Floor Statements

Madam President, I have been listening to Senator Crapo's remarks, and I think he has made some excellent points. The Senator is pointing out the long-term consequences of this incredible spending proposal that has been put before us on top of two incredible spending proposals that we have passed in the last month in this Congress. So I do hope the people of America start looking at the long- term effects of this spending increase at a time when our economy is seriously in jeopardy. I hope we can stop it at the budget and start showing the American people that we know everyone is concerned about their future. Everyone is concerned about their jobs, their retirement. We need to act accordingly in Congress; and that is, to spend taxpayer dollars wisely and not continue to borrow as we have been just in the last 2 months. It is going to be a spiral that I don't know how we overcome. So we have to start overcoming it right now, and that is with the budget proposal that has been put before us.

I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Mrs. Hutchison pertaining to the introduction of S. 614 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that is sponsored by every woman in the Senate. All 17 of us have come together to introduce legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, called the WASP. Senator Mikulski and I are taking the lead on this with the other 15 women Senators to finally honor over 1,000 of the bravest, most courageous women in U.S. military history.

This is a picture of those brave World War II pilots. They were the first women in history to fly America's military aircraft. Between 1942 and 1944, they were recruited to fly non-combat missions so every available male pilot could be deployed in combat.

The women pilots who graduated from Army Air Force flight training earned their silver WASP wings in Texas. The first class graduated at Ellington Field in Houston and the remaining classes from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX.

Throughout their service, these courageous women flew over 60 million miles in every type of aircraft and on every type of mission flown by Army Air Force male pilots except direct combat missions. Although they took the military oath and were promised military status when they entered training, they were never afforded Active-Duty military status, were never commissioned, and were not granted veteran status until 1977, over 30 years after they had served. All these women volunteered to serve their country in wartime. They paid their own way to Texas for training, and when victory seemed certain and the program was shut down, they paid their own way back home.

Over 25,000 women applied for the program, but only 1,830 qualified women pilots were accepted. Unlike the males, females were required to be qualified pilots before they could even apply for the Army Air Force's military flight training program. By the time the war ended, 38 women pilots had lost their lives while flying for their country. Their families were not allowed to have an American flag placed on their coffins.

I wrote about the WASP in my 2004 book, ``American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country.'' I wanted to raise public awareness about these military pioneers who have had a tremendous impact on the role of women in the military today. Their examples paved the way for the Armed Forces to lift the ban on women attending military flight training in the 1970s and opened the door for women to be fully integrated as pilots in the Armed Forces.

Today, women fly every type of aircraft, from combat fighter aircraft to the space shuttle. However, despite their cultural impact, the WASP have never received honors, nor have they been formally recognized by Congress for their wartime military service--until now. We, the women of the Senate, are introducing legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the courageous WASP of World War II.

The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest and most distinguished award this body can award to a civilian. These women are certainly worthy.

There are precedents for this action. In 2000 and 2006, this body awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen, respectively. Those heroes deserved the same type of distinction, and they, too, served in World War II and were finally appropriately honored by their Government. Now it is time for Congress to celebrate the courage of another group of remarkable Americans who served with courage and honor and whose example brought historic change to our Nation. Of the 1,102 WASP, approximately 300 are still alive today and are living in almost every State of our Nation. They have earned this honor, and the time to bestow the honor is now before any of them are away from us and not able to come to the ceremony which I hope we will have.

I am so pleased that every female Senator, all 17 of us, are cosponsors of this bill, and I hope the rest of our colleagues will also join and that we can pass this bill expeditiously.

I would like to take a moment, with this wonderful picture in the background, to read from the bill that we have just introduced today:

Congress finds that--

(1) the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII, known as the

``WASP'', were the first women in history to fly American

military aircraft;

(2) more than 60 years ago, they flew fighter, bomber,

transport, and training aircraft in defense of America's

freedom;

(3) they faced overwhelming cultural and gender bias

against women in nontraditional roles and overcame multiple

injustices and inequities in order to serve their country;

(4) through their actions, the WASP eventually were the

catalyst for revolutionary reform in the integration of women

pilots into the Armed Services;

(5) during the early months of World War II, there was a

severe shortage of combat pilots;

(6) Jacqueline Cochran, America's leading woman pilot of

the time, convinced General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air

Forces, that women, if given the same training as men, would

be equally capable of flying military aircraft and could then

take over some of the stateside military flying jobs, thereby

releasing hundreds of male pilots for combat duty;

(7) the severe loss of male combat pilots made the

necessity of utilizing women pilots to help in the war effort

clear to General Arnold, and a women's pilot training program

was soon approved;

(8) it was not until August, 1943, that the women aviators

would receive their official name;

(9) General Arnold ordered that all women pilots flying

military aircraft, including 28 civilian women ferry pilots,

would be named ``WASP'', Women Airforce Service Pilots;

(10) more than 25,000 American women applied for training,

but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath;

(11) exactly 1,074 of those trainees successfully completed

the 21 to 27 weeks of Army Air Force flight training,

graduated, and received their Army Air Force orders to report

to their assigned air base;

(12) on November 16, 1942, the first class of 29 women

pilots reported to the Houston, Texas Municipal Airport and

began the same military flight training as the male Army Air

Force cadets were taking;

(13) due to a lack of adequate facilities at the airport, 3

months later the training program was moved to Avenger Field

in Sweetwater, Texas;

(14) WASP were eventually stationed at 120 Army air bases

all across America;

(15) they flew more than 60,000,000 miles for their country

in every type of aircraft and on every type of assignment

flown by the male Army Air Force pilots, except combat;

(16) WASP assignments included test piloting, instructor

piloting, towing targets for air-to-air gunnery practice,

ground-to-air anti-aircraft practice, ferrying, transporting

personnel and cargo (including parts for the atomic bomb),

simulated strafing, smoke laying, night tracking, and flying

drones;

In October 1943, male pilots were refusing to fly the B-26 Martin Marauder, known as the Widowmaker, because of its fatality record. General Arnold ordered WASP director Jacqueline Cochran to collect 25 WASP to be trained to fly the B-26 to prove to the male pilots that it was safe to fly.

During the existence of the WASP, 38 women lost their lives while serving their country. Their bodies were sent home in poorly crafted pine boxes. Their burial was at the expense of their families or classmates. There were no gold stars allowed in their parent's windows, and because they were not considered military, no American flags were allowed on their coffins.

In 1944, General Arnold made a personal request to Congress to militarize the WASP, and it was denied.

On December 7, 1944, in a speech to the last graduating class of WASP, General Arnold said:

You and more than 900 of your sisters have shown you can

fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers. I salute you . . .

We of the Army Air Force are proud of you. We will never

forget our debt to you.

With victory in World War II almost certain, on December 2, 1944, the

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill that is sponsored by every woman in the Senate. All 17 of us have come together to introduce legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, called the WASP. Senator Mikulski and I are taking the lead on this with the other 15 women Senators to finally honor over 1,000 of the bravest, most courageous women in U.S. military history.

This is a picture of those brave World War II pilots. They were the first women in history to fly America's military aircraft. Between 1942 and 1944, they were recruited to fly non-combat missions so every available male pilot could be deployed in combat.

The women pilots who graduated from Army Air Force flight training earned their silver WASP wings in Texas. The first class graduated at Ellington Field in Houston and the remaining classes from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, TX.

