Floor Statements

Mr. President, this week the Gallup poll came out with a survey that said 85 percent of small businesses in this country are not hiring. They just are not hiring. When asked why, 50 percent of those small businesses responded that it was the health care law and complying with Federal regulations that were preventing them from hiring. Well, there probably isn't any better example of the overreach, overkill, and excess when it comes to regulations than the Department of Labor regulation on child labor in agriculture. It was put out and public comments were invited on the proposal last September.

Since that time, numerous Senators and outside interest groups have requested a 60-day extension due to the timing of the harvest season, but the Department of Labor only extended that comment period for 30 days. Then 30 Senators--led by the Senator from Kansas who authored the letter--sent a letter that many of us signed onto, basically asking the Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, to withdraw those proposed regulations that limit the ability of farmers and ranchers to hire young people to work in agriculture. In February of this year, the Department of Labor announced plans to repropose a portion of the regulation on child labor in agriculture interpreting the ``parental exception.'' But what is interesting about it is there have been multiple efforts made to try to get a response to the letter, and the Department of Labor didn't respond to a letter from 30 Senators.

It strikes me that with all of the issues that were raised in that letter and the impact this would have on the very heartland of our country and the ability of farmers and ranchers and their families to sustain themselves and to contribute to feeding the world, it seems they would at least have the courtesy of responding to the points that were raised in that letter. But we have not yet received a response to that letter sent by the Senator from Kansas, Senator Moran, and 29 other Senators who signed onto that requesting a response to the various issues that were raised. We will get into those in a minute. It strikes me as certainly odd, and perhaps I would have to say demonstrating an arrogance, a power to not respond to 30 Senators who, on behalf of their constituents, raised some issues that are very important to the economy of the heartland of the Midwest and the people I represent, and I know the Senator from Kansas represents.

When you look at what they are proposing and the prescriptive nature of that, the detail they go into in restricting the ability of young people to work on family farm and ranch operations, you have to say: What were these people thinking and what world do they live in? Because there seems to be a parallel universe to think that all of these various regulations and restrictions they would impose on young people working in agriculture wouldn't undermine the very fabric, the very nature, the very foundation of American agriculture.

Farming and ranching is inherently a family enterprise. Young people have contributed for generations in helping that family farm or ranch operation survive and prosper. They contribute. They grow up in that business, and in many cases they take it over. It is amazing to me, and incomprehensible, to think that bureaucrats in Washington, DC, could tell family farmers and ranchers how to run their operations with the kind of detail and the incredible prescription of these regulations and the very activities they would curtail for young people.

I wanted to engage my colleague from Kansas on this subject. As I said, he was the author of the letter that was sent, along with many of us--30 Senators in all--asking the Department of Labor to withdraw, in raising a number of points about various aspects of these regulations. And, as I said, we will touch on those in a minute.

I would ask my colleague from Kansas if he thinks that 85 pages of regulations, which is what this proposal is--do we need 85 pages of regulations that tell family farm and ranch operations and young people who work on those family farm and ranch operations how to go about their business? Is it necessary? Do we have to get this bureaucratic and impose these kinds of regulations, these kinds of costs and these kinds of burdens upon American agriculture at a time when--as I mentioned before--there are so many other costs associated with doing business in this country imposed by the government? The ObamaCare, the health care law, and as I mentioned earlier, the Gallup poll was mentioned by half of the small businesses who said it is one of the reasons why they are not hiring. All of these other regulations, many of which come from the EPA, but certainly the Department of Labor in this particular case is guilty of making it more difficult and more expensive to do business in this country and certainly inhibiting the very nature and, from an operation standpoint, the very way that a family farm or ranch operation conducts itself.

I ask my colleague from Kansas his thoughts on this and whether he thinks

it is necessary to have 85 pages of regulations having to regulate how family farm and ranch operations do their business.

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield on that point, what the Senator has touched upon I think is something that perhaps people who don't come from farm country don't appreciate as much as we do, and that is just the very nature of farming. Farming is, as we said, very much a family operation. What we are talking about right now with these regulations is, at a time when we have young people who want and need the opportunity to learn responsibility, who need to learn the value of hard work as well as, for that matter, earn a little extra spending money, this regulation would restrict their ability to do all three. It would be really bad for family farming and ranching in the State of South Dakota. I know that.

It is also a regulation that I would say I don't think has gotten as much attention perhaps as some of the other ones that are out there but one that would have profound consequences on production agriculture.

The Senator mentioned a couple of examples of operating farm equipment. If a person is on a tractor, that person probably, in most cases, would be higher than 6 feet, and this regulation would prevent them from doing things at elevations higher than 6 feet. We could also argue some other things that would fall into that category. How about working on a haystack? A farmer is going to be more than 6 feet above the ground.

Some of the restrictions with regard to working with animals that are more than 6 months old--as the Senator mentioned, being able to herd cattle on the back of a horse--these are all things under these regulations that would be restricted or prevented for many of these young people.

It seems pretty amazing that we would have a Washington bureaucracy dictating with this kind of specificity, with this kind of minutiae, how farm and ranch operations would be conducted. I would argue that the very organizations the Senator from Kansas mentioned--4 H, FFA, extension service--know full well and the families who operate farms know full well what the risks are. They understand. They want to protect their families.

Instead, we have a Washington bureaucracy that thinks it knows best telling family farmers and ranchers how to go about their business in a way that will make it not only more difficult for them to make a living but also I think more difficult for young people to learn the skills and get the experience they will need when hopefully that time comes around that they can take over that operation of farming, ranching in Kansas, as it is in South Dakota. It is very much an intergenerational occupation. And it is more than just an occupation, more than just a vocation. It is a way of life. It is something where values are transmitted from one generation to another--the values of hard work, personal responsibility, integrity, honesty. There are so many character qualities that we value and that young people learn on family farms and ranches. So notwithstanding the economic impact on family farms and ranches, there is certainly a cultural and social impact on our family farms and ranches, and the middle of this country is tremendously impacted by this regulation.

I hope the Senator from Kansas will continue to keep the heat on and continue to keep the pressure on in trying to get a response not only to the letter that he offered and that many of us signed but also to, if possible, get the Secretary of Labor to come to a State such as Kansas or, for that matter, South Dakota and actually see a family farm operation and how it functions because I think they are operating in a bubble, in a vacuum out here where there is very little understanding of the implications of these types of decisions. This is really an example of big government run amok. If we want an example of big government that has completely lost touch with reality, this is certainly an example of that.

I encourage the Senator from Kansas, and I will support his effort 100 percent, to keep the pressure on and trying to get them to recognize the impact of what they are doing and the impact it would have on rural agriculture and all over the world.

Mr. President, if the Senator from Kansas will yield quickly in closing on one point, is the Senator aware of any group that was consulted on this? Were there any farm organizations that were brought into this or had any input into this? As the Senator mentioned, was this solicited by anyone? Was there any rationale based upon data collected about safety or that sort of thing that necessitated that they use such a heavyhanded, big-government approach to addressing what they perceived to be a problem?

I don't know what the Senator's average age of a farmer in Kansas is, but my understanding is, at least nationally, the average age of a farmer in this country is nearing 60 years old, which means one thing: somebody is going to have to fill those shoes. Somebody is going to have to come along and take over that farm or ranch operation. This is going to make it increasingly difficult to prepare that next generation of farmers and ranchers.

Again, it occurs to me that this is just something that ought to be withdrawn. I hope the Senator in his efforts and those of us who are supporting that effort will succeed. This is a perfect example of a big-government solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished ranking member on the Budget Committee for engaging in this discussion, and I am anxious to hear from our colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Ayotte. She was there this morning and was able to ask questions of the witness, the panel we had in front of the Budget Committee.

I guess what struck me about listening to that discussion was just the evasiveness we had from Mr. Zients and, in fact, as the Senator from Alabama has mentioned, his failure to respond to very direct questions--not questions that are trick questions, questions that are just a matter of the facts.

