Floor Statements

Mr. President, I object on behalf of our leader. This is a matter that needs to be decided between our two leaders. That has not been done. The bill has just come over. There needs to be some time. Certainly we hope in the future to vote on it at a time when the two leaders can agree.

Mr. President, at a time when our economy is staggering and global unrest is making long-term energy supplies uncertain, we are going to eventually be able to take up a bill that has been passed by the House that would bypass the President's decision to postpone until 2013, after the elections next year, a domestic infrastructure project that promises 20,000 immediate jobs, and 118,000 spinoff jobs, and provides a stable energy source from our trusted neighbor Canada.

After 3 years of unprecedented reviews by State and Federal agencies, the administration decided to delay the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election. Why? It would seem obvious that this is a decision that could now be made. The studies have been done. The jobs are needed. This is a privately financed traditional energy project. It is truly shovel ready. It is not a temporary government stimulus program based on wishful thinking, looking for things that can be done around the country. It is ready to go and it is privately financed, so there are no taxpayer dollars involved.

The pipeline is our Nation's access to the estimated 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil in western Canadian tar sands. It will provide energy from a reliable trading partner and friend, lessening our dependence on oil from turbulent Middle East and North African countries and from dictators and terrorism-supporting regimes in South America.

This turmoil leads to price spikes and supply interruptions that threaten our economy and our national security. If we can go forward with the pipeline project, it would have a tremendous impact on our Nation, where the project could stimulate $2.3 billion in new spending and generate more than $48 million in new tax revenues just in my home State of Texas.

The pipeline construction would result in 700,000 additional barrels of oils per day being sent to refineries in Texas. Our State's 26 refineries account for more than 25 percent of the total U.S. oil production, which is approximately 5 percent of worldwide capacity. Texas refineries working at capacity are of great benefit to the consumers of America. Oil is provided faster and more efficiently to domestic consumers and industry, bringing down the cost of energy to everyone in our country.

Last night the House approved this legislation. President Obama continues to threaten to veto any bill that comes to his desk that involves the Keystone pipeline. So I think it is fair to ask: What is his plan? The administration recently announced the President's 5-year blueprint for the future of America's energy resources. For example, the plan limits the offshore energy development to less than 3 percent of offshore areas.

The administration is decreasing our energy resources while other countries continue to increase their energy wealth, just off our coast in some instances, some as close as 25 miles from the U.S. waters. With the right policies, the oil and gas industry could create 1.4 million new jobs and raise $800 billion of additional government revenue by 2030. That would come from people working. That would come from people in the economy buying things, creating new jobs, and paying taxes because they are earning money. That is the way we should increase revenue in this country, not by stimulus programs that add to our deficit and to the debt that is going to be inherited by our children.

The administration is determined to pursue policies that limit our utilization of our own natural resources. Most other countries in the world are trying to develop their natural resources, and some do not have natural resources and wish they did. America has them but we are not using them.

We could--with a single pipeline--do something that would lower the cost of energy and create new jobs and raise additional government revenue. The fact that we are debating this project today in the face of a frozen economy and rising energy insecurity is unthinkable. We do not need more Solyndra fiascos. We do not need to waste additional billions of taxpayer dollars to support failed businesses that would not exist without federal subsidies.

This pipeline has not one taxpayer dollar in it. It is privately funded and will create private industry jobs that would be jobs that create more revenue for our country through the spending and the creation of still further jobs.

We would be doing it with a trusted neighbor and ally, Canada. This is something we should do. I would love to see us do it in a bipartisan way in this Senate as the House has already done.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to join many of my colleagues, as Senator DeMint has said, to endorse the balanced budget amendment that Republicans are offering. We have 47 Republicans in the Senate and there are 47 cosponsors and supporters of this approach to a balanced budget. Our approach addresses the fundamental problem in America and that is government spending. Big problems require bold action. Today's staggering national debt, $15 trillion, is crippling our economy. We must take action to stop it.

The 40-year average of total U.S. Federal Government spending is 20.8 percent of gross domestic product. For 2011, Federal spending was 24.1 percent of GDP. Looking forward, if we stay on the same course we are on, Federal spending is projected to be 40 percent of GDP in 2046, and by 2085 it will reach 75 percent of GDP. We are reading a lot of stories about European countries that are doing exactly what we are talking about how the future for America will look like if we do not curb spending right now.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think increasing taxes will reduce the deficit. However, the facts state otherwise. The trajectory of government spending, as I have outlined, could not be met with tax increases. There are not enough tax increases if you went to 100 percent rate of tax. There would not be enough to support that kind of government spending.