Throughout their service, these courageous women flew over 60 million miles in every type of aircraft and on every type of mission flown by Army Air Force male pilots except direct combat missions. Although they took the military oath and were promised military status when they entered training, they were never afforded Active-Duty military status, were never commissioned, and were not granted veteran status until 1977, over 30 years after they had served. All these women volunteered to serve their country in wartime. They paid their own way to Texas for training, and when victory seemed certain and the program was shut down, they paid their own way back home.

Over 25,000 women applied for the program, but only 1,830 qualified women pilots were accepted. Unlike the males, females were required to be qualified pilots before they could even apply for the Army Air Force's military flight training program. By the time the war ended, 38 women pilots had lost their lives while flying for their country. Their families were not allowed to have an American flag placed on their coffins.

I wrote about the WASP in my 2004 book, ``American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country.'' I wanted to raise public awareness about these military pioneers who have had a tremendous impact on the role of women in the military today. Their examples paved the way for the Armed Forces to lift the ban on women attending military flight training in the 1970s and opened the door for women to be fully integrated as pilots in the Armed Forces.

Today, women fly every type of aircraft, from combat fighter aircraft to the space shuttle. However, despite their cultural impact, the WASP have never received honors, nor have they been formally recognized by Congress for their wartime military service--until now. We, the women of the Senate, are introducing legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the courageous WASP of World War II.

The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest and most distinguished award this body can award to a civilian. These women are certainly worthy.

There are precedents for this action. In 2000 and 2006, this body awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen, respectively. Those heroes deserved the same type of distinction, and they, too, served in World War II and were finally appropriately honored by their Government. Now it is time for Congress to celebrate the courage of another group of remarkable Americans who served with courage and honor and whose example brought historic change to our Nation. Of the 1,102 WASP, approximately 300 are still alive today and are living in almost every State of our Nation. They have earned this honor, and the time to bestow the honor is now before any of them are away from us and not able to come to the ceremony which I hope we will have.

I am so pleased that every female Senator, all 17 of us, are cosponsors of this bill, and I hope the rest of our colleagues will also join and that we can pass this bill expeditiously.

I would like to take a moment, with this wonderful picture in the background, to read from the bill that we have just introduced today:

Congress finds that--

(1) the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII, known as the

``WASP'', were the first women in history to fly American

military aircraft;

(2) more than 60 years ago, they flew fighter, bomber,

transport, and training aircraft in defense of America's

freedom;

(3) they faced overwhelming cultural and gender bias

against women in nontraditional roles and overcame multiple

injustices and inequities in order to serve their country;

(4) through their actions, the WASP eventually were the

catalyst for revolutionary reform in the integration of women

pilots into the Armed Services;

(5) during the early months of World War II, there was a

severe shortage of combat pilots;

(6) Jacqueline Cochran, America's leading woman pilot of

the time, convinced General Hap Arnold, Chief of the Army Air

Forces, that women, if given the same training as men, would

be equally capable of flying military aircraft and could then

take over some of the stateside military flying jobs, thereby

releasing hundreds of male pilots for combat duty;

(7) the severe loss of male combat pilots made the

necessity of utilizing women pilots to help in the war effort

clear to General Arnold, and a women's pilot training program

was soon approved;

(8) it was not until August, 1943, that the women aviators

would receive their official name;

(9) General Arnold ordered that all women pilots flying

military aircraft, including 28 civilian women ferry pilots,

would be named ``WASP'', Women Airforce Service Pilots;

(10) more than 25,000 American women applied for training,

but only 1,830 were accepted and took the oath;

(11) exactly 1,074 of those trainees successfully completed

the 21 to 27 weeks of Army Air Force flight training,

graduated, and received their Army Air Force orders to report

to their assigned air base;

(12) on November 16, 1942, the first class of 29 women

pilots reported to the Houston, Texas Municipal Airport and

began the same military flight training as the male Army Air

Force cadets were taking;

(13) due to a lack of adequate facilities at the airport, 3

months later the training program was moved to Avenger Field

in Sweetwater, Texas;

(14) WASP were eventually stationed at 120 Army air bases

all across America;

(15) they flew more than 60,000,000 miles for their country

in every type of aircraft and on every type of assignment

flown by the male Army Air Force pilots, except combat;

(16) WASP assignments included test piloting, instructor

piloting, towing targets for air-to-air gunnery practice,

ground-to-air anti-aircraft practice, ferrying, transporting

personnel and cargo (including parts for the atomic bomb),

simulated strafing, smoke laying, night tracking, and flying

drones;

In October 1943, male pilots were refusing to fly the B-26 Martin Marauder, known as the Widowmaker, because of its fatality record. General Arnold ordered WASP director Jacqueline Cochran to collect 25 WASP to be trained to fly the B-26 to prove to the male pilots that it was safe to fly.

During the existence of the WASP, 38 women lost their lives while serving their country. Their bodies were sent home in poorly crafted pine boxes. Their burial was at the expense of their families or classmates. There were no gold stars allowed in their parent's windows, and because they were not considered military, no American flags were allowed on their coffins.

In 1944, General Arnold made a personal request to Congress to militarize the WASP, and it was denied.

On December 7, 1944, in a speech to the last graduating class of WASP, General Arnold said:

You and more than 900 of your sisters have shown you can

fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers. I salute you . . .

We of the Army Air Force are proud of you. We will never

forget our debt to you.

With victory in World War II almost certain, on December 2, 1944, the

Mr. President, what is the pending order?

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to the Omnibus appropriations bill that is before us. I think this debate has been good. We have had amendments. I thank the majority leader for allowing amendments to be offered. I note that not one amendment has been agreed to, but nevertheless we have had the debate and I think the American people do deserve to know more about this bill and why there are so many objections to it.

I am speaking against it today because of its sheer size. It is a $408 billion bill. But when you account for the previous bills that have already passed appropriations this fiscal year for defense, military construction, veterans affairs, and homeland security, the bottom line is for fiscal year 2009 we are going to spend $1 trillion. Passage of this bill will mark the first time in U.S. history that our regular appropriations process, funding Government in the routine and regular order, will surpass $1 trillion.

Last week I offered an amendment. Senator McCain offered an amendment, Senator Coburn offered several amendments, Senator DeMint, Senator Vitter, Senator Kyl--so many amendments have been offered but they were basically different ways to bring down the cost of this bill to some kind of responsible, agreed-upon area so we can say we are doing the people's bidding by taking care of taxpayer dollars. That is what we tried to do.

First, Senator McCain offered an amendment to say let's do a continuing resolution that funds Government at 2008 levels until October 1, the end of the fiscal year. Next, an amendment was offered by Senator Ensign that basically said 2008 spending levels, but with the new bill, with the new authorizations. It will have all of the congressional imprint but it will be 2008 levels. That failed.

My amendment was 2008 levels with the rate of inflation, so instead of an 8-percent increase in spending in a 1-year period, double the rate of inflation, it would have been a 3.8 percent increase from 2008, which I thought was quite reasonable. Furthermore, I said let's decide that we will only take it from the accounts in the bill before us that duplicate what we passed in the stimulus bill weeks ago. In that way, we would say to the American people we are going to fund the Government at 2008 levels plus the rate of inflation, and the way we are going to cut it back is to let the Appropriations Committee decide which of the duplicated accounts that were passed in the stimulus bill 2 weeks ago would be taken

out--either the stimulus bill or the bill before us. That was my amendment and it too failed.