I think what I was struck by too is that when he was asked about whether the administration wanted Majority Leader Reid to bring the President's budget to the floor, he could not give a direct answer, and his comments indicated that they would not be calling on the majority leader to bring the President's budget before the Senate. The other thing I was struck by is that the President's own budget chief could not confirm or verify that the President has added already about $5 trillion to the debt since taking office. Those were both things that seemed like very straightforward questions and should have been very straightforward answers.

The fact is it is very difficult for him or any other official in this administration to defend this budget. This budget is not a serious budget, and even people on the other side, people in the media have all passed judgment and basically said that this is not the kind of budget that takes on the challenges the country faces.

I would say to my colleagues that it is hard to take this seriously when they aren't serious about it, but they ought to be because these are serious times. We live in a time where we are running a $15 trillion debt. This budget would add another $11 trillion to that debt over the next 10 years. We are living in a time when we have European countries that are on the verge of fiscal collapse with regard to their economic and fiscal situations, much of which we are watching on a daily basis unfold in front of us and what that might mean for our country, and hopefully there is something instructive about that because clearly we need to be taking a page out of what is happening there and getting our house in order now.

We have made promises to the American people that we can't keep. We need to reform our entitlement programs. And that probably more than anything else was the biggest disappointment in the President's budget because it is the fourth year in a row where he has proposed a budget that doesn't do anything to address the fundamental drivers of Federal spending, and by that I mean the mandatory part of the budget; that is, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP. All of those different programs represent today, with interest on the debt, about 64 percent of all Federal spending. At the end of the 10-year period, they would represent 78 percent of all Federal spending. So this budget is a dramatic increase in the amount we are spending on various programs. That is what is driving Federal spending today, that is what will drive Federal spending into the future, and that is why a failure and a lack of leadership when it comes to the issue of entitlement reform is so disturbing, and it really is a missed opportunity.

I understand that this is an election year. Everybody says this is a campaign document, this is a political document. That does not absolve the President or us of the responsibility we have to the American people to start making some decisions around here that will get this country back on the right fiscal track.

When you propose a budget that spends literally $47 trillion over the next 10 years, which is basically what we are talking about here, then you have not done much to bend the spending curve in the right direction. So I would strongly disagree with Mr. Zients' statement today that this is a ``very tight budget''--that is how I think he described it.

We have Governors around the country who are making some tough decisions to balance their State budget. The Federal Government ought to do the same. South Dakota is a good example of that. We made some difficult decisions this last year, and as a consequence of that, our budget situation is much better this year, but it is because they had the courage to step forward and do some things that needed to be done.

The budget proposed by the President fails to rein in government spending and balance the budget. As I said, it adds $11 trillion to the national debt, which will reach--if my colleagues can believe this-- nearly $26 trillion by the end of the decade under the proposal the President put forward.

I could go on, but I would say to my colleague from Alabama and to my colleague from New Hampshire that based upon what we heard this morning, I guess I don't feel very reassured that this administration gets it. The President's budget submission clearly was an example that they don't get it, and the defense of it this morning that we heard in front of the Budget Committee certainly reinforced that impression with me. But I would be interested in knowing what the Senator from New Hampshire, who was there and able to question the panelists, including the OMB Director, thought based on the testimony we heard this morning.

I would say to the Senator from Alabama that it was interesting to me because at the White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit in February of 2009--this is in the context of discussing our unsustainable budget deficits--President Obama said the following:

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past

few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the

consequences to the next budget of the next administration or

the next generation.

That is exactly what he has been doing now for 4 years, literally-- every budget, every year. We think, OK, maybe this year the President is going to get serious because we have serious problems and these are serious times in which we are living and we have to get the situation turned around or we are headed for certain disaster. Yet, last year, as was noted, the President's budget when it was put on the floor of the Senate did not garner a single vote here--not a single vote. It was 97 to 0. It was unanimously rejected by the Senate, Members on both sides voting against it.

This year one would think, OK, the situation has gotten much worse. Our fiscal situation has deteriorated even more. The amount of debt we have racked up is continuing to accumulate. We thought perhaps this year we would see a budget that actually did address these problems, but, no, we have a budget that is filled with more spending, more debt, and higher taxes at a time literally when we need to be tackling spending, we need to be taking on saving Social Security and Medicare for the next generation, and doing something to create economic growth and get jobs created for American workers.

What is disappointing is not just the fact that the spending and debt situation is out of control but also the impact it has on the economy. The Senator from Alabama knows full well, because we both have studied this subject, that when we look at the research that has been done with regard to the impact of spending on debt and economic job creation, when we achieve a certain level or arrive at a certain level of debt as a percentage of the economy--90 percent is the threshold and it costs about a percentage point of economic growth every year, which means fewer jobs, and in this case about a million fewer jobs, in our economy. So the high, sustained levels, chronic high levels of debt and spending are directly impacting our economy's ability to get out of this cycle we are in and to start growing and expanding again and creating jobs.

I think it is very clear. I think if you look at, as the Senator said, the debt as a percent of GDP--now over 100 percent; think about that--this is the highest level of debt, highest level of spending as a percentage of our GDP that we have seen literally since the end of World War II. We have not seen anything that rivals it. We have seen now 4 years in a row where we have run trillion-dollar-plus deficits, and we have added, as was said earlier, nearly $5 trillion to the debt since this President took office. But when you get that kind of debt level sustained over time, it does have a direct impact on jobs and the economy, and I believe we are paying a price for that right now. You can look at what is happening, obviously, with the high levels of debt and the impact it is having on countries in Europe.

So this whole idea with the President producing his budget and not taking that issue on, not doing anything substantial or meaningful with regard to spending or debt, and then adding to it, and making matters even worse, raising taxes by almost $2 trillion--it seems like a most natural instinct. It is just in their DNA. Everything has to be about raising taxes. And, clearly, that is not the solution. We all know that. In fact, we need to create policies that will be conducive to economic growth and job creation in this country.

Raising taxes on investment, which is what this budget does--by the way, it would raise capital gains tax rates from 15 percent to 20 percent right away, and then if you are hit by the Buffett rule, it would go up to 30 percent. It would raise the dividend tax rates from 15 percent to up over 39 percent--almost triple the tax on dividends in this country, which, incidentally, have already been taxed at the corporate business level. So you are talking about almost tripling the tax rate that Americans are going to have to pay on investment income. Then you look at the ObamaCare taxes that would kick in, the 3.8 percent on investment income, you add that and you start getting to a marginal income tax rate that is up in the 43, 44-percent range. It is very hard to argue that can be anything but awful when it comes to jobs.

The entire budget--from the failure to address spending and debt, the failure to take on saving Social Security and Medicare by reforming our entitlement programs; and it seems as though the constant reliance on taxes is their answer to everything--could not be a worse budget for the American people. It could not be a worse budget for the economy. It could not be a worse budget for jobs. And it certainly could not be a worse budget for seniors, as we continue to watch Medicare and Social Security cascade further and further toward bankruptcy. It is a bust as far as I am concerned. I think that is why people on both sides and people in the media and the American people get it.

It is time for this administration to get serious because these are serious times. When you are going to do big things, you need Presidential leadership. There are 100 Senators, 435 Members of the House of Representatives, 535 of us in all. There is only one President, one person who can sign a bill into law, one person who can engage the American public and the Congress in a way that will help us solve these big problems and tackle the challenges we face as a Nation right now. This budget does none of that.

If the Senator would yield on that point, in closing, I do think there will be a vote probably at some point. The House is going to pass a budget. We know that. I suspect what will happen is what happened last year. If the Senate fails to produce, if the Democratic majority does not produce a budget here, we will end up voting on the House budget, perhaps on the President's budget. But the regrettable thing about all that is we are not doing our job as Senators. It has been over 1,000 days now, and this will be the fourth year in a row in which this body has not adopted a budget. What we have gotten from the President, of course, is not a serious one. All they want to do is get out and demagog and attack people who are serious about solving this problem.