In addition to that, as we have been saying, increasing taxes is going to lower the capability of our small businesses to hire. That is what we are trying to spur right now, more employment. It is going to take systemic changes in government spending to get the debt and deficits down in this country. Lower spending is the only way we can have the systemic changes that are necessary to lower the government burden so the debt begins to get less and less.

My colleagues across the aisle have proposed their solution with a different approach to a balanced budget amendment. In our opinion, it is flawed because it fails to include a supermajority requirement to raise taxes and it separates Social Security from the Federal budget. That might seem like a good idea on its face, to assure that Social Security never goes under because there would not be a connection between Social Security and the Federal budget, but in fact as we speak today it is part of our Federal budget because the Social Security outlays exceed what is coming in revenue from Social Security. Excluding Social Security from our Federal budget would not solve our deficit spending or shore up Social Security's finances for current and future generations. Right now, Social Security is on a glidepath toward insolvency.

I firmly believe that entitlement reform is vital to any long-term solution to our Nation's financial problems. It is essential that we assure the markets that long-term financial challenges are being confronted, and that includes entitlement reform so that Social Security will be on a glidepath toward solvency rather than the other way around.

Earlier this year I proposed a modest Social Security reform that would gradually increase the retirement age so it more closely resembles today's actuarial tables and life expectancy. It would decrease the annual cost of living slightly by adjusting it if inflation exceeds 1 percent. If inflation exceeds 1 percent, then you would have a cost-of-living adjustment. Otherwise, you would not.

In addition to spending reduction and entitlement reform, we need long-term progrowth tax policies in place, not constant threats of tax increases. When we hear our small business people talking about why they are not hiring--because I think probably every one of us in this Senate as we travel around our States and in the country asks our small business people why aren't you hiring? Why aren't you adding to our economy?--they say two things. They say, No. 1, the regulations of this country are driving them down. It is like a blanket over their capability to produce, get more traction and hire people. So it is overregulation that we are seeing rampant in this administration.

The second thing is our President is always talking about tax increases. He talks about it every time I see an interview or a speech. Those people out there need to pay more taxes. You know what, if you are being constantly threatened with more taxes, you know you have to look at your budget and adjust, and that adjustment usually means you are not going to hire people if you know your expenses are going to go up through regulations and more taxes.

If we are going to make conditions in this country better for private sector job growth in this country, which certainly would lead to a stronger economy, we have to address spending and tax policy. Our balanced budget amendment moves forward on these fronts. We reduce spending responsibly, to put our country on a fiscally responsible path. We can shift the spending trajectory in this country by passing the balanced budget amendment and implementing a long-term plan that caps Federal spending. The Federal Government has grown exponentially in the last few years. We cannot sustain that. That is not a responsible position when we know unemployment is almost 9 percent. We have to have policies that will encourage employment. That is the way to grow revenue.

We can grow revenue, but not by taxing the people who are hiring. Rather, we can do it by giving them a regulatory playing field that is responsible

and not overbearing, and by making sure we have not only a tax policy that encourages hiring but one that is stable and predictable.

If taxes are going to change every year, that is not predictable and it is not stable. I hate it when I talk to an international company and I am talking to someone in that company--maybe the CEO, or chief financial officer--and I say, why are you moving that part of your company overseas? They will invariably say: Because there is a better regulatory environment.

That is shocking. It is shocking for an American CEO to say we can better predict what the conditions for regulations are in foreign countries than we can in America. That is not the foundation to revive our economy.

We have a balanced budget amendment that we believe addresses the issues of this economy. It will put caps on Federal spending. It will start bringing down the size of government to meet the gross domestic product of our country. Right now it is off balance and we need to put it right so we do start hiring in this country in the private sector. Hiring in the government sector is not a long-term growth strategy. We need jobs in the private sector for permanency and we will do that with a balanced budget amendment that puts caps on spending. Systemic change is what is necessary in this kind of environment. I hope Members on both sides of the aisle will look at these amendments and realize we could help the jitters in the market get calmed by addressing this in a long-term way.

The balanced budget amendment we are offering--and we will vote on tomorrow--is the best approach. It is looked at by people in the real world, the business world, the hiring world. They are saying what they need is stable regulatory environment and taxes that are not confiscatory so they will have the ability to hire more Americans and create greater revenues through people who are working and producing-- people who are going to pay taxes, people who are going to export and keep our economy on a growth pattern rather than one that continues to sit there with a high unemployment rate that is stagnating our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in Texas, football and team loyalty is a key part of our identity. Today, I know that Baylor University students, alumni, and fans--known as the Baylor Nation--are bursting with pride over the first Bear to win the Heisman Trophy. Robert Griffin III was named the 2011 Heisman Trophy winner for his incredible accomplishments on the football field. Baylor finished this season ranked No. 15 nationally with a 9 to 3 record which included impressive victories over nationally ranked TCU, Oklahoma, and Texas. While Baylor and Big 12 fans have witnessed Griffin's football prowess, many more American sports fans will have the opportunity to watch him lead the Bears in the Valero Alamo Bowl on December 29, 2011.