We have tried everything we know how to do in a reasonable and responsible way to say to the American people: Everyone is hurting right now and we should not be spending in the regular order on regular Government business, 8 percent above last year's rate. My amendment would have been a 1-percent cut from this bill and the Appropriations Committee could have chosen where that went. I also suggested that we take it out of the duplicate measures that we passed within 1 month of each other. The American people expect more responsible actions from Congress than spending without restraint.

I hear from my constituents all the time. A lot of common sense is coming out of my constituents. I wish we could export the good old Texas common sense to the Congress because what we are saying is why don't we look at the big picture here? Instead of a $1 trillion stimulus spending package on top of $1 trillion to fund Government for the next 9 months, and furthermore we have not even dealt with the financial institutions yet, why don't we step back and look at the problem we have, which is that our financial institutions are not working, our small businesses are not getting credit so they are not able to borrow to stay in business, and the housing market is in the tank? We have not addressed those issues yet and here we are, spending as if there is no restraint, adding to the debt because we do not have the money in the bank. I cannot think of anything more irresponsible than what we are doing in these last couple of months in the Congress.

Actually, the stimulus packages from last year were also erroneous. But couldn't we have learned from the mistakes? Couldn't we have learned from what did not work in the first stimulus package? But, no, we do not seem to have learned, even though it was less than a year ago. I think the American people are showing the concern they have because the stock market is low, and is not getting stabilized.

Now we have coming on the heels of this omnibus bill, which we are not accounting for, a $3.6 trillion budget proposed by the President with a deficit for 2010 projected at $1.75 trillion. The cumulative debt of America today is $11 trillion. The proposed budget plan recently suggested a doubling of this debt over the long term.

Mr. President, 25 percent of the national debt that we are accumulating is owned by foreigners. The Chinese Government owns almost $700 billion of our debt. This is the same Chinese Government that last weekend took a rather hostile action toward one of our naval vessels in the South China Sea. I think we should be looking at the national security implications of having so much of our country's debt in the hands of any foreign country or any foreign national.

In addition to the concerns about whether the borrowers are going to buy our debt--what if they say: $10 trillion, $11 trillion, you know, maybe we will buy your debt, but the risk is too great and we will have to jack up the interest rate? What is that going to do to an economy that is teetering so badly?

I do not think we can turn a blind eye to the long-term consequences of this debt burden. It is not only irresponsible but it borders on being reckless. When are we going to stop it? If not today, then when? We have a chance today to say to the American people we will go back to the drawing boards and we will put reasonable limits on the amount of debt we are accumulating. We will put limits on the deficits that are being created. I think we should go back to 2008 levels because we passed a $1 trillion spending plan. Why not go back to 2008 levels and take out the duplication from the stimulus bill and what is in the bill before us today? That would be a responsible action that might start giving confidence to the American people that the Congress and the President will be able to work together in a bipartisan way to act responsibly, with the big picture in mind. I urge the President of the United States not to go forward with the budget that he has put forward, not to go forward with an energy plan that is going to start increasing taxes on every electric bill that every consumer in this country will have, but instead to step back and say let's fix the financial industries. Let's fix the financial institutions. The idea has been propounded is that the FDIC is going to start putting an assessment on every bank deposit to pay for these other schemes that have no impact whatsoever.

There are a lot of things coming out of here that do not make sense. I think it is time for us to begin to show the American people we are going to step back. We are going to fix the financial markets so people can borrow to make payroll and keep people working, so people can stay in their homes and not get foreclosed, and to shore up the housing industry and help them start building and selling homes again.

If we can start there, then we will know what kind of stimulus we need, or what kind of further spending would be in the best interest of this country to get our economy going again. But until then, we should not pass the bill before us today. We should go back to the drawing board and begin responsible, bipartisan leadership from Congress and the President on behalf of the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have a motion at the desk which I would like to call up for consideration.

Mr. President, the amendment that was just defeated was to hold us to the 2008 spending levels after the $1 trillion of stimulus spending that has already been passed and signed by the President. My amendment would be for the nonsecurity spending for 2008, plus the rate of inflation at 3.8 percent.

Basically, what I am doing is asking that we commit the bill to the Appropriations Committee to amend and find the places in the omnibus bill that is before us or the stimulus bill from 2 weeks ago where we would take out the amount of spending that is duplicative or nonessential in the amount of approximately $12 billion. This is a very modest cut, but it would begin to put us on the road toward some fiscal responsibility. We have just passed a $1 trillion stimulus package. It is in all of the areas that we could spend money on, and many of those are duplicated in what we are taking up on the floor right now.

So if you take the nonsecurity spending of 2008 and you add the regular inflation at 3.8, the Congressional Budget Office says that it would be about $12 billion in cuts that the Appropriations Committee would be able to find. So we are not saying here to slash across the board. We are certainly holding harmless defense and veterans. But we are saying that the Appropriations Committee should look at what we have passed and see where there is duplication and cut $12 billion out of this spending bill, and then we will be setting the precedent that we are going back to fiscal responsibility, which is setting the budget and having a reasonable increase--the rate of inflation--which has been the normal procedure here until this year.

When you look at the bill that is before us, it would cost about $408 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. When you account for the previous continuing resolution, which provided funding for defense, military construction, veterans affairs, and homeland security, the top line fiscal year 2009 spending level would exceed $1 trillion. This does not include last year's supplemental nor the stimulus which we have just passed, which, when you combine those bills, would be another total of $1.4 trillion. That is a 49-percent increase over a 1-year period. If we want to exclude the emergency or one-time actions, such as supplementals or the stimulus, then you would have an increase over last year's spending by $83 billion, which would be an 8.8-percent increase over last year's spending. That is more than twice the rate of inflation, at 3.8 percent.

Let's take some examples. I will look at my committee, Commerce Committee, and the areas of my jurisdiction. We authorize broadband grants. We share this jurisdiction with the Agriculture Committee. We provided a total of $7.2 billion for broadband grants and loans in the stimulus package, $4.7 billion for the NTIA, and $2.5 billion for rural utility service. Yet in this bill we are adding another $400

million. That totals, for the fiscal year 2009 spending, a 4,500- percent increase. Why do we need another $400 million when we haven't even begun to spend the $7.2 billion from the stimulus yet?

How about the National Institute of Standards and Technology? This is a program I support. It is a valid program, just as the previous one. But here we are increasing the NIST funding by $31 million over last year's funding level and we just gave NIST $220 million not 2 weeks ago. So the Institute of Standards and Technology would be increased not by $31 million, but $251 million over a 1-year period.

These are only some of the items in my own committee's jurisdiction. There are 122 accounts in this bill that received stimulus funding, and I support most of what is in this bill because the Appropriations Committee took up these spending bills last year. We had the ability to amend, in most cases, and we know what is in those bills. However, they were increased on the House side since we took them up last year, and now we have, between now and October 1 of this year, this spending bill for all of the accounts except the security accounts.

Why don't we show the American people that we are going to exercise fiscal restraint; that we know we have just passed $1 trillion in stimulus spending--some of which arguably is stimulus and some of which arguably is not, but we passed that stimulus bill--and it is going to cost our taxpayers $1 trillion. We hope it will increase the revenue, because we hope it will increase jobs and it will keep people in their jobs. That is what we want it to do. But now we are in the regular appropriations cycle, from today until October 1, and we are talking about $408 billion more in spending, some of which has already been provided for in the stimulus package we passed.