Last year, as was the case with the House-passed budget, when it came over here, it was routinely attacked and demagoged. But nothing was ever put forward that would represent an alternative because they do not want to deal with these issues. It is unfortunate for the American people.

We yield our time.

Mr. President, there is an old political axiom that is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, more recently to Gerald Ford, that says: A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

Those words took on a whole new meaning this last week when we found out the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, Kathleen Sebelius, was issuing new regulations with regard to the health care act that passed last year that would apply to religious-affiliated universities, charities, and hospitals.

I think we have to remember exactly why it was that many of our forefathers came to this country in the first place. They came, in many cases, because they were trying to get away from religious persecution in their homelands. So they came to the United States with the desire to start anew and to assert that in this new government they formed that they would protect freedoms, basic freedoms, such as religious liberty.

So in the Declaration of Independence they said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with

certain unalienable Rights, that among these are [the rights

to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.--[In order]

to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

So that was a foundational principle of our democracy, and it was enshrined, when they wrote the Constitution, in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights, when they said:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .

It was the very first right they enshrined in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States. That was the weight they attached to the important issue of religious liberty, and it was consistent with the statement in the Declaration of Independence, where it says that those rights are endowed by our Creator. They are not given to us by a State. They are not given to us by government. They are something that is endowed by our Creator. The government is here to protect those rights.

So when this issue popped up on many people's radar screen--and, of course, it has been percolating out there for quite a while, but there had been an opportunity to weigh in and to provide comments, with the hope that the Department of Health and Human Services would come to the right conclusion and exempt religious-affiliated schools, hospitals, and charities--when that was not going to be the case and they were going to require these very organizations to do something that violated their consciences and violated the teachings and the practices of their faith, many people across this country--we have all heard from them-- got very engaged on this issue.

It seems to me, at least, there is a very simple answer to this; that is, the administration could go back and revisit this issue and more broadly make this exemption not just for churches--which is where it is today--but also for church schools, church hospitals, church universities.

It was interesting, Tuesday morning the minority leader in the Senate, Senator McConnell, was out here talking about this issue, and he mentioned:

One out of six patients in America is treated at a Catholic

hospital. Catholic Charities is the largest private provider

of social services to poor children, families, and

individuals in America. The Catholic Church runs the largest

network of private schools in the country.

He goes on to say:

These institutions have thrived because they have been

allowed to freely pursue their religious convictions in a

country that, until now, respected their constitutional right

to do so.

He went on to say in that statement:

If the rights of some are not protected, the rights of all

are in danger.

I think what has many of the churches across this country and many of the

universities and many of the hospitals concerned about is that this is going to become a finalized regulation.

The proponents of the regulation are saying there is a year to comply with it. I would submit to you that asking people in this country to check their principles at the door not now but a year from now is not making any kind of an accommodation.

This needs to be reversed. This is clearly a violation of religious liberty, the protection and right we have in the first amendment of our Constitution in our Bill of Rights, and I hope the administration will do the right thing and acknowledge that they have made a mistake, that they have gone too far, that they have overreached, that they have treaded in an area they should not tread and make this right. The way to make this right is to reverse this decision.

Some have argued: What is that going to mean? Does that mean people in this country are not going to have access to contraceptive services? The answer to that is absolutely not. Contraception would be widely available. It is just that religious-affiliated employers would not be forced to fund this coverage which violates the tenants of their faith. It does not have anything to do with contraception. It does not have anything to do with that issue at all. What it has to do with is the issue of religious liberty and whether we are going to respect that or are we going to allow that to be eroded, and who knows where this goes next.

The other point I would make is, this is also, I think, an example of what happens when you get a government that is so big it can give you everything you want but also big enough to take it all away. There are a lot of people who, when this was debated, when the affordable care act was debated, argued--myself included--this would lead to government running more of our lives, making more decisions, intruding more, having more control, and making decisions with regard to people's health care.

I would submit this is an example--and perhaps example No. 1--of that very fact. What we are seeing now is, the affordable care act--as it gets implemented, we are giving more and more power to the Federal Government, and when we do that, when big government gets bigger and bigger, it has more latitude when it comes to running over the rights of ordinary Americans. This is a perfect example of that.

I could go down the list of other regulations. I have come down to the floor many times to talk about regulatory overreach, excessive regulations that go way beyond common sense, that do not deal with issues of public health and safety but are simply regulations for regulation's sake.

People have heard me come down and talk about the Department of Labor's efforts now to regulate the young people who work on family farms and ranches and the overly proscriptive way in which they are trying to keep young people from performing duties they learned growing up that they are trained to do, that contribute to the overall success and prosperity of family farms and ranches.

The Department of Labor's proposal right now would restrict young people from working at elevations that are more than 6 feet, from working with farm animals that are more than 6 months old, from working around grain elevators or stockyards or operating certain kinds of equipment, many pieces of equipment, types of equipment that are fairly standard on a farming operation. It strikes at the very heart of what makes a family farm and ranch operation tick. It is an assault on the heartland of this country and the culture and values that have helped shape it and make it great.

So this issue of regulatory overreach and big government is an issue that I think is symbolized by this current debate. What we are having is a debate about the reach of government to where they can start coming up with regulations under the new health care law that clearly violate the religious liberty protections that are afforded for people in this country under the first amendment and which I think our Founders, if they were around today, would find incredibly offensive.

This is an affront, an assault on these very liberties. It is an assault on our Bill of Rights, our Constitution. It is something the administration should walk back from and make right. They can do that very simply by reversing this or widening or broadening this exemption to cover religious-affiliated schools, universities and charities. And they could do that right now.

I would hope that would be the case. If it is not, there is legislation that has been proposed here. A number of my colleagues have already filed bills. In fact, Senator Blunt was down here earlier today and asked to call up an amendment that would address this issue. It was objected to on the grounds that it is not related to the underlying bill, the highway bill. Well, if it is not related to the highway bill, then let's provide an opportunity for Congress to weigh in on this. I can tell you one thing, the American people are weighing in on this. This Congress of the United States, as their representatives, needs to stand for the American people and, more importantly, needs to defend the Constitution of the United States. If the administration is going to take this step, and if the administration is not going to walk back from this, this Congress of the United States needs to be heard.

There will be numerous attempts until that opportunity is presented by my colleagues and me to make sure this wrong is fixed, is corrected, and that the religious liberties for which our Founders came to this country and for which so many have fought and died over the years to defend are protected, and those rights that are enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution and our Bill of Rights are protected for the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to laud the actions of the House of Representatives which voted to repeal the CLASS long-term care entitlement program that was created by the health care law. The vote yesterday in the House of Representatives was 267 in favor of repeal. It was a bipartisan vote. It was a clear, I think, message that this is a piece of legislation that needs to be taken off the books.

It was a disaster in the making from the very beginning. Many of us tried to predict that ultimately this program was destined to fail. The vote in the House of Representatives yesterday to repeal this insolvent program I hope will pave the way for the Senate to follow suit. My fear has been all along that if we do not get this program off the books, at some point there will be an attempt to resurrect it. That would be the absolute worst outcome and worst scenario for the American taxpayer because this is a program that, even before it was voted on and added to the health care bill, was predicted would fail.

The Congressional Budget Office said it would run deficits in the outyears. The Actuary at the Health and Human Services Department predicted that this was a program that actuarially was unsound, could not be viable in the long run. It was here in the last few months that finally the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, came out and said, ``I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation.''

That was a statement she made back in the middle of October. So even the person who was tasked with implementing this program has now said there is no viable path forward for CLASS.

