fill his administration, and they are now filibustering judges to block him from filling any of the vacancies with highly qualified people. We need to call out these filibusters for what they are--naked attempts to nullify the results of the last Presidential election, to force us to govern as though President Obama had not won the 2012 election.

President Obama did win the 2012 election--by 5 million votes. He has done what the Constitution requires him to do--nominated highly qualified people to fill open vacancies on the Federal bench. If Republicans continue to filibuster these highly qualified nominees for no reason other than to nullify the President's constitutional authority, then Senators not only have the right to change the filibuster rules, Senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules. We cannot turn our back on the Constitution. We cannot abdicate our oath of office. We have a responsibility to protect and defend our democracy, and that includes protecting the neutrality of our courts

and preserving the constitutional power of the President to nominate highly qualified people to court vacancies.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``The Role of Manufacturing Hubs in a 21st Century Innovation Economy.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 10 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 2 p.m. in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Judicial Nominations.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 9:30 a.m. in room 428A of the Russell Senate Office building to conduct a roundtable entitled ``Serving Our Service Members: A Review of Programs for Veteran Entrepreneurs.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 13, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013.''