The American people, some of whom have lost their jobs, some of whom have received notice that their mortgages are going to be foreclosed and their homes are going to be taken, are saying: What are they doing up there? How can they spend money like that without any regard to what is fiscally responsible? And how we are going to pay it off? Because this is more debt, and we are going to increase, and increase again, and everyone who owns something or who has a mortgage understands this.

We don't have to do this. We can say today, in a bipartisan way, that we are going to turn a new page; we are going to turn a new page in this Congress and the Appropriations Committee is going to do its work. The Appropriations Committee is going to, in a bipartisan way, start looking at this $408 billion bill and compare it to the 122 accounts in this bill that got stimulus 2 weeks ago and we are going to find $12 billion in cuts--$12 billion out of $408 billion. It could come out of the stimulus. If that were the preferred way to go, we could go back into the stimulus in the outyears. It doesn't have to be in the next 2 years, it can be in the outyears of the stimulus. The Appropriations Committee would be authorized to go into either bill and shrink $12 billion.

It seems almost unthinkable that we would not be able to cut $12 billion out of $1.408 trillion of taxpayer money that is coming out of Washington and which is debt because we don't have the money to pay for it.

I urge my colleagues to pass this amendment. Let us show the American people that we do understand we should have fiscal responsibility and restraint, as every household in this country is experiencing right now; and that from now forward our appropriations bills are going to be in the regular order; that we are going to have a budget, and we are going to live within that budget, and we are not going to add 5 percent or 8 percent and then bring it over here and pass it with no amendments. That is business as usual. That is not change, it is not bipartisanship, and it is not acceptable.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I rise to speak against the bill coming from the House shortly. We have had a chance to look at this bill for the last few hours. There is much in it that is different from what passed the Senate. Some of it is different from what passed the House as well.

I wish to address a few points that have been made. It is somewhat misleading to talk about the Republican input in the way it is being described. First, the bill was written without any Republican input. It was written in the House of Representatives by Democrats. There were no amendments allowed. The committees were not allowed to exercise their jurisdiction on the bill there. It came to the Senate. I was on the Appropriations Committee which passed the spending part of the bill. Amendments were discouraged. The meeting lasted a couple hours. The same thing happened on the Finance Committee, which is the tax part of the bill. There were no amendments that were hammered out. There was not an amendment process where we gave and took. To say Republicans had a chance to have input is disingenuous.

I respect the President of the United States for coming and talking to Republicans. He talked to the Republican Senators and House Members. That is good. There is nothing bad about that because he is a smart and civilized man whom we all respect. We want the President to work with Congress as we go forward. But talking should include taking ideas and shaping them into something on which we could all say we had a part. If I could support half this bill, I would be inclined to look at it in a way that maybe I would be able to support. But let's look at what this bill is.

It has a total cost of $787 billion. The spending portion is $580 billion. With interest, the cost of the bill is going to be about a trillion dollars. I take the cost of a trillion dollars, and borrowing that money from the future, very seriously. We ought to spend some time before we spend $1 trillion in a bill that is going to be off the budget and is not in any projected budget we have seen. It is going to add almost $1 trillion to the deficit. Is it going to succeed? I hope it does. But let's talk about what is in the bill.

Eleven percent of the spending in this bill will occur this year. The purpose of a stimulus bill is to stimulate the economy quickly. We are talking about almost $1 trillion and 11 percent is spent this year. A stimulus bill should inject money into the economy that will cause jobs to be either produced or kept, that will produce spending so there will be something for people to make and retailers to sell. After we have that stimulus, which we hope would be in the private sector and therefore permanent, then we are going to have to deal with the deficit in years 3 through 10, so we don't have an upside down situation where we have so much debt that either our foreign investors will not buy our debt or, if they do, the risk is so high that they increase the interest rate, which then becomes an inflationary problem. This is not a stimulus package when 11 percent is spent in the first year.

Eighteen percent of this conference report is dedicated to tax relief. I believe tax relief has been proven again and again to spur the economy. President Kennedy gave tax relief, and it spurred the economy and increased revenue. President Reagan, tax relief, and it increased revenue. President Bush, in 2001 and 2003, when we were having a rough time in the economy, the tax cuts gave us the largest increase in revenue in the history of America.

People scoff at tax relief as part of a stimulus package. How can they scoff, when it has been proven again and again to work? In this conference report, 18 percent is tax relief. It is not even tax relief that will spur the economy. The tax relief is the Making Work Pay Credit which is going to be approximately $7.65 per week in tax relief for a worker. That is going to be limited to $400 a worker.

Speaking of what has been tested, last year, when we became concerned that the economy was beginning to lag, we passed a $600 tax credit. Every economist I have read says it did nothing. It did not spur the economy. It did not help our financial situation at all. That was $600 per person last year. This is going to be $400 per person, and it is going to be strung out in such small amounts in a person's paycheck, they are not going to go out and spend money which is what you want in a stimulus package. The stimulus provides $1.10 a day in tax relief to workers, while saddling every American family with $9,400 in added debt.

The home buyer credit the Senate added, which tries to correct the fundamental problem that started this whole economic downturn-- housing--is all but eliminated from the conference committee report. We have an $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers. Now, I support this because it will be some credit for a first-time home buyer to go out and buy a home. But the Senate provision was $15,000 for any home buyer. So we had the capability to give every home buyer that $15,000 tax credit so we would move inventory and allow homebuilders to start building again, which would create jobs. That was changed in the conference report.

The conference drastically reduced the auto purchase deduction which would have spurred our struggling auto industry and provided relief to dealers

all across the country. I have a great sympathy for auto dealers. When we were taking up the automobile manufacturing bailout, I was very concerned about not only the manufacturers but also the dealers because the dealers could not help what was happening in the auto manufacturing industry. They had nothing to do with the manufacturing, but the dealers and the families who are supported by dealers were being hit again and again and again because their buyers could not get credit and they could not buy cars.

So we should have dealt in this bill with housing and credit. Those are the two things that caused this financial downturn, and so I hoped the first things we would deal with in this package would be housing and credit, and I hope eventually we will.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 10 minutes.

Mr. President, 17 percent of the discretionary spending in this package is for infrastructure items. Now, infrastructure is what we should be spending money on because infrastructure is jobs. Infrastructure is American jobs. In this bill, we do not have enough in infrastructure spending.

Mr. President, we should keep in mind that the money in this bill isn't temporary. There are concerns that it will be permanent. It is likely that those funds will be extended well beyond the short window that we claim to be acting in. And in that case, according to The Heritage Foundation, the total cost of the bill comes to $3.27 trillion over 10 years.

This is not the bill we should be passing right now. This bill did not even have the signature of one Republican on the conference committee. We do not expect to have dominated the conference committee or the Senate or the House production of a bill, but to have no Republican support cannot under any circumstances be declared bipartisan. Mr. President, 3 Republicans out of the Republican contingent is just not bipartisan.

Let me add, in a couple of minutes, what we are for. I am for stimulus. We all know we need stimulus.

I would like tax cuts that would spur spending, not tax cuts that would be dribbled out in such small amounts that no one would feel they could go out and buy something. Tax cuts that would spur spending would be in the form of a card, such as the converter box cards that were sent in the mail, that would be for specific purposes--maybe it would be home improvements, maybe it would be weatherization. Specific purposes would require spending. It would be a card that people would know they could spend, and it would make a difference in jump-starting the economy.

Tax cuts that would spur hiring. It was sort of said on the other side that we do not need corporate rate deductions because no one is making a profit. Well, let's do something that would allow corporations to make a profit because that is when they hire people, when they are making a profit.