We ought to get this off the books. It was, in fact, a pay-for in the health care bill. It was designed to help understate the cost of the health care bill. It front-end-loaded premiums, got revenue in the door early, knowing full well that when the demands for payments came later on that it was going to be upside down, and it was clearly a program that I think, by any account, all who observed this process closely knew just flat out this would not work. But what was done--it obscured the cost of the health care bill and helped it to sort of balance out because it was front-end loaded, saw revenues come in in the early years before payments would have to go out in the outyears.

I am hopeful the Senate will take the action that was taken by the House of Representatives and end this once and for all. We have people on both sides of the aisle who have come to that conclusion. There was a lot of debate, even in the runup, the lead-up to the health care bill, about how this would not work. I offered an amendment during the health care debate to strip it. We had 10 Democrats at the time who voted with me on that amendment. Many of them made statements regarding this legislation and the implications if it were to pass. In fact, the Senator from North Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said at the time that this is ``a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.''

He vowed to block its inclusion in the Senate bill. It ended up in the Senate bill and ended up in the overall bill, so to this day it is still a part of the health care legislation but a part that needs to be stripped out if we are going to do what is in the best interests of

the American taxpayer and not put yet another unfunded liability on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

We have a lot of bipartisan support for repealing it. There are a lot of people who have weighed in against this, who know it will not work. We have an awful lot of outside interests as well who have observed, now, that this is not something that is sustainable over time. In fact, a lot of editorial pages around the country, newspapers have weighed in on this. The Washington Post:

. . . a new gimmick that has been designed to pretend the

health reform is fully paid for.

That is something they said back when this was being debated.

The Wall Street Journal:

Known by the acronym CLASS, the long-term care insurance

program for nursing homes and the like was grafted onto the

health-care bill mostly to hide that bill's true costs.

It has been described as ``a budgetary time bomb.''

It seems to make perfect sense to me, and I hope to many of my colleagues, that we take the steps necessary to get this program off the books once and for all. In trying to justify this, there are people who say we ought to keep it on the books in case we figure out a way to go forward with it, to implement it. It does not work. It cannot work. That has been known from the very outset.

I want to mention something else the Actuary, Rick Foster, said prior to it being voted on. He said:

Thirty-six years of actuarial experience lead me to believe

that this program would collapse in short order and require

significant federal subsidies to continue.

I want to repeat that. This is from the person who studies the trends and makes sure, or tries to make sure, these programs are actuarially sound.

Thirty-six years of actuarial experience lead me to believe

that this program would collapse in short order and require

significant federal subsidies to continue.

That was the warning that was issued way before the vote ever occurred on the CLASS Act.

He described it as `` . . . a classic `assessment spiral' or `insurance death spiral.' '' Those are words he used to describe this.

The program is intended to be ``actuarially'' sound but at

first glance this goal may be impossible.

These were all statements made by the Actuary.

Those of us who were here at the time and were concerned about this being included in the health care bill came to the floor and, as I said, I offered an amendment to strip it. It came close to getting the necessary votes but unfortunately came short. It had broad bipartisan support but we recognized at the time this thing was destined to fail. Now we have all this, the studies that have been done since, that validate that by the objective third-party validators, if you will, by the HHS Actuary.

It seems to me at least that the American taxpayers, the American people deserve to know where their elected officials stand on the CLASS Act. Are they for keeping this unviable, insolvent, actuarially unsound provision in the health care bill, which now even those who are tasked with implementing it--the Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius--have said there is no viable path forward for its implementation? Are we going to continue to keep this around? Or are we going to have a vote here in the Senate to put an end to this once and for all?

I hope the majority leader, Senator Reid, will allow us to get this up for a vote. It has been passed in the House of Representatives. It is very clear based on not only all the actuarial evidence but all those who have looked at it who are tasked with trying to put it into practice that it is not going to work. I hope before this goes any further we will get a vote here in the Senate that will echo what happened in the House of Representatives and that we will do the right thing by the American taxpayer and get rid of a program that, if it ever is resurrected, if it ever is reincarnated in some form, would be a terrible drain on American taxpayers, not only today but well into the future, and represent yet another unfunded liability that we will put on the backs of our children and grandchildren. It is time to end the CLASS Act once and for all.

I am going to continue to press for a vote on this and I hope Majority Leader Reid will allow us to get a vote on repeal of the CLASS Act so the American people do know exactly where their elected officials stand and whether they are going to stand on the side of the taxpayer, stand on the side of common sense, or stand on the side of using this budgetary gimmick to understate the cost of the health care bill and perhaps at some point in the future put a plan in place that literally is not going to work, is only going to continue to lead us on the pathway to bankruptcy.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to enter into a colloquy with my colleagues from North Dakota and Nebraska.

Mr. President, President Obama has said that every morning when he gets up, he thinks about what he can do to create jobs. Yet just in the last couple weeks, he turned thumbs down on a project that would create

20,000 shovel-ready jobs, the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is a project that is teed up and ready to go. It would invest $7 billion initially and create 20,000 jobs immediately. It will address a very important issue for this country--energy.

We talk about getting away from the dependence on foreign sources of energy and becoming more energy independent, and we have an opportunity to do that and, at the same time, create economic opportunity in this country and get people back to work. It is a mystery as to why the administration and the President would not find this particular project to be in America's national interest.

It comes down to whether we are going to continue to import the oil, the energy we need, from unfriendly nations--we get about 700,000 barrels a day from Venezuela--or whether we will get that oil from a friendly neighbor such as Canada. When we look at that juxtaposition, that comparison, and ask should we get that 700,000 barrels of oil from Hugo Chavez or from Canada, most Americans would say it makes more sense to do business with our friendly ally to the north. Also, we would have that come down into this country in a 1,700-mile pipeline, which would transport that oil to refineries in the United States, where it would be refined and create jobs there as well.

In almost all respects, as we look at the project and the attributes that come with it, they are job creation, investment, energy security, not to mention the State and local tax revenue, which is something that is important to a lot of people whom I represent in South Dakota. In fact, I had someone from western South Dakota in my office last week, and he said: We care about the energy security issue, the jobs issue, and all that, but we need the tax revenue for our school districts and county governments that would be generated.

So we have all these positive benefits associated with this particular project. Yet after having studied it for 3 years, about 1,200 days, and having done multiple environmental impact statements-- the last one concluded in August of last year--lo and behold, the President decides he is not going to move forward with this project.

We think that is terribly unfortunate, not in the national interest. We believe it is in the national interest to move forward to address the important energy security needs, as well as the needs for job creation and economic growth.

Two of my colleagues, former Governors, now Senators from Nebraska and North Dakota, are people who are well acquainted with these types of projects. The Governor from North Dakota was very involved when the first Keystone Pipeline that was built from Canada through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and points south. That project went through a permitting process. It was a couple years in the making and it was approved. The construction process was concluded and it is now operational. That is an example of how this particular project can work.

This pipeline would cross the State of the Senator from Nebraska. There were concerns about whether it had the right route in order for this to be done in the best environmental way. Those issues have been addressed. The Nebraska legislature met in special session, and they and the Governor came up with an alternative idea about how to do this. They have been supportive of moving forward with this project as well.

The question before the House is if the President of the United States determines this is not in the national interest, notwithstanding the support of lots of Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle and I think overwhelming support of the States through which this line would traverse and the labor unions which represent a lot of people who are involved. Many editorial pages support this, including the Chicago Tribune, which said:

Obama's decision will cost the U.S. jobs. . . . He seems to

think those jobs will still be there when he gets around to

making decision on the pipeline. But they may well be gone

for good.

They go further and say his decision ``will deny the U.S. a reliable source of oil.''

They recognize the importance of this project and doing business with a friendly country, the importance of energy independence, and the fact that if we don't benefit from this, it will go somewhere else. They have made it abundantly clear this is not something--if the United States turns it down--they will continue to wait around for until sometime in the future when we might consider it. They will go somewhere else--probably China--with it.

