Floor Statements

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, it is my understanding we are now in morning business. I ask if there is a time constraint when making speeches.

Thank you, Mr. President. We are facing a moment in the issue that all Americans are looking at and wondering: What is happening here? What is going to come about? What are we going to do?

But I wish to remind everyone, in 1773, a tea party was held in Boston Harbor. It was to protest a yoke of oppression that hobbled the start of freedom in our new Nation and that new Americans wanted removed. Those here then wanted the liberty to choose their own customs and their way of life.

While that was 238 years ago, we again struggle to keep a fringe group from taking away the rights of a majority of American citizens who treasure choices they are free to make in our democracy. Although these attacks are marked in the cloak of fiscal responsibility, it is very clear that this group, unlike our forebears, is determined to restrict the freedoms most Americans choose to protect.

So while we are not latter-day Paul Reveres, we sound the alarm for the American people to beware. I come to the floor to warn every parent and grandparent to beware for the well-being of your loved ones. If you want your children and your grandchildren to have the best health care American research can produce, beware.

If your chest swells with pride when your 2-year-old repeats numbers or words learned at a Federal Head Start schoolhouse, beware.

If your child suffers when toxic air overwhelms them and they are gasping for a breath of fresh air, beware. Look at your family, and if you have a son or a daughter anxious, ready, and able to go to college and you cannot afford to help, beware.

If you are a woman dependent on Planned Parenthood, where every year women receive tests for breast or cervical cancer that could endanger their health and maybe their lives, beware.

If you are a retiree who believes Medicare is freely available to help you live longer or function better, beware. Watch out. Tea party Republicans have seized control of the House of Representatives and will use their power to eliminate current services to children, adults, and retirees from the government, as promised.

They are continuing to brew a toxic tea, a sleight of hand trick to push pain on America's most vulnerable citizens, as we look at this placard: ``House GOP Brewing a Toxic Tea for Americans.''

Across our country, millions are worried sick about losing jobs, losing homes, and losing an established way of life for their children's futures. What do the tea party Republicans propose? Cut their programs to protect the wealth of the richest among us. But tea party Republicans do not want to solve problems. Instead, they are trying to use the budget process to push an extreme ideology that they believe is the only way others should live their lives. Do it their way or no way.

They are willing to shut down the government to prove a point, to change the condition we have operated so well under for many years. They are willing to sacrifice America's financial standing to impose their extreme views on millions who do not agree with these radical extremists.

They refuse to step up, compromise, and move ahead, so America can continue leading the world as it has been. The President and the Senate Democrats have come to the negotiating table with a responsible plan that protects our country's fragile economy, economic recovery, and invests in our future.

But the toxic tea Republicans in the House would rather recklessly shut down the government than budge off their foul scheme. Last week, they stood outside the Capitol and chanted: ``Shut it down. Shut it down.'' That was their mantra, shut down the government.

When Speaker Boehner told them to prepare for a shutdown, they gave him

an ovation. That is where they stand: Cut it off. Cut off the health America needs to maintain some financial leadership. These are elected lawmakers who are supposed to guard our government, not kill it.

They want to deceive our people, talking about arithmetic and accounting, but that is not their real aim. Their aim is to have the government decide what is right or wrong in people's homes and families so they can govern others' behavior. Make no mistake. They do not care if their cuts hurt children. They have shown that all along. They want to chase more than 200,000 children out of Head Start, where children learn how to learn, and modest-income families have no other way to provide that education.

We see it on this placard: ``House Republicans Hold Back 218,000 Head Start Kids.'' That is not going to help our country in the future. Tea party Republicans ignore the fact that children who attend Head Start have higher test scores and are more likely to graduate from high school and go on to college.

They should visit Head Start classrooms to see those little ones. Maybe their tough hearts will mellow instead of just saying: No. Sorry. With American wealth, we cannot help you.

But Head Start is only a beginning. Look at what tea party Republicans want to do to higher education. They want to reduce Pell grants, which help millions of Americans go to college. Do they not understand they are not just saying no to hard-working young students, they are also saying no to American employers, telling them: Too bad our country does not have the skilled workers. Ship those jobs overseas or bring foreigners here. They will work for much less anyway.

They are saying no to the millions of hard-working parents who dream of seeing their kids living better than their parents because they received a college education. This chart tells a tragic story about the opportunities for smart kids who depend on Pell grants to afford college. Look at what it says: ``As College Costs Rise, House GOP Slash Pell Grants.'' We can see it here. Rising tuition and less help is the way they would like to see America go.

Do we want to force students to take on more debt in order to attend college or kick them off our country's campuses altogether?

I learned the value of a government investment in college education firsthand. I attended Columbia University on the GI bill after serving in the Army during 1944 and 1945. Later, I cofounded ADP. That is one of America's most successful companies, now employing 45,000 people. America built the ``Greatest Generation'' by enabling 8 million veterans to attend college free for their service in wartime.

Even as we currently continue losing lives in wars that have also injured thousands, they are willing to shut down the government, no matter what, if it takes away a payday for soldiers on the battlefield.

The assault on our children's future does not end there. The tea party Republicans want to cripple our ability to provide the clean air our people need to breathe without fear by eliminating the Clean Air Act, putting polluter's profits ahead of our children's health.

It is an outrageous assault on a landmark law that the Supreme Court ruled on in 2007, that it is the government's responsibility to protect children from toxic chemicals in the air and illnesses such as asthma, lung cancer, among other life-threatening diseases.

I wish our GOP colleagues would be straight with the millions of parents who are concerned about their children's health and explain why tea partiers are asking families to be patient and maybe their children will outgrow asthma.

One of my grandsons suffers from this disease. He is an athletic child, and every time he goes to a soccer game, my daughter first checks to see where the closest emergency room is. No parent should have to worry about their children playing outside.

Look at this picture. Soot is ugly when it is pouring from a smokestack, but it is even uglier inside a child's lungs.

Tea party Republicans say you can not restrict polluters with regulations because it is too cumbersome.

By their logic, we should rid ourselves of traffic signals, too. Those red lights are a real inconvenience.

And while we are at it, maybe our Republican colleagues would like us to get government bureaucrats out of the air traffic control towers.

Can anyone believe the Republicans are going after medical research, at the same time?

The National Institutes of Health are making strides in fighting childhood diseases. But the Republicans want to reduce NIH's ability to do research by taking $1 billion of their budget.

That is funding that could find a cure for childhood cancer or just maybe identify the cause of autism or other autoimmune diseases.

If the government shuts down, NIH will have to stop admitting new patients for 640 clinical trials, 60 of which involve children with cancer.

And what about the toxic tea Republicans are trying to serve to women? Willing to put women at risk with their health.

They want to wipe out Planned Parenthood, one of the Nation's leading providers of health services for women.

Disadvantaged women turn to Planned Parenthood for family planning services, breast exams and cervical cancer screenings.

And make no mistake: Cancer screenings save lives.

Since the 1950s, cervical cancer screenings have cut mortality rates by more than 70 percent.

So why would we want to take cancer screenings away from women?

But it is not just women's health at risk, health care for America's seniors and retirees is also on the tea party Republicans' chopping block.

They just revealed a scheme to end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program.

The problem is, when your voucher runs out, you will have to dig into your own pocket to pay for health care.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could not have been clearer this week when it reported ``Under [this] proposal, most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system.''

Is this what America wants, forcing seniors to spend more on medicine and treatment, and get less in return?

The bottom line is the Republican leaders in the House should stop the toxic tea lawmakers from hijacking the deficit debate.

We cannot allow them to ``ransom'' Head Start, the Clean Air Act, Planned Parenthood and Medicare.