How about a tax credit for hiring people? That might make a difference. How about spending on infrastructure? How about more than 17 percent of $1 trillion going for infrastructure? That would be jobs today for people building bridges, building highways, building things that would clearly be job creation.

I had an amendment which never made it to the floor that said that military construction should be moved up from the Department of Defense 5-year plan to 3 years. Military construction is money we know we are going to spend. The Department of Defense has a 5-year plan. They know exactly what their priorities are. We normally take it 1 year at a time. Why not take the 5-year plan and bring it up and do it in 2 or 3 years? Because we know it would be American jobs. We know it is money we are going to spend anyway. It would be stimulative, and it would be the right kind of spending. Instead, the conference cut the military spending in this bill from what passed in the Senate. The conference cut our military spending for hospitals and for Veterans' Administration hospitals to increase the quality and access to health care for our veterans. What kind of priority is that? And they are increasing spending to save a mouse in San Francisco that might be endangered.

This is not a package we can be proud to give to the American people and say: It is worth tightening our belts to do this because it will make a difference. But we can be for something. We do not say we should have everything we propose. There are other good ideas on the other side. We acknowledge that. But this is not the right bill for the American people, and I urge my colleagues to please consider their positions and let us do this right: tax cuts to spur spending, tax cuts to spur the opportunity for corporations and businesses to hire people, spending on infrastructure, more in military construction. That would be a bill we could support.

Mr. President, I thank you and yield the floor.

Madam President, is there time allocated to each side?

Madam President, I rise with hope that my colleagues will not waive the Budget Act point of order on this bill and to speak against passage of the legislation.

Sometimes one has to talk about process when dealing with something as important and as large as the bill before us. A fair process would have allowed input from both Republicans and Democrats, and would have written the bill in committee rather than trying to write the bill on the Senate floor. I am still concerned about a $1 trillion expenditure. When we have an 800-page bill, we are spending about $1 billion per page. Yet I don't believe we have a consensus about the right way to be spending $1 trillion; $1 billion per page in this bill.

The important thing we must do for the future is to look at all of the expenditures we are making. It is important for us to look at the trillion dollars we spent on stimulation last year which did nothing to help the economy. Now we have another trillion dollars coming down the pike to shore up financial institutions. We have $1 trillion in spending before us. We already have a $10.6 trillion debt. It is time to step back and say: a trillion dollars here and a trillion dollars there, we are talking about real money. The great Everett Dirksen talked about the ``real money'' of a billion dollars, and now we are at a trillion.

It is time to pause and say to the American people: We are going to look at what needs to be done before we spend another dollar, much less $1 trillion.

I believe 100 of us would say we need a stimulus package. It is how we spend the money that is in disagreement. Right now the bill before us is one-third tax cuts and two-thirds spending. Even the tax cuts are not going to help create jobs or keep people in their homes, which should be our major focus. The tax cuts are similar to the ones we did last year, which every economist agrees did not work because we didn't see a stimulus. We didn't see an increase in buying. Instead, the economy continued to go steadily downhill. The payroll tax that is dribbled out at $20 or $30 per paycheck is not going to make people feel confident to spend money which, in turn, creates the jobs.

I believe we should have tax cuts that are targeted to making people spend their money. We have had the converter box coupons that will go to offset the cost of the digital transition. You get a coupon in the mail. You take it into a dealer that is selling the boxes. It offsets the cost immediately. How about a tax cut that is in the form of a coupon that can only be redeemed if you spend money in certain areas, such as home improvement, weatherization, where you buy things that create a market so we won't see retailers or manufacturers having to lay people off, as we have seen in the last few weeks? Why not a coupon for expenditures that will ensure that the money is spent for job- creating activities? Why not a tax cut to employers for hiring people? That would be direct. That would say: If you will hire people, we will give you a tax credit. Employers would understand that. That is an incentive. Five hundred dollars in payroll taxes dribbled out will not give that confidence. We have the history of last year to show it.

Let's talk about the spending. I think we can spend wisely to create jobs. The Republicans are not against spending. We just want to separate spending that is going to create jobs versus spending that people might like that might be good programs but are not going to create jobs. That is the division we have now.

The spending in this new amendment is better than the original bill. They said they cut about $100 billion, but when you add in the amendments already in the bill, it is about $50 billion. And some of what they cut out was the right amount they should have cut out. It was the right types of projects to cut out. I will give them that. I think if we had had a more collaborative process from the beginning, we could cut out about $200 billion that would not be creating jobs, and we could put it into a stimulus that would.

The kind of stimulus we should be targeting is money that we are going to have to spend anyway, say, over the next 5 years. Let me take, for example, military construction. In military construction, the Department of Defense

has a 5-year plan. We know what the 5-year plan is. In normal times, we would take 1 year at a time. The Department of Defense will put its highest priorities in the first year and then the second year will be next and then the third and fourth and fifth. But if we had a stimulative package, we would take that 5-year plan, and we would put it into 3 years so the spending would be upfront, and I have an amendment that will do that.

It would create jobs in America, and it would be spending we know we are going to do anyway. That spending would create jobs from money we are going to spend anyway. So in the last 2 years, we can start going back to normal, if the economy has picked up and people are spending and we have a lower unemployment rate. We would be able to say: Well, we have already done our military construction spending. We do not need to spend that money in those last 2 years and we can start trying to come toward a balanced budget again.

We have to start whittling down that $10.6 trillion debt. But, instead, we are going in the opposite direction, adding to that $10.6 trillion debt already on the books.

So I think there are some things we could agree to do. But this bill has not gone through the processes that would allow that input. My amendment has been pending since last week. It has been filed. But no action has been taken on it because we are not allowed to have the action, and we did not have the action in committee that would have allowed amendments.

I believe we could have made some headway on military construction. The same for highways. I agree with the highway spending in the bill. I think we should have more in that direction because it is money we are going to have to spend eventually; move it up to the front. They are American jobs. That meets the test.

I am very concerned that some of the spending in this bill--in the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars--is the kind of spending that is going to increase. It is going to increase payments the people are then going to come to expect, and we are not going to be able to come back to normalization, even when we have normalization, and we are going to keep adding to this debt.

I hope my colleagues will pause and realize that for $1 trillion, we ought to do better for the future generations of our country because if our foreign investors in U.S. start beginning to think it is a risk to invest in the United States because we have no means to pay them back, two things can happen, and both of them are bad. One is they stop buying the debt. Then what are we going to do? The second is, they buy the debt but at what rate? They start raising the interest rates because the risk is greater. That will increase the economic woes we are now experiencing. Neither of those scenarios is a good one.

I hope our colleagues will see we are on a road that in the long term is not the right road for our country. I respect that everyone is trying to do what is right.

I know my colleagues on the Democratic side are trying to do what they think is right. I know the President is. I know the Republicans are too. We are in disagreement because we have not had the ability to fully come together in a way that will allow give and take, not just to have a bill that is laid before us where we are trying to amend here, amend there, without any cohesion in what we want to be the final result that would be a collaborative process. But what we have done is not, and at $1 trillion I think we need to do it right.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee has spoken, and we are working very hard on an amendment that would be an infrastructure amendment. It would be money that we want to spend now, but it will be spent in the future. I think if we have infrastructure requirements that we know we are going to need in the future and we can push them up for 2 years, that is a policy all of us can agree to. That is exactly what the distinguished chairman and I are working on.