For those reasons, we believe we need to do everything we can do to move this project forward. My colleagues came up with legislation that recognizes the role of the Congress under the commerce clause and our ability to approve this project. I hope we will get an opportunity to discuss and debate this issue in the Senate and get a vote and perhaps get a vote as well in the House of Representatives, where Congress could weigh in and perhaps change the President's mind about this important project.

I am glad to be with my colleagues today. I will yield to the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Nebraska, two great leaders on this particular issue and all issues relating to energy security. They understand the history of this, as well as its importance to America's future.

I ask the Senator from North Dakota if he would like to give us an insight about the first Keystone Pipeline, built through his State a few years ago, the history of that, and the history of how this particular project was put forward as well and why we think it ought to go forward.

Mr. President, I appreciate the hard work of the Senator from Nebraska on this subject, as well as the Senator from North Dakota, and he has fashioned a solution which I think does give us an opportunity as a Congress to assert our role under the Constitution, under the commerce clause of the Constitution, to move this project forward, notwithstanding the opposition, really of one person--the President of the United States, who is the person right now who is standing in the way of this.

I would again say to my colleague from North Dakota, as we wrap up here, I hear people say this needs to be studied further; that we need to do more analysis. It is sort of mind-boggling to think after more than 1,200 days of study, analysis, review, and scrutiny that people would come to that conclusion. The Keystone XL

Pipeline I, which the Senator from North Dakota is well acquainted with because it goes through his State and he was involved in negotiating that project, took 693 days in the process of getting approved. What is interesting to me about this particular project is that after 1,200 days--longer than any of the pipelines of this magnitude--the extended review and more than 10,000 pages of environmental analysis concluded-- concluded--the pipeline will not adversely impact the environment. When the announcement was made to deny the construction of the pipeline, the State Department still had 5 weeks to review it if they had chosen to use it. Clearly, the announcement wasn't based on policy but on political expediency, which is what the Senator from Nebraska pointed out.

There is a tremendous amount of resource in my colleague's State--the State of North Dakota--that could benefit as well. I think the State of North Dakota has the potential to generate somewhere on the order of 500,000 barrels of oil, about 100,000 of which, I am told, could be moved through this pipeline if it is approved. It seems to me at least, again, that here is a resource, an energy reserve in our country, in my colleague's State, that could benefit people in this country.

By the way, in 2011, Americans spent more on gasoline than any other year since 1981. And reports indicate that 2012 could be even worse. So when we look at the economic impact on Americans, from our not having our oil and energy being produced in this country, it is a very real impact. In fact, since the President has taken office, gas prices have gone from $1.84 a gallon to over $3.30 a gallon, and this pipeline could be part of that solution.

I want to end with a quote made by the State Department in their review of the pipeline. The Department of Energy, I should say, but it was part of the State Department's review. The Department of Energy noted:

Gasoline prices in all markets served by East Coast and

Gulf Coast refineries would decrease, including the Midwest.

That is coming from the State Department's review, the Department of Energy, that gasoline prices in all markets served by east coast and gulf coast refineries would decrease. That is a pretty remarkable economic impact, not to mention all the jobs that would be associated with the construction, and once it is operational the jobs that would be created in refining this oil.

So again it is a win-win, as we heard from the Senator from Nebraska, who said that initially their State had some concerns about the route, but that has been all resolved so this project can move forward.

The legislation of the Senator from North Dakota, which I am proud to support and cosponsor, I hope gets a vote in the Senate, and I know the Senator is going to do everything he can to advance it--I hope he does--and I look forward to working with him.

Mr. President, with that, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 1477.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this amendment would make it easier for small business to better access capital in order to expand and create jobs. On November 3, 2011, the House of Representatives passed a companion measure, which was introduced by Representative Kevin McCarthy, on a near unanimous vote of 413 to 11; 175 Democrats in the House supported this legislation. We have an opportunity here to show the American people that we are serious about creating jobs and to pass this amendment here in the Senate.

This amendment would remove a regulatory roadblock in order to make it easier for small businesses to access needed capital to expand and create jobs. Current SEC registration exemption rules severely hamper the ability of small businesses to raise capital by allowing them to raise capital only from investors with whom they have a preexisting relationship.

By modernizing this rule, small businesses and startups would be able to more easily raise capital from accredited investors nationwide. According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council:

This is a long overdue solution that will widen the pool of

potential funders for entrepreneurs. Our economy will improve

once entrepreneurs are provided the tools, opportunities and

incentives that they need to hire and invest.

Earlier this month, the SEC Small Business Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies recommended that the agency ``relax or modify'' the general solicitation prohibition as a good policy to increase the amount of capital available to small businesses.

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama called on Congress to pass legislation that will help startups and small businesses access capital in order to expand and create jobs. The President said:

Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small

businesses. So let's pass an agenda that helps them succeed.

Tear down regulations that prevent entrepreneurs from getting

the financing to grow. Both parties agree on these ideas. So

put them in a bill and get it on my desk this year.

This is exactly what this amendment will do. And it has support from investors and entrepreneurs alike. When you have unemployment hovering around 9 percent, we need to pass legislation that will enable our job creators to expand and create jobs. As I said, this legislation received overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of Representatives. I hope we can do the same here in the Senate by passing this amendment.

We all talk about the importance of making it easier, making it less costly, less difficult for our small businesses and entrepreneurs to get access to capital so they can create jobs and get the economy growing again. So many times these are contentious, they are controversial differences of opinion about how best to do that. We fight over regulations, we fight over taxes. This is something where there is broad bipartisan support, almost unanimous support in the House of Representatives, a vote of 413 to 11 in support of this legislation when it was voted on in the House of Representatives.

We have an opportunity to do something that is very straightforward, that is broadly supported by both Democrats and Republicans--at least it was in the House of Representatives--that the President has suggested we ought to be working on, looking for these types of approaches to freeing up access to capital for our small businesses.

You have the folks out there in the business community overwhelmingly supportive of doing away with the regulatory barrier, the regulatory obstacle this particular regulation represents in terms of access to capital for our small businesses. It seems like one of those issues on which there should be no disagreement. I hope that will be the case. I hope we can get a vote on this amendment, get this put into law and put into effect so our small businesses and our entrepreneurs in this country can do what they do best; that is, create jobs. They have to have access to capital in order to do that. This makes that process easier. It does away with some of these unnecessary regulations and roadblocks and barriers that exist today.

I hope my colleagues in the Senate will support this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wish to, similar to all my colleagues, express our sympathy and support and prayers for our colleague, Senator Kirk.

Senator Kirk is someone who is new to the Senate but served for a good number of years in the House of Representatives and has already made a tremendous impact in coming to the Senate--incredibly smart, hard-working, thoughtful, knowledgeable on so many different subjects. So obviously we will miss his presence in the near term but hope and pray for a full, quick, complete recovery and hope to have him back with us soon. I know I speak for many of my colleagues, but I certainly wish to express my and my family's prayers and support for Senator Kirk and for his family as he tries to get back on his feet. We wish him all the best as he does that and hope he will return soon and be able to get involved in many of the issues he was involved with and has been involved with since he has come to the Senate.

The Budget

If he were here, I think he would be very involved in the debates we are going to be having in the coming days about the budget. Today marks the 1,000th day since we have actually acted on a budget in the United States. That is something many people here who are interested in fiscal policy are very concerned about. Senator Kirk is one of those. I consider myself to be one of those. We have a lot of people in the Senate who are very concerned about where we are as a nation, about the amount of spending, the amount of debt we have racked up and continue to pile up on an annual basis. It all starts with a budget.

We spend $3.6 trillion of the American people's money on an annual basis. Yet we have not had a budget in the Senate for 1,000 days, literally now for 3 years, essentially, since the Senate last passed a budget.

We cannot continue with a straight face to go to the American people and say we are being good stewards of their tax dollars when, in fact, we don't even go through the exercise annually of determining and prioritizing how we are going to spend their hard-earned tax dollars. This is something that cries out for reform.