We cannot negotiate away the health and well-being of America's children, women and seniors.

This is not how we solve our financial problems.

I was a CEO for many years, and I know that you cannot run a company, or a country, without sufficient revenues.

I voted last year to end the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of wage earners because I know windfalls for the wealthy will not guarantee jobs, reduce the deficit or help us invest in our future.

I am one of the most fortunate people on Earth, and it is time for those of us who have been fortunate to pay our fair share.

So I call on every Member of Congress to reject the toxic tea that the House Republicans want to serve America's most vulnerable citizens.

Let's protect the future of our country, not poison it.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, this afternoon, this Chamber is going to face a clear question: What matters more, children's health or polluters' profits? We will be voting on amendments that would cripple the government's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act.

This is a landmark law that protects our children from toxic chemicals in the air and illnesses such as asthma and lung cancer. In 2010, the Clean Air Act prevented 1.7 million cases of childhood asthma and more than 160,000 premature deaths. The numbers are big, but numbers do not mean much unless it is your child. If it is your child, there is no number that is too large to take care of that child's health.

If you want to know the real value of clean air to American families, talk to parents who live in fear of their child's next asthma attack. It is a fear my family knows very well. I have a grandson who is a terrific athlete, who is very energetic. He suffers from asthma. He is an athletic child. Every time he goes to play soccer, my daughter--his mother--will check first to see where the nearest emergency room is. She knows very well that if he starts wheezing, she has to get him to a clinic in a hurry. No parent should have to worry about letting their children play outside.

The fact is, the Clean Air Act has improved life for millions of young people. The Supreme Court and scientists agree that the Clean Air Act is a tool we must use to stop dangerous pollution.

This picture demonstrates so clearly what it is like with smog in the air, and it permits us to imagine what it looks like inside a child's lung. This picture shows what toxic skies look like. It is an ugly scene, but it is much uglier when it is inside the child's lungs or a child's body or anybody who is sensitive to polluted air. That is the picture coming out of the smokestacks, and the picture turns into reality when it is in the lungs or the body of an individual.

Allowing companies to reduce pollution, they say, would cost too much for polluters. Too bad. What is a life worth? What does it mean to someone who is sensitive to polluted air not to be able to get out or stop coughing or stop wheezing?

Allowing companies to continue polluting does not eliminate the costs. It simply shifts the costs to our families, our children, and all of us who breathe that air.

The American Lung Association and five other health groups sent a letter opposing all of these amendments. They say:

The Clean Air Act protects public health and reduces health

care costs for all by preventing thousands of adverse health

outcomes, including: cancer, asthma attacks, heart attacks,

strokes, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and

premature deaths.

I am aware of the threat asthma can be. I had a sister who was a victim of asthma. If our families traveled together, she would have a little respirator that could be plugged into the cigarette lighter hole and enable her to breathe more comfortably. One day she was at a school board meeting in Rye, NY, where she was a member of the school board. She felt an attack coming on. Her instinct was to try to run to her car so she could plug in the machine to the lighter hole. She collapsed in the parking lot, and she died 3 days later. We saw it upfront and personal. It was a terrible family tragedy. She had four children at the time.

When we hear talk about how threatening it is to control pollution, we say, no, the threat is to family health and to our well-being. That is what we are about in families with young people across this country and across the world.

It does not matter what the cost is. There is not a family in the world that would not dispose of all of their assets to protect and continue the life of a child.

History shows that the cost of cleaner air is very low compared to its enormous benefits. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, fewer parents miss work to take care of children suffering from asthma. More families avoid the crushing health care costs associated with a heart attack or stroke. People live longer, more comfortably, and have more productive lives. Simply put, weakening the Clean Air Act puts the profits of polluters ahead of the health of our children.

To see what the United States would look like without the Clean Air Act, we only need to look at China. On a visit there, I was scolded by the minister of environment that the United States was using too much of the world's oil, creating difficulties in the air. When I was in the minister's office, I invited him to join me at the window 23 stories up in the air. We looked outside and we could not see the sidewalk. That is how thick the polluted air was. The air in China is so polluted that many people wear masks when they walk outside. We do not want to be doing that in America.

This poison must not be the future. I do not want it for my grandchildren, and I do not want it for anybody else's children or grandchildren.

In our Senate, in our Congress, our goal must be to take care of our obligations to protect our families. And the strongest obligation anyone has, anybody we know who has children does not want to endanger their health. I ask all of my colleagues: Stand up. Vote down these dangerous efforts to destroy the Clean Air Act. It belongs as part of our environment. It protects our children, it protects the environment, and we must not let this opportunity be misunderstood and say: We have to vote no to give polluters a preference before our children.

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

Mr. President, I would ask the Senator from California how she sees the amendment we are discussing in terms of the lives of our countrymen as we see them. And I wish to first mention what I see and see if the Senator agrees with me.

The amendment that has been proposed by the Senator from Kentucky, Republican Mitch McConnell, is as dangerous an effort as we can imagine. It would undermine our children's health while helping polluters and their lobbyists. And what a strange thing this is. I hope the American public sees it for what it really is. It is an attack on the well-being of our children, our grandchildren, at the expense of promoting those companies, taking the rules off so those companies can run rampant, do any darned thing they want, put up any pollution they feel like doing, not having to care that effluent from their manufacturing process has to be properly packaged away but just dump it, get rid of it. Often, those dump sites wind up as Superfund sites. But it does not matter; just go ahead and do what you want.

I was watching television, as everybody here must be, looking at the calamity that struck Japan, and I saw one bright moment. They found a child who was under debris for something like 3 days, and they unearthed her. She was so beautiful, and it brought tears to my eyes--I am a tough guy, it is believed--to see this beautiful thing alive and wanting to be protected and continue her life.

I never met a grandparent who was not ready to show you pictures of their latest grandchild. So there is no deeper love that can be found.

Here, we hear the message that has been going around: Let's get rid of the EPA's ability to regulate. Who are they to tell us what businesses can do?

Thank goodness that in this democratic society in which we live, there are rules and regulations to keep us as a civilized nation. The Supreme Court and scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency agreed that the Clean Air Act is a tool we must use to stop dangerous pollution.

This amendment, it is very clear, favors one group--the business community. I come from the business community. I know what companies will do to help stretch their profits. Most companies do it reliably, honestly, and so forth, but there are others who encourage this kind of thinking and say: Get rid of this regulation, this bureaucratic stuff.

You know, the Republican tea party politicians--and we see them, we see their thoughts reflected here--say: Just ignore the Supreme Court. Ignore the scientists. We know better. They want to reward the polluters by crippling EPA's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act.

Gutting this vital law is a clear and present danger. The Clean Air Act protects our children from toxic chemicals in the air and illnesses such as asthma and lung cancer. Last year alone, the law prevented 1.7 million cases of childhood asthma--1.7 million children--and more than 160,000 premature deaths, according to the EPA.

Those numbers are gigantic, but they loom much larger when it is your child, when it is your doctor who says: I hate to tell you this, Mr. or Mrs., but your child is sick. Your child has asthma. Your child may have lung cancer. And the largest cause of these conditions is pollution in the air.

Numbers are big in what we say here because it doesn't seem to be entering the thought process. What goes around comes around, and it may be your child in danger, and heaven forbid, because there isn't a parent or a grandparent around who wouldn't give their own life to protect the lives of their children or grandchildren.