Senator Rockefeller and I know that modernization of our air traffic control system is certainly something we would like to be ahead of Mongolia in doing. But in addition to that, we want to make sure we have the efficiencies in the system. Not only will it create jobs in the next 2 years, but it will streamline the system, it will make it more efficient. Prices can come down for consumers and that will also help jump start our economy.

I thank the chairman and I wish to talk now about the McCain amendment.

I am so pleased Senator McCain has come up with an alternative. It will be a substitute for the bill before us. It strikes the balance. It is tax relief and increased Government investment in our economy so we will be able to jump start our economy in a fiscally responsible way.

The bill before us is not the right approach. I could not possibly support the underlying bill. I do hope we can come together, though. Having the debate and hearing what people are saying on the outside, I think has made people realize, when we are talking about $1 trillion, we are not talking about a vacuum. We are talking about $1 trillion on this bill, we are talking about another $1 trillion of deficit this year, not counting the bill we are discussing today. The U.S. debt is $10.6 trillion already.

We are approaching a tipping point whereby creditors are going to be increasingly unwilling to lend to our Government because they are going to be concerned about our ability to pay them back. Much of our debt, 25 percent of our U.S. national debt, is held by foreigners. The Chinese Government, in particular, owns over $500 billion.

We must consider having this much of our debt in foreign hands and whether borrowers will continue to buy our debt. What happens to our economy if they do not? What happens if they do? What would the interest rate be if all of a sudden they decide it is going to be more risky? Interest rates go up. What would inflation do to the economy we are in right now?

If we are going to do this, we must spend every dollar so carefully. We must make sure every dollar we spend is stimulative. In fact, the bill before us, the underlying bill, one-third of it that is supposed to be stimulative is not going to be spent in the next 2 years. That means we would be spending money down the road to solve a problem that may not even exist down the road, and we will be increasing the size of debt without the stimulative effect.

I refer to Alice Rivlin, who was the Budget Director in President Clinton's White House. She recommended we split the plan. She said implement the immediate stimulus now. As she acknowledged, we talk about the plans which may or may not have value at a later time. It doesn't have to happen right now. The McCain alternative has a better way to stimulate the economy, put money into the economy immediately, and it is a balanced approach. The McCain proposal will lower the 10- percent bracket to 5 percent for 1 year; lower the 15-percent bracket to 10 percent for 1 year; eliminate the payroll tax for all employees for 1 year. It would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent for 1 year. Recognizing that we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the entire industrialized world, we want to encourage our corporations to hire people in America today.

We need to look at tax cuts and the history we have had with tax cuts. Every time we have had big tax cuts in a depressed situation, they have stimulated the economy. They have worked. President Kennedy, President Reagan, and President Bush.

Assisting Americans in need--the McCain alternative extends unemployment insurance benefits, extension of food stamps, extension of unemployment insurance benefits that are tax free until 12-31-2009; training services for dislocated workers. Certainly, we all will agree that is important.

The McCain alternative goes to the heart of the problem, which is housing. The underlying bill doesn't address what caused this in the first place and that is the problem in the housing market. The McCain alternative provides a loan modification program, tax incentives for home purchases of up to $15,000, making the GSA-conforming loan limits extended at the higher levels to get more help for people who are struggling to make loans. This is a very important component.

Last but not least, the spending part goes to infrastructure. It does not have all the programs in it that the underlying bill does, that we will be able to debate in the future. They may be good programs, but they are not going to create jobs.

The McCain spending portion is on infrastructure and defense. I am the ranking member on the military construction subcommittee of Appropriations. We have a 5-year plan for the Department of Defense. They know what they are going to spend and what they are going to need. We have just had a ramp-up of troop strength to 90,000 more in our armed services, the Army and the Marines. We have to accommodate them. We have to build the housing, we have to build the training facilities. All those things are in a 5-year plan that normally we would take 1 year at a time to build out.

Why not take the 5-year plan and move it up to 2 years or 3 years? I have an amendment that will do that. But the McCain alternative puts $9 billion into those exact types of military construction projects. That is a very important component because it will be jobs in America, it will be jobs that will benefit Americans, and of course it will be for the training and care of our military who are out there on the frontlines, protecting our freedom. What better kind of infrastructure building would we want?

The McCain substitute has transportation infrastructure. We all know there are shovel-ready transportation projects ready to go all over our country--bridges, roads, public transit--something I certainly support, airport infrastructure improvements. Senator Rockefeller and I are going to try to increase that in amendments later on. These are the components of the McCain substitute I hope our colleagues will consider.

The tax cuts have a history--if they are big enough and they can be felt--of stimulating our economy through the worst of times. All through history, they have done this. I hope we can support the McCain substitute. Or I will look down the road, and I will say, if the McCain substitute is not accepted by the majority of our colleagues, let's let that be the benchmark from which we will go. I do not think the majority of America believes that what is in the underlying bill is good for the short term nor is it good for the long term. I cannot even imagine putting so much debt into our system without the underlying stimulative effect that would bring in revenue to pay for that debt and thereby, perhaps, cause a much worse problem in our financial markets than we see today.

I hope, during this debate we have had this week, we now will be able to see what the good parts of all the different plans are. I hope we can adopt the McCain substitute. If we do not, I hope it will be one of the components of a bill that will be written, that will have the support of many Republicans and many Democrats. It will be the best thing that could happen in our country if this bill passed on a true bipartisan basis. It does not give the confidence to our country, to have a plan that is passed just by the Democratic side of the aisle.

Yes, Democrats won the election. No one argues with that. But 46 percent of the people of our country did vote for Republicans, so if we have a balance here and America sees we are working together, I think that would be a good thing for the overall spirit in our country that is searching for bipartisanship. If we can come to a bill that would have tax cuts for every individual and businesses to be able to hire people, if we can fix the housing market by encouraging people to buy, if we can give spending plans for our infrastructure to the States so they would be able to hire people for bridges and roads and mass transit, if we can put our money into the Department of Defense, I know we could spend $75 billion in 3 years instead of 5 years, and I know the jobs would be in America and they would be for Americans.

I think we have an opportunity. I hope we can come to some agreement that we can all be proud would be the best for our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on the nomination of Eric Holder for the position of Attorney General of the United States. We place enormous trust in the nominee for this position to not only enforce the laws of our land but also to advise the President on legal and constitutional matters. One of the important freedoms that we have in the Constitution is the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed to us in the second amendment of the Constitution. Many jurisdictions around our country do not have the ability to own a gun, and there are restrictions in jurisdictions all over our country for the use of a gun. Nowhere is it more strict than in Washington, DC.

In 1976, in Washington, DC, the City Council passed the toughest gun control laws in the Nation, banning handguns and requiring rifles and shotguns to be registered, stored unloaded, and either locked or disassembled. These were the most restrictive laws in our Nation regarding gun ownership. I thought they were not only incomprehensible but certainly unconstitutional.

I introduced a bill with a number of my colleagues to repeal these prohibitive measures.

This prohibition, however, was challenged in court before my bill could get through Congress, and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the District's ban was unconstitutional.

When the District appealed to the Supreme Court, I filed an amicus brief with our colleague Jon Tester that was supported by 53 Senators and 250 Members of the House of Representatives. This was on the interpretation of the second amendment as preserving an individual right to keep and bear firearms. Our brief contained the most congressional signatures on any amicus brief ever in the history of our country.

In another amicus brief in this same district court opinion that was appealed to the Supreme Court, the nominee before us, Mr. Holder, along with 12 other former Justice Department officials, argued in favor of the gun ban in Washington, DC. His brief stated:

The second amendment does not protect firearms possession

or use that is unrelated to participation in a well-regulated

militia.