My colleague Senator Isakson, who just spoke, has some proposals for budget reform that I think we ought to take up and we ought to vote on in the Senate. I have some ideas about budget reform. There is so much we need to do to change the budget process in the Congress because we have failed to pass a budget resolution, not just for the past 1,000 days but also for 5 of the last 7 election years, and we have only completed all the annual appropriations bills on time in 4 of the last 34 years. We clearly have a problem. I don't think there is anybody here who can't say this system is broken and needs to be fixed.

It strikes me, at least, that as we went through the 2012 budget process, we failed again to complete the appropriations work on time, and so we had to go through this annual exercise of doing a nearly $1 trillion omnibus spending bill at the eleventh hour yet again. During the past 3 years, we have consistently had record deficits of $1.3 trillion or more.

Clearly, what we have in place is not working, and the American people are the ones who are paying the price for that because the debt per person is now over $48,700. That is an increase of nearly $14,000 on an individual basis since President Obama took office.

If we think about it on a per household basis, it represents $126,000 per American family, per household that is their share of our Federal debt. That is a massive amount of money we pile onto people in this country.

If we add in the unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, which exceed $40 trillion, then we start talking about over $\1/2\ million in liability for every family in this country.

The national debt is now more than $15 trillion, which is literally over 100 percent of our gross domestic product. To put that into perspective, 1 year ago, Greece was at 143 percent. We are not far behind. We are now 1 to 1, 100 percent debt to GDP. We are seeing the effect of high levels of sovereign debt on the economies of European countries such as Greece, and if we fail to get spending in our country on a sustainable path, we are going to face a similar crisis in the not-too-distant future. If we continue to see an economy that is struggling and growing at a very slow rate, we cannot grow that economy by making the Federal Government larger. If that is the case, the $1 trillion stimulus bill that passed in 2009 would have brought unemployment down. But, as we know, the unemployment rate in this country is still at 8.5 percent.

So we have to unleash the economy. We need to cut spending in Washington, DC. We have to make the Federal Government smaller, not larger, and get Federal spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product, as a percentage of our entire economy, back to more of a historical average.

Today, the spending as a percentage of our GDP is about 25 percent. If we go over the last 40 years of American history, the average has been 20 to 21 percent. Ironically, there have only been five times since 1969 where the budget has actually been balanced. In those cases where the budget was balanced, spending as a percentage of GDP was 18.7 percent, on average.

So it can be done. But we have to get spending back to a more historic and reasonable level relative to our entire economy.

The debt to GDP, as I mentioned earlier, is also historic because we haven't seen debt-to-GDP levels such as this literally since the end of World War II. We would have to go back over half a century to find a time when we were carrying debt to GDP that was literally 1 to 1, where the amount of debt we have in this country is 100 percent of our entire economic output in a given year. That is a staggering number and one that should make us all very concerned about our future if we don't take steps to correct it.

I think that point was driven home by the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ADM Mike Mullen, who has said in testifying before congressional committees that the greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt.

Think about that. He didn't say the Iranian nuclear program. He didn't say China. He didn't say North Korea. He didn't say al-Qaida. He said the greatest threat to America's national security is our national debt--that coming from the person who used to be the highest ranking military official in this country.

I think that speaks volumes about what we need to be focused on and why it is so important we start getting our budgetary, our fiscal house in order and why it is so important, frankly, that we pass a budget. One thousand days without a budget, and we spend $3.6 trillion every single year of the American people's money.

I think, again, in order to get our fiscal house in order, in order to get our economy back on track, we have to cut spending. We have to reduce the amount we spend. That means we have to take on some of the big challenges before us, such as entitlement reform.

We all know about three-fifths of all Federal spending is what we call mandatory spending, and that represents programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that are not annually appropriated for by Congress but are a function of the law. If a person is eligible for a particular program they are going to get a benefit under that program. That type of spending in our budget represents about three- fifths of all Federal spending. If we add interest on the debt, which is also mandatory spending, we get up to about 65

cents out of every dollar spent right now is mandatory spending.

If we have programs such as Medicaid growing at three times the rate of inflation, and Medicare growing at two times the rate of inflation, it is pretty clear that is not sustainable over time. We have to figure out a way to get these programs where they are not growing at 12 percent a year or 8 percent a year--closer to the rate of inflation. That means we have to reform these programs if they are going to be sustainable and if they are going to be there for future generations of Americans. That can be done without impacting the benefits that people who are on those programs today receive and those who are nearing retirement age receive.

There is a real concern, there is a lot of hot political rhetoric about Republicans just want to cut benefits for seniors across this country. I think most of my colleagues know there have been several proposals put forward that would address the long-term challenges we face with regard to Medicare and Medicaid and for that matter Social Security, all of which would not impact people who are retired today nor those who are nearing retirement age but simply put in place some reforms that would impact younger Americans who, today, are working hard, putting money into these programs, but if we do not take steps to fix these programs they are not going to be around when those people retire.

Entitlement reform is so important in terms of getting Federal spending under control. That is why, notwithstanding the fact it is an election year, I hope there will be the political will in the Congress and with the President. Frankly, it is going to take Presidential leadership to do these types of things. We cannot do big things, we cannot conquer big challenges and big problems in this country absent Presidential leadership. There are 535 Members of Congress and there is only one President, one person who can sign a bill into law, one person who can engage the Congress and work toward a solution to some of these big problems.

So far this President has demonstrated no willingness to take on the challenges we face with regard to our budget. It was demonstrated last year when he submitted his budget. It was ultimately voted on in the Senate, voted down by a vote of 97 to 0. I think that tells us they have not been serious about taking on the major drivers of Federal spending in this country.

With regard to the other part of the budget, the discretionary part, we saw spending increase in that part of our budget by about 24 percent between 2008 and 2010. It literally grew at about 8 to 10 times the rate of inflation. So we need to get that side of our spending under control as well. Many of us supported legislative efforts that would roll back discretionary spending to 2008 levels to get us back into a place where we can defend the things we are doing to the American people at a time when they are seeing their family budgets shrink, that they are seeing their personal assets shrink, and many of them are having a very hard time finding work. Cutting spending, reducing spending, reforming entitlement programs, getting our fiscal house in order, is just essential, absolutely essential if we want to put our country on a path and a track that will prevent us from heading for the train wreck that many of our allies, many of the countries in Europe, are facing right now simply because they made promises to their people they just could not keep.

We have to get our spending under control in this country and rein it in or that is our future. I hope for the sake of our children and grandchildren in this country we are willing to make the hard political decisions that will enable that to happen.

The second thing we have to do if we are going to get out of this sort of morass we are in right now, in addition to reducing spending, is we have to get the economy growing again. We have to expand this economy, grow this economy. It has been said the rising tide lifts all the boats. We need to get a tide that starts lifting all Americans. Instead of talking about how we are going to redistribute the pie, we need to make the pie bigger. The way we do that is to grow and expand the economy. If we start growing and expanding the economy we will get more Americans back to work, more people making money, more people investing. When more people are working, there are more people paying taxes and that gets revenue going up and that makes these other issues manageable. But we have to have economic growth and we have to have policies in place that promote economic growth.

Regrettably, the policies of the current administration have had the opposite effect. They have made it more difficult, more expensive to create jobs in this country. We need to put policies in place that will make it less expensive, less difficult to create jobs, and that will encourage people and provide the kind of economic certainty that gets people to invest their money, to put their capital to work, and to get Americans back to work in this country.