Do you really want to know the real value of the Clean Air Act to American families? Talk to the millions of parents who live in fear of their child's next asthma attack, and it is one my own family knows very well. A grandson of mine suffers from the disease. He is an active athlete, and every time he goes to a soccer game or another game, my daughter first checks to see where the nearest emergency room is because if he starts wheezing, she knows very well that she has to get him to a clinic.

The experience in our family with asthma is a tragic one. My sister, who was in her early fifties, 52 years of age, was at a school board meeting when she felt an attack of asthma coming on. She started out to run to her car, where she carried a little plug-in respirator. She never made it. She collapsed in the parking lot, and she died within 3 days.

So when you see the effects of these things, you say: What could we possibly do to prevent this from happening again to another family, to another relative? The tea party Republicans say to these families: Clean air is nice, but, listen, these companies have to make money, they have to pay dividends, they have to pay big salaries to these executives. So for them, on that side, they say the most important thing is those profits, those companies. Too bad, kids; sorry, we can't help you.

The tea party Republicans say you can't restrict polluters with regulations. It is too cumbersome. By their logic, we ought to get rid of traffic signals. Those red lights really slow down traffic. It is a darn nuisance. How does that sound for logic? That is what they are essentially saying. While we are at it, maybe we ought to get rid of the air traffic control system, too, because

why should pilots of these big aircraft have to wait for some government bureaucrat to tell them where and when they can land or take off? Just another bureaucratic agency. As ridiculous as it sounds, that is how ridiculous this sounds and should sound to the American people, the people across this country.

Stop it, Republicans. Stop threatening our children. Stop taking away a level of protection they now have. And if the tea party Republicans have their way, we will get rid of these environmental regulations because they interfere with some of these companies' rights to pollute. Do we want to protect our children from playing outside in foul air by keeping them indoors on a permanent basis or would it be better if the air were clean and they could go outside and play and you don't have to worry about it?

If you want to see where the Republicans will lead us, look at China. China has no clean air act. The air there is so polluted that many people wear masks when they walk outside. During the Olympics in Beijing, some U.S. athletes delayed their arrival to avoid the exposure to the polluted air.

I was on a trip to China some years ago, and I went to visit the Minister of Environment. He started complaining about how much of the energy supply the United States uses and fouls the air. So I was stunned because I had looked outside the window, and I invited him to join me from the 23rd floor and look down at the street. The only thing is, you couldn't see the street. It was so blocked with soot and mist, poisonous mist out there, you couldn't see the sidewalk. That is how heavy the pollution in the air was. We don't need that.

We want to make sure we take care of our obligation to our families, to the children, and the strongest obligation anybody has in America is to the kids. The bottom line is that a day on the playground should not end in an emergency room. But for millions of children with asthma in America, that is exactly where the tea party Republicans want to take our country.

As a corollary, I just met with a group concerned about diabetes, parents, each one of them, of a child with diabetes. I have a grandchild who suffers from diabetes. The forecast is that of children born in 2000, the year 2000, one-third of them will ultimately have diabetes. And it sends a chill through your body when you look at these kids and you think, well, one of the three of them is going to be a diabetic before their life ends.

I use that example to remind everybody, those who can see and hear what we are talking about and those on the other side who want to sweep away all of the protections we passed with the Clean Air Act and let those who would pollute go on unencumbered. So I hope my colleagues will stand up and vote down this amendment.

I ask the Senator from California, do you generally agree with what I have had to say here?

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

Mr. President, everyone is aware of how deeply concerned the American people are about staying in their homes, about having adequate health care, and about providing education and a better path for the lives of their children. But everyone also knows there is a group calling themselves the tea party, and they are busy trying to eliminate those opportunities.

In Wisconsin, a tea party Governor is trying to take away workers' collective bargaining rights to be represented. It is like going into a courtroom without a lawyer.

In Florida, another tea party Governor has killed the critical high- speed rail project by rejecting Federal grants of $2.4 billion to move it along. He threw it away, threw it back--$2.4 billion. Here in Congress, tea party activists have seized control of the Republican side of the aisle. But it is far from a tea party for lots of jobless people and those qualified to study in college but unable to pay the freight. Now that they are in power, we see them brewing a toxic tea--a dangerous concoction that will create pain for our children and ultimately bring shame to our country.

We know cutting critical programs now brings sky-high prices later-- in more illnesses and a less educated society. So we look at the future, we say we have to invest in our children, our environment, and medical research. But every time they hear something we need, they say no. They insist on saying no to 200,000 little kids who now go to Head Start Programs that help them in the earliest stages of life, when learning is fun and curiosity abounds. Look here. We see a young child's face through the window. They are holding back 218,000 Head Start kids from learning to learn. They ought to visit these schoolrooms and be upfront with these children and their parents and say, Sorry, America can't help you.

That is not all. Look at what they want to do to higher education. We say we must invest in Pell grants which make the dream of college a reality for millions of disadvantaged Americans. They say, Sorry, your country can't help you. They say no to future employers. Too bad we don't have enough qualified workers, so maybe the employers then can appropriately say, Oh, well, ship the jobs overseas. That is the alternative. Is that what we want America to do? They say no, even though the unemployment rate is twice as large for those who lack a bachelor's degree as for college graduates.

They are unable to look at a simple chart such as this one: There we can see the way the arrow is pointed, with the year 2000 over here and the year 2009 over here, and we see rising tuitions. That is what is happening. Therefore, it tells us how difficult it is for those who don't have the money, the family support financially, and won't able to take advantage of the Pell grants, because they want to slash them. They want to get them off the record as much as they can.

The chart shows between a $10,000 and $15,000 tuition rate in 2001. In 2008 and 2009, we are somewhere close to $20,000 a year. Do we want to force middle-class citizens to take on more debt in order to attend college or slam shut the campus doors on them altogether?

I know the value of government investment in college education firsthand. I came from a poor working-class family. I was a teenager when I enlisted in the Army. My father was on his deathbed. He died and left a 37-year-old widow, myself, and my 12-

year-old sister. Thanks to the GI bill, I attended college at Columbia and later cofounded a company with two other fellows--a company that was started with nothing. We had zero in funding. We put together a few hundred bucks. Now that company employs 45,000 employees in 23 countries, based in New Jersey. Jobs in this country. We built the ``greatest generation'' out of those educational opportunities we had in the military, and we were moving America to the top of the economic ladder.

Government investment in my education made all the difference in my life, and now the 45,000 people who work for ADP. Now Republicans want to take away opportunities such as that from young people. These are people who go into a business, have an education, learn something about how to operate a business, but also learn how we ought to be creating job opportunities and economic development for all in our country.

That is not all the House Republicans have in store for our country. We have to protect women's health, but they won't listen. They want to wipe out funding for title X. Title X offers women access to critical health services, including cervical cancer tests, breast cancer screenings, encouragement to think about family planning and how they are going to get by. But these people on the other side don't want to hear it. They don't care. They don't care that title X offers women access to take care of their health at all times.

Millions of poor women benefit from title X. So killing it will take care away from those who need it most. Title X funding for women's health: House GOP, tea partiers, lots of them, eliminate $1 billion for women's care. They cancel funding for 2 million breast cancer screenings. How cruel is that in this country of ours? If you have money, you can take care of yourself. If you don't, too bad. Well, that is not the way we want to do it. That is not the way we want to do it on this side of the aisle. They are cutting off resources for 2.2 million cervical cancer screenings. What a horror that is. What did these women do to deserve higher health risks during their lifetimes?

But it gets worse. The Republicans are also going after medical research. We say we must invest in finding cures and treatment for millions of children suffering from asthma, diabetes, autism, and pediatric cancer, to name a few of those health-damaging afflictions. To these children they say, You know what. If you don't feel good, maybe you should go to an emergency room with your parents. Stand in line. Too bad. We would like to help, but we can't do that.