Fortunately, on June 2, 2008, the Supreme Court affirmed the intent of the Founders: that the right to bear arms is an individual right protected by the Constitution. This was a major ruling on the second amendment because local governments that seek gun control measures have made the argument that Mr. Holder made in his brief. That is the basis for gun control ordinances and laws around our country.

The ruling in the DC case was a victory for the rights of all Americans to protect themselves and their families. The Supreme Court sent a clear message that the law of the land, the individual right to keep and bear arms, cannot be unreasonably infringed.

The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they put the right to keep and bear arms in the Constitution. They knew from their experience in the Revolutionary War that a free people must have the right to possess and bear arms. In 1775, the American Revolution started because ordinary farmers decided to fight back against foreign tyranny. Many in George Washington's regiments used their own guns.

I was alarmed to learn that while serving as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration, Mr. Holder said in an appearance on ABC's ``This Week'' that the second amendment ``talks about bearing guns in a well-regulated militia. And I don't think anywhere it talks about an individual.''

This interpretation, while interesting in academic circles, is not mainstream, nor is it reflective of public opinion. Indeed, in our brief that we filed, we cited every congressional action that has happened throughout the history of our country that affirmed that Congress believes the second amendment is an individual right.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. President, the Framers did not intend for this right to be collective. If that was their purpose, it would have been satisfied with article I, section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power ``to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel Invasions.''

The Framers went further than that. They wanted to ensure that gun ownership was recognized by posterity as an individual right. They put it in the Bill of Rights for that purpose. It is a compilation of individual rights of free speech, freedom of religion, a fair trial, and the right to keep and bear arms.

The Framers looked at the governments of Europe. James Madison said:

The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people

with arms. If they did, the people would surely shake off the

yoke of tyranny, as America did.

Later on, President Madison explained:

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed,

which Americans possess over the people of almost every other

nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people

with arms.

The right to bear arms should not be an issue in the United States. The Constitution is clear, and the Supreme Court has spoken. Our Second Amendment right ensures that our people have the ability to secure all of our rights and defend them, if necessary, from government suppression. It is this right that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people must never extinguish.

I believe that Eric Holder, from everything I have read, is an intelligent, experienced, and thoughtful candidate to be the U.S. Attorney General. But after examination of Mr. Holder's public statements and positions on gun rights, I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for the office of Attorney General, and I, therefore, will vote no.

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

Mr. President, I call up amendment 93 and ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the reading of the amendment.

I yield for 30 seconds to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, the CBO scores this as an actual savings. There will be no additional cost to the program and it has no impact over any other State's funding.

I yield the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, Senator Rockefeller and I, as the chairman and the ranking member of the Commerce Committee, have worked on a bill that will delay for 3 months, basically until June 12, this transition. It is voluntary. That was very important. Because many broadcast companies have made the investment for digital transmission, and they will be able to go to that digital transmission. It also allows people, even if they have coupons that are expired, to reapply and get coupons.

But I do wish to serve notice that I will not support another delay in implementation. By now people have had the notice, and we have done everything to help mitigate the cost of this transition. I talked to Senator Rockefeller about that, and I think we are in agreement that now is the time for people to get their coupons and get their boxes because June 12 this transition will be made.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from South Carolina. I believe he laid it out very well. I am very concerned about the broadening aspects of the underlying bill. As I have said on many occasions, Senator Mikulski and I have worked on so many issues to advance the cause of women, the rights of women, fair treatment of women. I would like to be able to support her bill, and I support the concept of her bill.

My concern is in two major areas: One is the inability for a legitimate defense to be raised if a person waits when they should have known there was discrimination, to be able to address that immediately or within a reasonable amount of time. I want people to be able to raise the issue.

I have heard of company policies. I have worked in a place where it was company policy that one didn't talk about pay. That was when I was making $600 a month. Maybe there was discrimination there. If there is a company policy or a feeling in the company that if you talk about pay, you are going to be punished or maybe even fired, then that makes the statute of limitations not function at that point. That, then, is a policy that is discriminatory. That is what we are trying to do: give the right of the plaintiff to show that he or she could not have known, didn't know, and could not have known.

The second area that is of great concern to me is the expansion of the right of the plaintiff to go beyond the plaintiff himself or herself, to allow a person affected by the alleged discrimination to file suit, which could even occur after the person is not even there or is dead. That is putting into our system a possibility that the person might not have filed the claim on their own, didn't file it, might not have wanted to, might have believed it wasn't the right thing to do, or might have believed there were other areas that made up for what the person might have thought was not right in one particular area, such as the area where he or she worked or the amount of pay.

I think you have to have a right yourself, but when it is a tort in our English law, in our American law, that does not accrue to another person generally. There are specific exceptions to that, but in general the tort claim goes with the person against whom the tort is committed. It should be that way in a discrimination area as well. So adding the ability for someone to sue on behalf of someone who isn't suing for something that happened to the person who isn't suing is a trail that is going to go way beyond the fairness that we try to put into our legal system.

I hope we can pass my amendment. I hope we can keep working on this bill. I wish there had been a markup in committee because there might have been more of a capability to shape this bill so that it would be something that would meet the test of adding to a plaintiff's claim, cause of action, opportunities, but without producing such an unfair disadvantage to anyone to be able to defend by having a statute of limitations that is not effective and by increasing the capability of someone to make a claim on behalf of someone who has chosen or doesn't make the claim.

I hope our colleagues will look at this issue. I hope we will be able to keep working on this matter. I would vote for this bill if my amendment passes. It will be a much harder decision if my amendment does not pass because I know the struggles of small business. I have great admiration for people who are in small business. I have been in small business myself. I know many times margins are very thin, and you want to make sure you know what your liabilities might be and that you have the ability to plan for that. We want business to thrive. We want business to keep employees. We don't want to do anything that causes fewer people to be employed because of greater potential liabilities. We don't want to do anything that adds

to the instability of the job market today. We want to help our businesses get through this time by keeping people working. I am afraid the underlying bill will be a deterrent in that respect.

I appreciate those who have spoken for this amendment. I hope we can continue to work on it together.

I yield the floor.

I appreciate that very much from the Senator from Maryland, as always, because I would like an up-or-down vote. This is an amendment that is the decision on this bill. I appreciate that. This whole debate has been sort of the test. Harry Reid said we would be able to have amendments. Our leader said we would take up the amendments that would be relevant to this labor issue. I think everyone has performed admirably. I hope we can keep going. I thank the Senator very much.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be reinstated for the debate and the vote as previously ordered.

Mr. President, I just want to say my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Maryland, said it is easy for an employer to know they will not have a liability; just pay equal. Simple: Pay equal. But let me give you an example of what an employer actually faces.

You take the situation where, say, an employer owns a bakery. One employee punches in at 8, leaves at 4, does an adequate job during that time, and that employee is paid one wage. Another employee always stays late when

there is a need to stay late for a reason and comes in early if the employer has a big order and needs help early, and the second employee is paid more than the first one. But the first one believes there is discrimination for some reason--age, race, gender--and, therefore, believes they have a claim.

That is not a situation where the employer should have to pay exactly the same to two different people when one goes the extra mile and one does not. This is just one example a person who has been in small business can tell you happens every day in every business in our country. The people who go the extra mile, who do a little more, should be able to be rewarded. That is what ownership of a business thrives on.