I think there are several things, obviously, that need to be done. No. 1, of course, is to reform the Tax Code. In my view, right now that is a roadblock, if you will, an obstacle, an impediment to economic growth. We are not competitive in the world marketplace because of our tax policies. What we need today is a clear, fair, simple tax code that does away with a lot of the special interest loopholes that exist today, one that broadens the tax base in this country but at the same time one that lowers rates so that businesses want to invest in America as opposed to moving their headquarters and taking their jobs overseas. We want to encourage investment. That means we have to reform our Tax Code and, as I said, we have to do away with a lot of the Tax Code that is riddled with loopholes. We have to do away with those loopholes and get our tax rates down to where they are competitive with countries around the world that are stealing business from us and taking jobs overseas.

Tax reform is, in my view, an essential element of an economic growth strategy that will get us on a path where the economy is growing and expanding and we are creating jobs in this country. That is going to take Presidential leadership just as entitlement reform is going to take Presidential leadership. We cannot do big things in this country absent Presidential leadership. This is another area where we have not seen that from this President.

I hope he will engage the Congress--again, notwithstanding the fact that this is an election year--in a debate and perhaps more than a debate, a solution to the problems in the Tax Code in this country that will get us on a competitive footing and make us more competitive in the world marketplace. The President is going to have to be involved in that debate or it is not going to happen, particularly in a political year.

We also have to get our arms around these overreaching, excessive regulations that are strangling small businesses in this country. I cannot tell you how many times, when I travel my State of South Dakota or anyplace else for that matter, that I hear from small businesses that the No. 1 obstacle right now to us creating jobs is this massive amount of regulation coming out of Washington, DC. In fact, there have literally been thousands and thousands of pages of new regulations that have been promulgated and issued since this President took office. They affect every sector of our economy.

The one we hear about the most probably is the EPA, but we have the Department of Labor, we have other agencies of government that are constantly putting forward new regulations which make it more difficult, more complicated to get people in this country back to work.

Just as a point of fact, regarding a recent set of regulations proposed by the Department of Labor--by the way, there was no complaint about this that there was no consultation with the people who would be impacted by this--there was really no reason we can come up with for why these regulations were put forward. But the Department of Labor, in their infinite wisdom, decided they knew better about how to run a farming operation or a ranching operation in this country, better than the people who are involved in those endeavors, and they have basically put forward some regulations that would put all kinds of new restrictions on young people working in family farming or ranching operations--incredibly prescriptive regulations, I might add,

detailed regulations that are going to change the culture and the economic fabric of ranching and farming in this country more than anything we have seen before.

Anybody who has been around a farming operation or enterprise in my part of the country realizes they are inherently family operations. Young people are involved in those operations. When the Department of Labor comes out and says young people cannot operate certain types of equipment or young people cannot work with farm animals that are older than 6 months or cannot be at an elevation that is any more than 6 feet, it is a complete contradiction to the way that work gets done in rural parts of this country. But that is what we have. We have a massive amount of new regulation coming out of the Department of Labor that will forever change the way farming operations are carried out and the way work gets done on a family farm.

That is the kind of thing I am talking about. It is overreaching. It is excessive. It goes beyond the pale in terms of what we need by way of regulation in this country. We need smart regulation. There are public health and safety reasons why we need that. But this kind of overreaching and excessive regulation is making it that much more difficult for people to get jobs in this country.

The final thing I will mention in regard to an economic agenda that I think will create jobs is the issue of energy security. We need an energy policy in this country that promotes domestic production, that recognizes that we have enormous amounts of resources at home, that we should not have to continue to import a lot of our energy from outside the United States. The Keystone Pipeline, which was just recently vetoed by the administration--turned down--is an example of that. It was studied 3 years extensively by many agencies of the government. At the EPA there were serious environmental impact statements done. They all cleared, they all teed this up to be done, and just this last week the President said: No, it is not in the national interest.

I, and I think a lot of people on both sides in the Senate, would argue this is in the national interest. It is a lot better for us to get 700,000 barrels of oil a day from a friendly neighbor such as Canada as opposed to a country such as Venezuela. We can continue to buy oil from Hugo Chavez or we can get the same, the equivalent amount of oil from a friendly neighbor such as Canada, bring it into this country where it is refined and creates jobs, puts people back to work, puts capital to work in this country, and gets investment in the United States. Instead, we are going to see that energy source go in the other direction. It is going to Asia, it is going to go to China, if we are not able to get projects like this approved.

Interestingly enough, there was a pipeline just like this that was built a few years ago, and it goes right through the eastern part of my State and other States. This pipeline would go through the western part of my State of South Dakota as well as other States, but it would bring much of that energy resource into this country, create jobs, and help create economic growth in America as opposed to sending that energy overseas and making us even more dependent upon foreign sources of energy at home. It makes absolutely no sense.

If the President of the United States is serious in his rhetoric about focusing every morning on creating jobs, one would think the first thing he would want to do is support projects that create shovel- ready jobs, in this case 20,000 shovel-ready jobs and an investment of $7 billion, and bring energy into this country that will make us more energy independent. That is absolutely right in the wheelhouse of what we ought to be looking for in terms of getting this country's economy back on track. Yet last week the President turned thumbs down on this proposal.

I would say again, in closing, in my view, if we are going to get our country back on track, we have to get our fiscal house in order, which means we have to reduce spending, get our spending as a percentage of our entire economy back into a form of historical norm of revenues. As I said, for the past 40 years that has been 18 percent of our economy. Today we are spending 25 percent, and we are on a trajectory such that not too far from now we are spending our entire economy on the Federal Government, not to mention State and local control. We have to get policies in place that will promote long-term economic growth and reverse the decline we have seen, the massive amount of debt we racked up over the past 3 years, and the huge job losses we have seen at the same time. If we can do that, we will at least be doing the people's work in terms of trying to address the major problems I think face most Americans and the things they are most concerned about every single day.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I think there are a few things that many people across the country, and, hopefully, in the Congress, agree upon. One is that we need to focus like a laser on creating jobs. That is something I think there is universal agreement on here.

I also think there is universal agreement that we ought to become more energy independent as a nation. We need to look for ways in which our country can lessen that dangerous dependence we have on foreign sources of energy. We import a good amount of our oil from other places around the world--some of them not so friendly regimes. That is why it is such a mystery as to why the Keystone XL Pipeline project is running into such resistance from the administration.

It is ironic in many respects because we had the President of the United States, several months ago, saying:

We are going to have to import some oil; and when it comes

to the oil we import from other nations, obviously, we've got

to look at neighbors like Canada and Mexico that are stable,

steady, and reliable sources.

That is what the President said earlier this year, that if we are going to get energy, if we are going to import oil, we ought to import it from countries that are friendly to the United States. I argue there is no country more friendly to the United States than Canada, with whom we have a very robust trading relationship. We do about $640 billion of bilateral trade annually with our Canadian neighbors. So thinking that we might be able to get oil from Canada, as opposed to from Venezuela or somewhere in the Middle East, seems like a good option for this country--a good option that policymakers here ought to be very supportive of.

That, again, makes it an even greater mystery as to why the administration has insisted on blocking or even making a decision about whether we can develop a project called the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would take advantage of those oil resources available in Canada and bring them into the United States, transport them through a pipeline that is 1,700 miles long to refineries where that product can be refined, and people here could benefit from it or it could be sold perhaps somewhere else. Nevertheless, it would benefit the economy.

Both in the initial stages when the project is under construction, as well as later on, it will create lots of jobs. In my State of South Dakota--the pipeline would come through South Dakota as it makes its way down to the refineries, and we would benefit from hundreds of jobs that would be created and $\1/2\ billion in economic activity will be created alone in South Dakota. That is during the construction phase, not to mention all the State and local tax revenue that would benefit many of the local governments across my State and other States through which the pipeline would traverse.

It is increasingly a mystery--I don't know how else to describe it--a curiosity or something--to those of us who see the great benefit in getting our oil resources from a friendly country like Canada as to why this administration would be so opposed even to issuing a decision on permitting this pipeline project that would enable that oil to come from Canada through to refineries in this country.