The National Institutes of Health is making strides in fighting childhood diseases, but the Republicans want to reduce NIH's ability to do their research by taking $1 billion out of the their budget. If you want to see bravery, look into the eyes of a child struggling with leukemia, and look in the parents' eyes, and you will see tears, often no hope.

Look at what the Republicans want to do to our environment. We say we must invest in the Clean Air Act, a law that spares millions of children from suffering from asthma, and the Republicans say, No can do. They say you can't restrict polluters with regulations. It is too cumbersome. And if you don't like regulations, for instance, take a look at this bothersome thing we have in America called red lights. They are cumbersome. They stop traffic. These people don't want regulations, so we ought to get rid of the red lights and let the traffic move, but watch yourself when you get to the intersection.

Maybe they want to get rid of the air traffic control system. Pilots have to wait for some government bureaucrat to tell them where and when they can fly? What a nerve that is to interfere with these regulations and rules.

The Republicans also want to let mercury back into our air. Mercury is brain poisoning for children. They also want to stop us from restricting soot pollution. Look at the picture. Soot is ugly when it is pouring from a smokestack, but it is even uglier inside a child's lungs. This is a picture we see in many places in our country.

Several years ago I wrote a law called the Right to Know. It says to people who live in areas where there are chemicals present--either manufacturing, chemicals being stored or transported--so people could know if they hear a particular alarm, they have to respond to it and report it to the fire department. We had an incident in Elizabeth, NJ, some years ago when a group of firemen responded to a chemical fire and, in some instances, their protective uniforms melted. That is the kind of situation we want to avoid. We want people to know what is being stored, what is being released into the air in case of a fire.

Finally, when we say we have to clean the water our children drink, the Republican answer is, Oh, we can't handle that. It costs too much. So they cut the funding that helps States protect our drinking water from E. coli, arsenic, and other dangerous substances. The water is not safe for dishwashing, much less consumption.

The House GOP keeps on brewing their toxic tea for America. Ask any parent if they want their kids to drink from that teapot. They don't, and we shouldn't make them do it. We need to gather together for things such as birthday parties and school graduations and lots of smiles instead of their toxic tea parties.

Let's reject the House Republican tea party approach to funding our government. When they say, hey, join us for a cup of toxic tea, we must say, no, we have had this long enough, and we are not going to stand for it anymore.

Mr. President, you know very well that what we are looking at is very constricted budgets. One doesn't have to be an economist or a business executive to know that when there is a financial statement, it comes in two parts. One part is the expenses you need with which to operate. The other is the revenues that permit the companies and the organizations to function. What we are looking at is revenues. I know the Chair shares that position with me. We have discussed it.

Why should people who have the means, who have the good fortune to make lots and lots of money--we saw something this afternoon on a chart that had janitors in New York City at some locations paying a higher tax rate on their earnings than those who earn a million dollars or more. That is not fair. So if we want to do the right thing, we have to introduce revenues into the budget. We have to restore the cuts they want to make on the other side. We want to restore children's health. We want to make sure the NIH is producing as much as it can, and we want to turn America back to a lot more smiles than we have seen.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I inquire of the Parliamentarian: My understanding is, we are in morning business with Senators permitted to speak for 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, there is a lot of talk these days about dangers posed to our national security from far away places: revolution in Libya, the war in Afghanistan. They get our full attention. But what about the dangers that lurk inside our Nation?

We have a domestic situation, a danger that is directly visible, and we are about to stoke that fire. House Republicans are going after something as fundamental as the air our children breathe.

The budget they recently passed calls for the gutting of the Clean Air Act, which is a clear and present danger, as they fail to solve a major fiscal requirement. That includes the expansion of revenues to balance the budget rather than simply the slash-and-burn policy we are now undergoing.

The Clean Air Act protects our children from toxic chemicals in the air and illnesses such as asthma and lung cancer. Last year alone, that law prevented 1.7 million cases of childhood asthma and more than 160,000--160,000--premature deaths, according to EPA. Those numbers are big, but they loom a lot larger when it is your child. As we often say here, what goes around can come around.

If you want to know the real value of the Clean Air Act to America's families, talk to the millions of parents who live in fear of their children's next asthma attack. It is a fear my own family knows all too well. One of my grandsons suffers from this disease. He is an athletic young man, and every time he goes to a competitive game, my daughter first checks to see where the closest emergency room is, if she hears him starting to wheeze.

The House Republican budget says to these families: We are sorry, we are here as accountants and we are not here to worry about these humanitarian things--as ridiculous as that sounds. But that is the result of the work they have done over there with their budget.

They say you cannot restrict polluters with regulations because it is too cumbersome. If you do not like regulations, get rid of traffic signals. Those red lights slow traffic down. It is a terrible inconvenience. Think of the outcome if you had no red lights. Or maybe they would get rid of the air traffic control system--pilots having to wait for some governmental bureaucrat to tell them when and where they can fly, land, or take off.

The House Republican budget does not even allow us to control mercury emissions. Mercury is brain poisoning for children. The Centers for Disease Control has said mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can--and I quote here from their statement--``permanently damage the brain, kidneys, and developing fetus.'' Yet the House Republicans want to return mercury to our Nation's air.

The House Republicans also, in their budget, prevent the EPA from strengthening air quality standards for soot pollution. Soot pollution reaches deep into the lungs and causes serious health problems, especially in the very old or the very young. As shown in this picture I have in the Chamber, you see how ugly it looks. It is much uglier when it reaches inside a child's body.

Studies have linked soot with aggravated asthma, heart attacks, and premature death. Why would we want to weaken our clean air laws and allow polluters to pump more smog, more soot, and more toxic substances into the air our children breathe?

It is pretty simple: The tea party Republicans in the House apparently do not care about protecting our children's health. They only care about one thing: cutting the budget no matter the real cost, the long-term pain that can follow by cutting these budgets.

The question we have to ask here is: Do we want our children to be able to play outside in clean air that allows them to grow and be healthy? Or should we keep them indoors all the time?

If you want to see where the House Republicans will lead us, look at China. China has no clean air act. The air is so polluted that many people wear masks when they walk outside. During the Olympics in Beijing, some U.S. athletes delayed their arrival to avoid the polluted air.

On a trip I took to China some years ago, I went to visit the Minister of the Environment, and he complained. He said: Look at how the United States fouls the air with their burning of fuel. I asked him to join me at the window. We were on the 23rd floor. You could not see the sidewalk--that is how heavy the pollution was in the air.

We do not want to be like that. We want to make sure we take care of our obligations. And the strongest obligation anybody has in America is to their children. Interestingly enough, what is happening now is: The phone calls that came to my office in New Jersey at first seemed to support these irrational budget cuts; and now they have turned around and they do not like what they see.

We would rather make sure our children are taken care of, that we try to balance the budget in more efficient ways. The one I talk about on a regular basis is revenue. I ran a pretty good-sized corporation before I came to the Senate and I know something about financial statements. I knew one thing: that we had to continually improve the revenue so we could, in that corporation, increase the profits and not cut

staff needlessly or endlessly while the company got weak. We cannot do it in this country of ours.

So we face a very difficult task because people are feeling the squeeze on their incomes, concerned about job protection, concerned about being able to stay in their houses. We still face a lot of foreclosure possibilities for homeowners. They cannot educate their children, cannot take care of their health. We cannot say to them, as we used to say, that we know our children will do better in the future in their lives than we did in ours. We cannot say it and be honest about it. We do not know that is true. If we continue along the path we are on, we are going to be looking at fairly bleak things to tell our children about as they grow, if we do not work harder to balance the budget, educate our kids, make sure their health is good, with America being what it is always thought to be: a golden opportunity to bring your families up and make sure life is acceptable or better than they otherwise might have had.