So I think to just say: Just don't discriminate, is to say, well, if one person is doing more, adding more to the business, and becoming more productive, we should have the ability as an employer to allow that person to make a little more or do something extra. So I do not think we want to get into a situation where you are only to pay the same wage for two different people who bring different things to the table. That is why we have lawsuits. It is why we have EEOC, to make those judgment calls.

So I am trying to make sure we keep an equal and level playing field so people who own a business who are struggling in this very tough economy have the ability to make the decisions that will keep those employees employed and make the judgment calls so that an owner--who is the one signing the checks, the one signing the loan applications, the one putting forth their whole livelihood and their family's security-- also has a fair chance in any kind of a dispute to do what is best for the business and for the employees of the business.

Thank you, Mr. President. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I wish to reserve my time. There is another speaker coming down now on my side. The Senator from Maryland may wish to go forward or we may wish to wait and have the time equally divided.

Mr. President, we are 5 minutes away from voting. The last speaker on my side was not able to make it, so I wish to close on my amendment.

What some courts around our country do is allow a plaintiff to say that he or she knew or didn't know, allow the person to say why they didn't know, and let the plaintiff go forward to give their defense or to give this statement as the reason why the statute of limitations should be tolled. In many jurisdictions, this is accepted and the statute of limitations is tolled.

What my substitute does is codify this so every jurisdiction will allow the plaintiff to have a right to say: I didn't know, and here is why I didn't know, and I need to be able to toll the statute of limitations to have my rightful amount of pay or the job I have been denied. It codifies so that it is clear. It brings clarity to the law and a unification of all the districts' views that this plaintiff should be allowed to say: I could not have known, and that is why I didn't file my claim earlier.

The other part of my amendment that I think is very important is that it does not allow the added person who is not the person who alleges the discrimination to still file a lawsuit on behalf of that person who did not file the lawsuit. That is in the underlying bill. I think it is a huge increase in another area of litigation that we don't have in the law today. In fact, in most tort claims we don't allow that because it is important when a person has a claim that they make the decision to pursue that claim. Having another person who might claim to be affected by the discrimination against someone else really takes one into a whole other realm of ``he said, she said.'' Well, why would an heir be able to file when the other person didn't? Maybe the person is gone, maybe the person is dead, maybe the person did not want to make this claim or would have had they been alive and they could make the decision. It just adds an element of instability in the system that I don't think we have seen really in any other area of the law.

I want to have a fair judicial system. I want there to be more rights for the plaintiff to be able to come forward and sue for discrimination if they feel they have been discriminated against and to be able to say: I didn't know, I couldn't have known, our company doesn't let us talk about what we make, and have that before the court because I don't want anyone in this country to be discriminated against.

I also want a businessperson--a small businessperson, a big businessperson, anyone who is creating jobs in our country and trying to make it so that we keep our economy strong and keep jobs from being let go--I want that person to have a fair chance too. If you have a person who files a claim when the supervisor who is alleged to have made the discrimination is dead, that is a problem for the company to be able to make a defense, and that is what this whole case is about.

I believe Lilly Ledbetter was a good employee. I think she probably put forward her claim believing she had a discrimination, and I believe she probably did. I believe she started at a lower level, and even though she was increased at the same level every year as her peers, because she started out at the bottom or at a lesser level, that did cause discrimination.

If she had brought the claim in a timely way when she first knew or should have known because of a note that she received that was anonymous, then she probably would have been able to prevail.

I think she is a good and nice person, but we are setting a standard in the law that is going to make it very difficult for businesses to know what their liability is if a person claims something that happened 6, 8, 10 years ago. Not being able to have the records, not being able to have the witnesses, not being able to have the memories of people is going to be a significant deterrent for the employer to run the business.

I particularly have a place in my heart for small businesses because I know it is very difficult for a small business to make the salaries and the payroll and to put their livelihoods on the line.

I want to make sure we are fair to everyone. I want a person who is discriminated against to have a right of action. I do. I have said it before, I have been discriminated against. I know how it feels to be on the lower level when you know you are working harder. I know. But it is so important that also the person I am working for have a chance to defend with their witnesses and their records and let the court have everything to make a fair decision.

In America, one of the things we have prided ourselves on that was put in the Constitution by our Founding Fathers is fairness, justice. We are a country that prides itself on fairness and justice. We have to make sure we continue to have equal rights of plaintiffs and defendants to be heard, and that is what my amendment does.

If my amendment is adopted, I know we will add to the plaintiffs' capabilities, but with a fair right for the defense to make their case. And that is what our justice system should be.

I hope we will adopt this amendment. I hope we can keep working on this bill. I am sure there are other things we can do. I would like for us to talk about the ability to have a negotiation. I tolled the statute of limitations when a point is brought up and there is a negotiation, an arbitration going on between an employer and an employee. When we go to conference, if my amendment is adopted, and we can work something like that out, I will be for it. I think it is a fair point because we do want to have the total ability of the plaintiff to be able to make his or her case, and we want to keep people employed in this country, and we do not want there to be a deterrent for small businesses to keep the people they have employed so we can get the economy going again in this country and go back to the full employment we had maybe 2 years ago and try to make sure we don't have in any way a deterrent for people to know what their liabilities are and start pulling back.

I hope we can adopt my amendment and continue to work on this bill.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I yield back my time, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I come to the Floor today as the ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in support of the nomination of Raymond LaHood to be the 16th Secretary of Transportation.

As a former 7-term Member of Congress representing the 18th District of Illinois, and a former member of the House committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Congressman LaHood is well-qualified for this position.

This week, the Commerce Committee held a full committee hearing to consider his nomination. To Congressman LaHood's credit, and with the cooperation of Chairman Rockefeller, our committee quickly discharged his nomination in order to fill this important Cabinet position.

I am pleased that our committee moved expeditiously on Congressman LaHood's nomination and I am hopeful the full Senate will move just as quickly.

As my colleagues know, the range of problems confronting the new Secretary of Transportation are amongst the most difficult that any new department leader has faced in quite some time.

In a few short months, important policy, budgetary and regulatory decisions will need to be made on several transportation and infrastructure issues. I am confident that Congressman LaHood is up to the task and will hit the ground running.

As my colleagues know, the existing highway program expires at the end of September. Until then, Congress and the new administration will have to work very hard on a reauthorization. This will be a very difficult process due

to the current fiscal state of the highway trust fund and because of the current formula's disparate treatment between the States.

In addition, we desperately need to create stability in our aviation infrastructure programs by passing a full fiscal year 2009 FAA extension, along with completing a multiyear FAA Authorization bill. I have encouraged Representative LaHood to support a full fiscal year extension of the current FAA Reauthorization bill, through September 30, 2009, along with committing to work with him on a new FAA Authorization bill.

Without congressional and administration cooperation, the FAA's plan to modernize our air traffic control system--known as NextGen--could squander precious time and resources. Our Nation's skies and airports are severely congested; we need a Secretary in place immediately to oversee and manage the funding, implementation, and transition to NextGen.

I am also confident the DOT will have a renewed focus and appreciation for our Nation's Amtrak and high speed rail system. This is an area we have neglected too long. While the Amtrak reauthorization that was just signed into law was an important step, we need strong leadership at the Department to ensure that we have a national passenger rail system that works. Congressman LaHood is a strong advocate for Amtrak and I look forward to working with him to implement the priorities of that important legislation.

I encourage my colleagues to support Representative Hood's nomination.

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