The other issue on which there is universal agreement is that we ought to put policies in place that create jobs. There is no greater shovel-ready project than the Keystone XL Pipeline. It would have an immediate impact of 20,000 jobs that will be created immediately--a $7 billion initial investment and billions more over the years as this project continues to be utilized. Furthermore, I argue that it will create other opportunities for energy project development. Certainly, the Bakken oil find in North Dakota would stand to benefit from having a pipeline this accessible to it. It creates all kinds of spinoffs and other types of economic activity that would be good for jobs.

We will have something that lessens our dependence upon foreign sources of energy by about 700,000 barrels of oil a day, creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, and enhances the ability of State and local governments to collect revenues, which they desperately need for their own purposes and needs. Yet here we are looking at this project-- or at least a decision on it--being blocked by this administration for no apparent reason other than politics, I argue.

We are heading into a political year, and the President is running for reelection next year. I think it is clear that the delay on a decision on this project for 18 months was clearly designed to get past the Presidential election so the President would not have to make a decision that splits his political base. We have the labor groups that are for it and the environmental groups that are opposed to it. I guess it must be a political decision for this administration to delay this project. It doesn't make sense for America and American workers.

The President says he gets up every day and he thinks about what he can do to create jobs. Well, here are 20,000 immediate jobs that we can benefit from right away--not to mention the many jobs that would come if this project was built.

As we look at the legislation sent to us from the House of Representatives, it includes this Keystone XL Pipeline language that would allow a decision

to be made 60 days from its enactment. So we could accelerate at least the period in which this decision could be made.

Why is that important? Because this project is going to go on one way or the other. If it is not built in this country, it will be shipped somewhere else around the world--perhaps China or another country--and the American workers and the American economy will suffer, and the American need that we have for energy will not be met. We are not going to benefit or be advantaged by not having this project here or if it goes someplace else. That makes absolutely no sense for our economy, no sense for jobs and for many States that are in support of this project.

I hope as this debate gets underway on the proposal sent from the House of Representatives, the sticking point, the thing that hangs it up is not the Keystone XL Pipeline. People will probably have honest disagreements about various provisions in the legislation being sent to us from the House, but one thing that should not delay or in any way detour this from being considered in the Senate is resistance or objections to a final decision being made on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

I want to read a few things for you that have been said by some of the folks across this country who think this is a good idea. Many represent working people--the labor unions. The Teamsters said:

The Keystone Pipeline project will offer working men and

women a real chance to earn a good wage and support their

families in this difficult economic climate.

The AFL-CIO said:

For America's skilled craft construction professionals, any

discussion of the Keystone XL project begins and ends with

one word: Jobs.

Look at what has been said by the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers:

At a time when jobs are the top global priority, the

Keystone project will put thousands back to work and have

ripple benefits throughout the North American economy. Our

members look forward to being part of this historic project

and pledge to deliver the highest quality work to make it a

success.

That is what some of the labor leaders are saying. I want to read what some key Democrats in Congress have said about this. These are a few excerpts from Democratic Members of Congress:

America truly cannot afford to say ``no'' to this privately

funded, $20 billion jobs-creating infrastructure project,

which could bolster our economic, energy, and national

security. To that end, we respectfully urge you to ensure

that the Presidential permit is issued for Keystone XL.

Here is another quote:

Mr. President, America needs the Keystone XL pipeline. It

is in our national interest to have a permit issued for

Keystone XL as soon as possible.

The Department of State's final environmental impact statement reaffirmed the findings of the two previous environmental impact statements; namely, that the pipeline will have no significant impact on the environment.

So we have a project that has been OK'ed by the environmental agencies in this country, the people who look at the environmental impacts, who have said this project is ready to go. We have labor organizations that are waiting and are saying this is important to getting people back to work. We have Democrats in Congress who have said this is a project that we should be for. In fact, there was a vote on this language in a freestanding bill in the House recently. There were 47 Democrats who came out in support of the Keystone XL Pipeline legislation. So we have 47 Democrats on record.

Madam President, through the Chair, I would say to my colleague from North Dakota that my understanding is the legislation does permit that to happen, and that is why I believe the State of Nebraska, including the Governor and our colleagues here in the Senate from Nebraska, have now come out in support of this. Whereas previously there had been some concern about the Ogallala aquifer, my understanding is the legislation allows for that issue to be addressed. And I have a statement here from the Governor of Nebraska expressing his support for this legislation. So it does strike me that at least that should not be an issue that in any way deters consideration of this pipeline and that we shouldn't have to wait 18 months.

I am saying to my colleague from North Dakota--and I think he recognizes the value of this, as he is from North Dakota, and obviously his is a State that could be favorably impacted by the economic activity resulting from this pipeline--that if we don't do this, somebody else is going to benefit from it. This is not going to wait around. There are vast oil sands reserves up in Canada, and they are looking for a place where they can get this to a refinery and get it refined. If the United States doesn't move forward, some other country is going to benefit.

I appreciate the question and comments of the Senator from North Dakota. I couldn't agree more with the sentiments he expressed.

I do believe we have in front of us something for which there is a lot of bipartisan support--an extension of unemployment insurance benefits, with some reforms, a payroll tax cut extension, a fix for the physician reimbursements under Medicare, and a number of other things that have been put into this with an eye toward not only addressing what are some very serious concerns--many of these things expire at the end of the year--but also something that would really create jobs, that has a jobs component to it that would do something positive for our economy.

I hope that we can find a way to come together and that this does not become a deterrent to the legislation that is going to be before us in the not too distant future--the proposal that came to us from the House of Representatives. I certainly hope that doesn't unravel as a result of the Keystone XL Pipeline language being included because I recognize--as the Senator from North Dakota has expressed, and many of his colleagues on his side, along with many of my colleagues on our side--the value of what this could do for jobs, what this could do for our economy, and what this could do for America's energy needs. This will enable us to do business with a friendly partner to the north-- Canada--as opposed to continuing to import oil from other countries around the world with which we do not have that kind of a friendly and stable relationship.

I would hope the President would make a decision not to get in the way or assert pressure on Members on his side to vote against this simply because it includes this particular provision. It is good for America, it is good for the States that are impacted, and many of the local governments would benefit. It is certainly good for jobs and the economy, as has been voiced by the various labor unions across this country that represent working Americans. With 700,000 barrels of oil coming to America from Canada, we would be creating economic activity and jobs versus 700,000 barrels of oil going someplace else around the world and some

other country benefitting and our becoming even more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

So, Madam President, again, I don't know what to say. This is a no- brainer, and so I hope the Senate will find its way before we adjourn for the Christmas holiday to enact this legislation that has been put forward that would enable this project to be decided. It doesn't prescribe one way or the other what the President does; it just says the President either has to approve it or give a reason why it is not in the national interest.

I see the other Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Hoeven, is here as well. He has been a leader and involved in getting this legislation introduced. I thank both my colleagues for recognizing its importance, and I hope we can move legislation that will get this project decided one way or the other. In my view, an affirmative decision would be preferable and would allow us to move forward.

Madam President, with that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Richard L. Cotta on the occasion of his retirement from California Dairies, Inc.,

Madam President, today I recognize Christopher L. Cugini, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months.

Chris is a graduate of Glen Oak High School in Canton, OH. Currently, he is attending the University of Mount Union in Alliance, OH, where he is majoring in communication. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Chris for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Madam President, today I recognize Robert Cuyler Haskins, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months.

Cuyler is a graduate of L.D. Bell High School in Hurst, TX. Currently, he is attending Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX, where he is majoring in political science. He is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Cuyler for all of the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Madam President, today I recognize Kati M. Seymour, an intern in my Washington, DC, office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the State of South Dakota over the past several months.

Kati is a graduate of Jones County High School in Murdo, SD. This past August, Kati graduated from Sinte Gleska University in Mission, SD, where she majored in English and American history. She is a hard worker who has been dedicated to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Kati for all of the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.