Madam President, how is the time here?

Madam President, I will take that half minute, and I ask unanimous consent that if I go over the half minute that I get 2 more minutes.

Madam President, I served in World War II a long time ago, but I have been around a long time. When I went into the Army--I enlisted when I was 18--my father was deathly ill with cancer. My mother was 37 years old. The prospects for life for our family were grim. I went to the Army. My father, with a condition, arranged with the recruiters that I would be allowed to stay home till my father passed away. He was 43 years old. My mother became a 37-year-old widow, and things were tough. Money was owed to doctors and pharmacists and hospitals.

Why do I talk about this now? It is because I was given the benefit, as were 8 million others who were in uniform, to get my college education. I went to Columbia University. It was so far distant from my vision when I graduated from high school and enlisted in the Army. It turned out to be the greatest generation America has ever seen. It was because the government intervened at the right time and made sure that education was abundantly available for those who could learn. That is what we ought to recall about America, and not this kind of a gloomy picture that says, OK, we are growing, but so are the threats to health and well-being.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to extend morning business until 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

As the Senator knows, we successfully enacted a bipartisan bill to provide mandatory funding to take care of the first responders and others who became sick from toxic fumes, dust, and smoke after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. This new law was our Christmas miracle. It is very important to me and my constituents that there is no disruption in the care that eligible responders and victims can receive.

Mr. President, I hope it is noted that I stand here as a male Member with my colleagues who comprise a significant part of the women Members of the Senate. They do the mothering, they do the family raising, but it is pretty obvious to all of us that fathers and grandfathers have an active interest in what happens with our children, what it takes to make sure they grow up healthy, that they grow up with the tools they will need in their future lives for them to contribute to themselves, their families, and the country at large.

What we are witnessing in America today is an assault by House Republicans in trying to ram through a reckless, unhealthy spending plan that will ultimately bring shame to our country as it causes pain for little children who come from families who do not have the means, who do not have the stability of family life, in many cases, that will give them an opportunity to establish themselves with a cycle that will bring them to successful lives later on, to be able to hold jobs of significance and create a family environment.

It is hard when we look at this to figure out the mission. I come from the business community. I have been here a lot of years--27--but I spent 30 years in the business community. I learned something about financial statements. I learned you have to sometimes cut costs here or there and that sometimes you have to make investments so you can expand your business, you can make it more competitive.

As we look at the plan that is being offered, to cut, cut, cut, it causes us to rethink what is taking place, to think outside the box, as they say. There is a lot of applause for cutting costs. There is a whole group of people in the House of Representatives who have targets for cost cutting that will leave America without the tools in the future to remain competitive and to remain a place where great things can happen. Why is that? A lot of it is because they are cutting education programs--Head Start, for one thing.

I think every Senator ought to pledge to take a trip through a Head Start facility and see what it is like.

See what it is like when you have children, even 1 and 2 years old, in the early Head Start Program or 3, 4 and 5 in the full Head Start Program. See the enthusiasm that exists with these children.

I have an indication of that here--this card. It was Valentines Day when I went to the city of Perth Amboy. Oddly enough, Perth Amboy is where the first signature on the Bill of Rights was made, in New Jersey--the Bill of Rights. Here is an opportunity that is certainly a right, to be able to learn. I get notes from these children-- flattering, by the way, and not because of my looks. They say:

Dear Representatives: We love coming to school. We learn

languages. We can be scientists. We can be artists. We can be

authors and illustrators. We are lifetime learners.

Here they talk in less precise handwriting about how nice it is to be able to come to school. The design of this makes it a little tougher presentation:

Dear Mr. Representative: We love our preschool class. We

learn to write. We explore science. We explore changing

things in the world. We love to be here in school.

We love it when they are there because we know that not only are their lives going to be improved substantially, but also they are going to be contributing citizens to the society we live in.

So this is amazing and often neglected. I asked for some indication of what happens at Head Start. But let me say, first of all, all those children are beautiful. I never saw so many beautiful children in my life. I am a professional grandfather. I have 13 grandchildren. My wife brought 3 to the marriage and I had 10. There is nothing like seeing a 1\1/2\-year-old learning, a 2-year-old learning.

What we have found is that by the age of 1, most children begin linking words to meanings. They understand the names used to label familiar objects--body parts, arms, legs, animals, and people. At about 18 months, they add new words to their vocabulary at the astounding rate of one every 2 hours. By age 2, most children have a vocabulary of several hundred words and can form simple sentences, such as ``Go outdoors'' or the traditional ``All gone.'' Between 24 to 30 months, children speak in longer sentences, and from 30 to 36 months kids can usually recite the alphabet and count from 1 to 10. The fact is, they are learning something.

By kindergarten, kids are beginning to turn the pages of the book, and they start learning to read by about 5 years of age. There is a real reward for the country when they do that. Our society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children. It leads to an increase in achievement and lots of good things.

I learned a little bit the hard way about what Head Start means when I and a business partner of mine went back to a school we went to as kids. We went to the sixth grade and offered a scholarship program to youngsters in the sixth grade to pick up a large part of their college tuition. For 28 young people in our class, we would contribute toward a large part of their college tuition if they were accepted at any one of 30 colleges picked at random. We had counselors, and we brought them down here. I was able to take them on a visit to the White House, where Vice President Dan Quayle was very generous with his time, and I took them to the company I was running so they could see.

Madam President, you say there is no time left on our side for a presentation?

I will wrap this up very quickly, if I might. Just a couple words.

I thank my colleague and friend from Maine.

Very simply, we now see what the problem was. We analyzed it thoroughly. The problem was we started too late. In the sixth grade, it was too late to get a learning habit. Now we see these little tots and how quickly they are learning, how quickly they talk, and how quickly they adapt.

These children will suffer the pain created by Republicans' cuts--and shame on us if we don't stop them. You have to wonder why children are their No. 1 target? Did children cause the financial crisis? Were Head Start kids engaging in credit default swaps with mortgage-backed securities?

You have to wonder if House Republicans think this is the case. They want to decimate Head Start by cutting its funding by $1 billion. If they have their way, roughly one-quarter of all children in Head Start will be kicked out of the program. This includes 3,700 kids in my State of New Jersey, like the kids at the Head Start Center I visited last week and the kids who sent these Valentines Day cards. How can we tell these children: Forget about getting a head start. You must go to the back of the line.

The fact is, the House Republican budget will poison our future. Their prescription for America's kids is toxic. If we want our country to succeed, we must invest in its future--and that means protecting and inspiring our children. So let's reject shame and pain. Let's reject the disastrous House Republican budget plan. Let's invest in our kids and win the future. Our country's children deserve nothing less.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Maine for the courtesy, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I hear the requests of people on the other side of the political aisle to repeal a health reform bill that has been put in place, received majority support in the House and in the Senate when developed. Now what we are witness to

is that within a bill that is planned for the continued support for the FAA, which takes care of the conditions under which our aviation structure works, there is an amendment put in here that says: We want to repeal, recall the health care bill, the health reform bill that was signed into law by the President of the United States.

We have heard that there are challenges in court, but we hear also that there are verifications in the courts that say this bill, this act, does appear to be constitutionally sound. I am listening, and my vantage point is that I grew up in a very poor working-class family with all of the ills that follow poverty. I see America through that kind of a prism.

I see an America whose intention is to be fair, to take care of our citizens, to provide them with services, to make sure we have military forces to protect us from enemies, to make sure we have labor standards that try to make conditions healthy for working people so their health is protected as they perform their tasks. There is an implicit promise that says we are going to educate those in the early years for sure with a reasonable education. In other words, there is a distribution of the assets this country of ours holds to which almost everyone is entitled to.

We are not talking about differences in income or differences in personal material wealth--housing, et cetera--that somehow others don't have. I am not talking about that. I am a capitalist. I came up the capitalist ladder, working hard, and I will talk about that in a minute.

So when I listen to the rhetoric that is delivered here on a continuing basis about government interference in keeping people alive, keeping people healthy--why should the government interfere with people's chances to be overcome by illness or injury? I consider it an outrage that some of our colleagues want to repeal a law that is designed to improve the lives of millions of Americans.

I think the push to repeal health care reform is the worst kind of hypocrisy coming from this place and the other end of the Capitol--here with 100 people and the other side with 435 people. There are those who have voted not to have this health care reform in the first place, and now they are jumping on the opportunity to repeal a law that is designed to help people's health, to help kids grow healthily, to help families be able to maintain a degree of functioning when illness strikes their family, to provide services that increase longevity to our people. I, for one, speak well for that effort.

It is so hypocritical to me because the Senators who are advocating repeal have access to the best health plan in our country. They get to walk down the hall to a clinic with a half dozen doctors, competent and skilled people. There are health care aides who work there, professionals, and all they have to do is go in there and say: Doc, I feel something here or I feel something here or I have this swelling here, and they get care. We pay for it; not a lot but we pay for it. But it is available. It is available. It is the kind of perk, I will call it, that people across this country would be astonished to see how well we treat those who make the laws in this country, those who have the responsibility of taking care of our people, our constituents. They would be astonished to see how easy it is to go into the clinic, and-- yes, we will take you. You need some surgery and we will get you over to the hospital in short form and we are going to take care of this before your disease gets the better of you.

When people here--Senators, Congressmen--get sick, they just have to walk down the hall to the Senate Physician's Office. They don't have to get in the car or anything like that. They don't know the worry or understand the worry that comes if medical bills overtake the opportunity to buy food or housing or even force people into bankruptcy.

Again, let me say this isn't simple rhetoric for me. I lived through these conditions. Yet these people who are up for repeal are fighting to take away the lifeline the health care reform law has given to families in need. I know firsthand what it is like when your family doesn't have access to basic health care. I grew up in a family of modest means in Paterson, NJ. It is a mill town. It was typically a city that received immigrants on a regular basis. My father spent his short life working in local silk mills, and he died of cancer at 43 years of age when I was still a teenager. My mother was 37 when she became a widow.

I joined the Army. I enlisted in the Army. I attended college under the GI bill. I was a soldier. I served in Europe during World War II.

As a consequence of the opportunity I had to get an education, I was able to join a couple of friends and start a company that is known across the globe. The company is called ADP. We have more than 40,000 people working around the world in more than 20 countries, three of us, from poor families. Two of them are brothers, and their father was a mill worker also. Because of the success I had in business, all my family had to do was worry about their good health and not back- breaking medical bills. But I never forgot what it was like to see my mother working so hard behind the counter of the store to pay the doctors, the pharmacies, the hospitals, to keep my father comfortable for the 13 months he was in bed with cancer, robbing him of his life on a daily basis.

That is why I was proud to vote for the historic health care reform law which is holding insurers more accountable and making our system more sustainable.

I looked at the history of the health insurers because we see the health care bills constantly taking more of the GDP. But you wonder where the health care cost increases take place. I have looked at some of the companies. For instance, I took the year 2009. It was a tough year for lots of people. Lots of bankruptcies, lots of foreclosures, lots of jobs lost in 2009.

CIGNA had profits of $1.4 billion 5 years earlier and about the same in 2009. The company's CEO got $18 million worth of salary, providing a commodity service. Humana, in 5 years, went from $270 million worth of revenues to $1.3 billion. The CEO got $6.5 million. United Health had a heck-of-a 5-year period. They started off with $2.4 billion worth of revenues in 2004, and in 2009 it went to $3.8 billion. From $2.4 billion to $3.8 billion, and the CEO got $9 million in salary, he got big kickers at the end of the year. A company called WellPoint, in 2004 they did $960 million worth of sales revenues. Five years later they did $4.7 billion. The CEO got $13 million.

I look at that as we ponder where the money has gone to pay for health care in this country. So I see one place that a lot of it goes, and that is to the insurance companies.

Some of our colleagues want to recall this bill and remove the health care protection from 30 million Americans--30 million people across this country. Almost 10 percent of our population will lose health care if we repeal the bill that is now in place and is law. The fact is, repealing the health care reform law would be an enormous step backward for our country. It would hurt seniors, children, and small businesses, and our deficit would balloon, grow larger.

Repealing this law would raise drug costs for seniors by removing from them a 50-percent discount on drugs they purchase when they are in the period of the doughnut hole. By the way, repeal of this law would serve to prevent us from totally closing that doughnut hole. Seniors across the country, listen to the truth about what is being said: The doughnut hole is going to be closed. It is roughly a $4,500 element in people's income--or cost, rather.

This repeal would also give the biggest insurance companies more power over their patients to charge outrageous fees than ever before.

This means the insurers could once again reduce benefits, stop coverage during a person's illness, and refuse to care for individuals and children stricken with preexisting conditions.

Repealing health care reform would also hurt young adults, who would no longer be able to stay on their parents' health plans until age 26. For young adults--especially new college graduates facing a tough job market--staying on a parent's health insurance is the only reasonably priced insurance option available.

If health reform is repealed, small businesses will lose tax credits for up to 35 percent of health insurance premium costs. It would jeopardize the recent growth in the number of small

businesses offering health insurance coverage to their employees.

This repeal effort is fiscally irresponsible because ending health reform would increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion when we are all looking at the deficit here and wondering what we can do to bring it under control. We cannot do it with the costs we have scheduled for health care.

Yes.

About 3 minutes.

As a country, how could we repeal this law and then look our children and grandchildren in the eye? We should be focused on getting this critical jobs bill signed into law, not refighting last year's partisan battles.

Make no mistake, Democrats are willing and eager to fix the parts of the health care reform law that might need adjustment. I, for one, would salute that kind of a review. But to repeal the entire law is an example of outrageous overreach. Instead of meeting us halfway, our colleagues on the Republican side are engaging in misguided political battles. It is wrong, and we can't allow repeal of this law which is improving the lives of millions of Americans.

I thank my colleague from Arizona for permitting me a courteous extension of time.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, people across this country are feeling pressures from so many points of view--job loss, threatened losses in the future as pressure exists on businesses, particularly small businesses across our country. They look to us in the Senate and in the House to help them solve their problems, but what they have seen has resulted in an attitude, to a certain degree, of disdain about those of us who serve in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The reason it has developed that way is because they think we are not doing our job. If they watch television or listen to what is going on, it further confirms the fact they have in mind that we are not doing our jobs; that we are wasting time; that we are not paying attention to the country's needs.

That kind of a picture is appropriately formed, with the situation as it is. The Senate has been a roadblock to progress in our country. I salute my colleagues, Senators Udall of New Mexico and Merkley of Oregon, for the work they are doing, and the others who are associated with it, and I commend the Senator from Tennessee on the other side for his willingness, for his interest in establishing a consensus of view about how we can improve the functioning of our body. I salute him and commend him for it, and I have mentioned that to him privately. We have all been wrestling with this problem. But finally, I think we are coming to a time when we can solve it.

I have spent the past year trying to improve Senate rules so we improve our functioning; that we show the people in the country we are actively trying to solve their problems, and they will understand that when they see people on the floor debating the issues and not seeing a clock working without any action to support it.

Last year, and again this month, I introduced the Mr. Smith Act, to require filibustering Senators to come to the floor and actually filibuster. The filibuster is a right that is reserved for Senators when they object to a piece of legislation that we are dealing with, and if they are able to get the floor, to keep it until such time as 60 votes develop, which says, let us end this debate. So we know that at the moment that is a tool the minority has used regularly and it brings the Senate to a halt. But if the plurality--the majority--shifts, the same thing is liable to happen but with the Democrats then using the filibuster for dilatory reasons.

What we are going to do will make the body more transparent. It will reduce the practice of grinding the Senate to a halt for no good reason. Today, we will have the opportunity to vote on a couple of resolutions that include proposals based on the Mr. Smith Act. Everybody knows what the Mr. Smith situation was. Jimmy Stewart came to Washington and he stood for hours--an unimaginable length of time--to try to get something done. It was a heroic gesture and it has lasted as an icon for the American people.

Like my bill, which we entitled the Mr. Smith bill, the proposals put forward by Senators Merkley and Udall come down to a simple idea: Senators who want to delay action on a bill or a nomination must stand up here and explain why we are delaying responding to the needs of the American people. An empty Senate Chamber can't help put Americans back to work, protect people from dangerous weapons, or improve our country's schools. We can't invest in our railways, roads and bridges, other infrastructure needs, and help struggling Americans to stay in their homes if there is no Senator willing--sent here after, I am sure in every case, an arduous election, even though the numbers might not say that--to debate the issues. Why aren't they at work? We would have no tolerance for schoolchildren if they continued in their absence from their classrooms doing their homework. Why in the Senate should it be allowed without intervention?

We want people to be able to see that there are Senators in this Chamber debating the issues; that they are not clock watching and doing nothing to take care of the needs of the country. We are not making progress on vital issues because the rules of the Senate are being abused. Some of our colleagues are conducting silent filibusters, which is a disguise for inaction. Under these silent filibusters, Senators are allowed to object to a bill or a nomination without ever having to defend

their position. Instead of explaining to their colleagues and the American people why they oppose a bill, they are able to skip off to dinner, leaving this Chamber to total gridlock. Is it any wonder so many Americans have such a low opinion of Congress? When people look at the Senate and they see us stuck in a morass of dilatory activities, they do not appreciate it, they do not like it, and they want action. They want the people whom they have sent here, whom they voted for, whom they depend upon, to do something on their behalf. If there is a disagreement about whether one path is right, they will understand that at least we are trying to do something.

That is why I have spent so many months in trying to improve the way we conduct business. Passing these resolutions today will assure the American people that we are here to do their business.

In addition to the Merkley-Udall resolutions, we will be voting on other important reforms to the Senate rules today. For example, I support the measure of the Senator from Oregon, Senator Wyden, to end secret holds, because the American people, again, deserve to know who is holding up important legislation. Transparency is something we talk about constantly around here. Yet we are not willing to put it in front of the people. This is a much-needed reform.

But we need to do more to make the Senate a more effective and more efficient Chamber. The Senate--and I have been here a long time--was once known as the world's greatest deliberative body. At some point we decided--some years ago--that in order to bring the message more clearly to the American people we would allow television cameras to be here so the American people could watch us at work. They could see us at work--maybe even call it supervise us at work. Well, when they see a beautiful facility such as the Senate Chamber with no action going on, it gets to be quite depressing as far as they are concerned, and as far as we here are generally concerned.

As I said, the Senate was known as the world's greatest deliberative body--the place where national conversations began and the major issues of the day were debated. Many of my colleagues and I want to see the Senate regain the respect of the American people and restore our reputation for serious debate and civil discourse, but we will never achieve this if we continue to allow our own rules to be abused. So I urge my friends and colleagues to join in supporting these resolutions, because if we want to help the American people get back to work, if we want to restore their confidence, if we want to let them know government is here to help and not delay, then we have to get back to work too. The fact is time is being spent, but it is not being spent on behalf of progress for the country.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor, and I thank my colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin, who agreed to let me intervene with my remarks before he spoke at the time that was agreed to.

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

First, I wish to say I am so pleased to be with colleagues who are standing up for activity on behalf of the citizens, the constituents we represent, to get things done.

I doubt many of us would be happy with a report card we got in either high school or college or whatever education we got beyond that--I doubt we would be proud of any report card that resembles that which we have obtained in this facility, in this great house of debate, in this distinguished body of legislators, one of the most prominent--the most prominent--let me qualify that--legislative body across the world and the envy of so many who think the United States is still one great country.

We want to do the right thing. But here what has happened, we find ourselves in a morass of dilatory activities, things that do nothing but stop progress, and that is the mission we see. I congratulate my colleagues who have taken hold here to make sure we do whatever we can to change the facility.

I have here my picture of Jimmy Stewart, ``Mr. Smith.'' While I am not anxious to admit it, I do, I remember seeing the picture. We need not discuss the precise date, but it was some time ago when I saw this, and it left a vivid impression in my mind. But I cannot tell you what it was about, except that he was one trouper, that he stood on his feet, so many hours it is hard to understand how the body responded to the opportunity, trying to clean things up.

The date of the film was somewhere around the end of the 1930s, 1939, most likely. That was not the exact date, but in that vicinity. Even then, they were discussing what could be done to move things along and how the kind of effort he gave as Mr. Smith was required to honor the people, the responsibility he had to the people.

So we know what kind of report card the legislators here and in the House have gotten from the American people because they are sick and tired of seeing all this empty space, listening to words I could describe more in the vernacular as gobbledygook-gook, not understanding what is going on but knowing very well that nothing is happening that is benefiting them.

So when we see this low public opinion from Americans all across the country, it is because they do not believe we are getting things done that they sent us here for. Each one of us who has been elected, I do not care how popular or how remote, the fact is, you had to work hard to get elected and so proud--and I look today, as I saw person after person hold up their hand to take the oath. I have done it five times here and each time was a thrill. Even as I watched colleagues walk up there and heard their names called and saw them raise their hand, and to feel the pride they felt, I do not care Republican or Democrat, to feel the pride they felt, to be able to take this job on their hands, to get the support of the public in their States, enough to win an election, and then we show the public a lack of activity.

We have been through discussions, speeches made earlier, good ones, describing the number of times the filibuster has been used. If I might ask the majority whip, is it the record number of filibusters ever in the history of the Senate? The Senator from Illinois confirms that. Here we are, and the need has never been greater to get something done to let the American people know their government is there to help them through a crisis, to help them regain their jobs and regain their pride in themselves.

Make no mistake about it; the absence of progress in the Senate promotes bitterness and anger among the American people. Make no mistake; an empty Senate Chamber is no way to respond to the public's needs. All too often this is what happened because the minority now has simply been abusing Senate rules. They can do it. But it is an abuse of the process.

Last year we were locked in a constant struggle to help jobless Americans. Several times we attempted to bring legislation to the floor to extend unemployment benefits for millions of people who had no other source of income, who were in jeopardy of losing their homes and losing their opportunity to care for their families and being personally humiliated and disgraced about that and we could not get an agreement to pass an unemployment benefits bill until it was included with other legislation that had to pass.

Back in June, 59 Senators wanted to restore aid for those workers who had gone without income for weeks. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle objected and delayed the vote, then left town for a week-long break. By the way, I keep on reminding those hearing me that this is under the disguise of a filibuster, a legal process that is permitted by the Senate rules to be engaged in when there is a disagreement about a piece of legislation or a process that has to take place.

We left more than 1 million Americans in limbo for several agonizing weeks. Our opponents said they were simply filibustering the bill. In other words, they wanted to talk more about the substance. But they did not want to talk about the substance. They did not want the public to hear the truth about their views. But they did not even want to talk on the floor. They just left the Senate empty and silent.

That is why I reintroduced my ``Mr. Smith'' bill. I brought this up initially last March. It is almost a year now since I brought Mr. Smith back to this Chamber. As we know, the legislation is named for Jimmy Stewart's character in the classic movie, ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'' Frankly, we now look, the names are different, the mission is the same. There are those who want to make progress and those who want to do nothing more than delay progress.

As I said earlier, Mr. Smith wanted to make a point, spoke for 23 hours. These days, Senators simply object to the proceeding, walk away, and leave an empty Chamber behind. How are we supposed to create jobs in an empty Chamber? How are we supposed to increase educational opportunities in an empty Chamber? How are we supposed to help keep people in their homes in an empty Chamber?

The ``Mr. Smith'' Act will bring deliberations back to purportedly the world's greatest deliberative body. It will make lawmaking more transparent and Senators more accountable. Members of this body will no longer be able, if we pass this rule change, to be able to launch a filibuster and then skip town, leaving the Senate in a stalemate.

If you have the courage, stand and explain to the American people why you are objecting to things that can help the average family. This is still a recession. Yes, there are a lot of people at the top making lots and lots of money. We have seen it in the newspapers. We have seen the list of billionaires who make that much money in a single year. But we do not see the same pictures of people who are forlorn because they cannot help themselves, and they look to the government to be there with them.

I know from personal experience that my life changed radically when I got out of the Army and was afforded the GI bill. My father died after I enlisted. My mother was a 37-year-old widow. My father was sick for 13 months with cancer. At the time, there were not the products that make pain less acute or that provide more help for recovery. It was not there.

So we had not only the loss of a father--I had joined the Army. When I was 18 years old, I enlisted--we had bills and bankruptcy and life was miserable. The GI bill made the difference in my life. I was able to join two other people in my home city, friends of mine, in creating a company, three of us.

Now it employes 45,000 people. The company is called Automatic Data Processing, better known as ADP, because I got help when we desperately needed it, when my family and I could never think about my going to college. I wound up going to Columbia University, something so far out of sight I never dreamed it was possible. But it was there. There are times when people across the country say to our leadership: Please, give us a chance. Give us a chance to stay in our home. Give us a chance to educate my son and my daughter. They can learn. We do not have the money.

Make sure health care is available, that no matter what your condition of being is, you cannot be precluded from getting insurance. That is what is proposed in the health care bill that right now is in danger of being repealed, if the House takes the action as purported.

So what we are talking about, to summarize, is that we have to get busy and show the people across the country that this is not just a ring for showing how clever a speech can be or cute an idea might be, when all that is being done is stopping progress. Progress. They object to bills being even moved along so they can be considered--anything they can do to obstruct movement.

So we may be unable to bring Mr. Smith back, but we can write real accountability for filibusters and for the sake of a functioning democracy--more than a functioning democracy, a degree of dignity and hope for people who have been hurt by an unemployment record never before seen in the country, with the number of people out of work in the multiple millions, and they say: Mr. Senator, help us. Be there to help us now. We are not looking for charity. We are looking for a hand that will get us started, get this economy going. We owe it to them.

I say to those who want to obstruct it, be brave enough to stand and tell the people here or the people on television or those who read about what we are doing, tell them why it is you are objecting, and then we will restore a degree of confidence in those who serve here, those who work so hard to be elected, and those who can represent the people well.

But we cannot sit in silence, just wasting time. I hope we will come to our senses, make the changes in the rules that will stop the filibuster from being a disguise for inaction.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Merkley.) The Senator from Illinois.

Mr. President, when our colleagues from across the aisle blocked the Omnibus appropriations bill they decided to leave our Nation less safe and less prepared to thwart the next terrorist attack. They chose to put our homeland security on autopilot for the next few months--and that is just too risky.

We had before us an Omnibus bill that addressed the evolving threats to our homeland security. As chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, I can attest to the diligent, bipartisan work that went into crafting this legislation, which met our security challenges in a fiscally responsible manner. But our colleagues across the aisle chose instead to fund our homeland security at the status quo levels under a continuing resolution. The terrorists aren't operating under the status quo and neither should we.

The terrorists are constantly searching for new ways to threaten our way of life. We are approaching the 1-year anniversary of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, when a terrorist boarded a flight to Detroit with explosives sewn into his underwear. And just in October, printer cartridges being shipped from Yemen were found to contain explosives that were meant to blow up on cargo planes flying over the east coast of the U.S.

Homegrown terrorism is also a growing threat, as evidenced by the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt and the New York City subway plot. Earlier this month, the FBI arrested a suspect who was planning to blow up a military recruitment center in Baltimore. And last month, the FBI stopped a U.S. citizen who planned a terrorist bombing at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, OR.

Because of the opposition to the Omnibus, our Department of Homeland Security and first responders across the country will not have the resources they need to anticipate, thwart, and respond to these threats: The Transportation Security Administration will not be able to purchase new explosive-tracing equipment or hire more intelligence officers and canine teams. We won't be able to hire more Federal air marshals, who have been stretched thin since the Christmas Day bomb plot was foiled. Our airports and seaports won't get new equipment to detect radiation and nuclear material. We will have fewer resources to secure air cargo and eliminate threats like the package bombs from Yemen. We will have less funding to secure our rail and transit systems, which are prime targets for terrorists--as we've seen everywhere from Madrid and Russia to DC and New York City. The Coast Guard won't be able to hire 100 new maritime inspectors or improve their capacity to respond to an oil spill. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may have to cut back investigations into human trafficking, drug smuggling and identity theft. There will be fewer Customs officers on duty to keep dangerous cargo and terrorists out of our country. Our ability to prepare for natural disasters and other emergencies will suffer. Fewer local fire departments will receive needed assistance to pay for equipment and training.

In short, the Republicans' decision to kill the Omnibus will shortchange our safety and take chances with our security--and that is wrong for our country.

Beyond homeland security, the Republicans' actions will leave our troops worse prepared and our children without the education they deserve.

The Omnibus crafted by Senator Inouye, on the other hand, responsibly met all of these needs. And it did so at the exact same funding level proposed by the Republican leader in the Appropriations Committee earlier this year. In June, 40 Republicans voted to support funding the government at this level. Moreover, the Omnibus was crafted on a bipartisan basis--and included earmarks and other spending requested by Republicans.

So it is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism for our Republican colleagues to attack this bill as wasteful or bloated. Adding to the hypocrisy, just two days after killing the Omnibus, which included a quarter billion dollars more for border security than the CR, Republicans killed the DREAM Act--on the alleged basis that we should secure the border first. They are clearly more concerned with handing a defeat to our President and to congressional Democrats than with governing in a responsible way. Republicans have put politics first and it is our troops, our security and our children that will pay the price.

In the aftermath of the wreckage caused by the Republicans' opposition to the Omnibus, Senator Inouye was faced with the challenge of drafting a slimmed-down continuing resolution that would not leave the country vulnerable. This was an extremely difficult task, but Senator Inouye was able to craft a bill that provides the most vital resources our government needs to function over the next few months. This was no small feat and I commend the chairman for his tireless work on this bill and throughout this year's appropriations process.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to reconsider was laid on the table.