But it is not only his football talent that makes Robert such a remarkable young man. RG3, as he is known to his friends and fans, is the consummate student-athlete. An honor roll student at Baylor, he graduated with a degree in political science in only 3 years with a 3.67 GPA. While he was leading the Bears this year on the gridiron, he was studying for his master's degree in communications, and he has indicated that he would like to attend law school as well.

Robert's career at Baylor balances academics and athletics and should serve as a role model for other aspiring young athletes. The discipline to succeed was instilled in him at a very early age by his parents, Robert, Jr., and Jacqueline Griffin, both Army noncommissioned officers, who laid the groundwork for his strong work ethic. A graduate of Copperas Cove High School just outside Ft. Hood, Robert was a three- sport star athlete--he still owns Texas' High School State records for the 110-meter and 300-meter hurdles--and a top student.

Throughout his career at Baylor, Robert set 52 school records in passing, rushing, and total offense. He has thrown for an incredible 10,070 yards, and 77 touchdowns, while rushing for 2,220 yards and 32 touchdowns. During his impressive 2011 Heisman winning season, Robert passed for almost 4,000 yards and 36 touchdowns, while rushing for 655 yards and 7 touchdowns. He also earned the Davey O'Brien Award, presented annually to the best NCAA quarterback.

On Saturday, December 10, 2011, Robert Griffin III was recognized as the greatest college football player of the year. The Heisman Trophy is the most prestigious and coveted award in college sports, and no one is more deserving of this honor than Robert Griffin III.

Congratulations to Robert Griffin III on an incredible season; to his family, who provided the foundation for his abilities; to his teammates and the entire Baylor Nation. This is truly a storybook ending to a tremendous season.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to discuss and pass the Risk-Based Security Screening for Members of the Armed Forces Act.

How many times have you been at an airport screening line, you are getting ready to go through the machines that are going to determine you are safe to travel and standing right there in the line is a man or woman in their military fighting gear--their camouflage and their combat boots--and they are having to take off their combat boots, many times in their 2-week R&R period between their stints in Afghanistan or Iraq, and you think: Oh, my gosh. It is unbelievable that our military people--who are putting their lives on the line, who are sacrificing so much--are having to go through a procedure that does not have a commonsense feel about it.

Last week, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Burr, and I introduced S. 1954, the Risk-Based Security Screening for Members of the Armed Forces Act. The bill was a modification of the House companion bill that was recently passed by Representative Cravaack from Minnesota in a unanimous decision by the House.

It requires the TSA, the Transportation Security Agency, to create a system to speed members of our uniformed services through airport security.

I would also like to thank Senators Lieberman and Collins for their input on this piece of legislation. We have all worked hard to move this bill through quickly, and it is the House bill we will be taking up very shortly with the modifications I have mentioned.

The bill establishes a timeline for the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Defense together to develop and implement a program to establish expedited security screening procedures for military personnel and their families.

I think we can all agree our military men and women make sacrifices for our Nation every day. The least we can do is try to make their lives a little easier when they travel around the country they defend.

I think they have earned the right to at least go to the head of the line or have some kind of trusted passenger status.

Our Armed Forces are comprised of over 1.4 million brave men and women. They are stationed at more than 6,000 military bases worldwide. For all the hardships they endure, I think they deserve to be at the front of the line in some kind of procedure that expedites their security clearance.

Airports, airlines, and TSA recognize this issue, and they want to reduce the delays. Currently, TSA uses the same screening protocols for all passengers.

The TSA has indicated that it would like to improve the process and to move forward to risk-based screening procedures. They certainly have my support and I know that of many Members, if not an overwhelming majority in Congress, to do that.

Mr. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, has testified before our Commerce Committee about the risk-based screening procedures they are trying to put in place that will give them a better opportunity to target people who are more at risk or more under suspicion, while letting frequent flyers and people in the military go through on an expedited basis.

I would say the first identifiable group to get risk-based screening processes should be those who are fighting this war, those with boots on the ground. Members of our military and their families traveling on orders and in uniform should benefit from these new rules. In a time of limited resources, the establishment of procedures to expedite the screening of a pool of travelers who are most certainly our trusted travelers would better allow the TSA to focus their attention on areas of real threats.

Earlier this year, the House passed Congressman Cravaack's bill unanimously, just a couple of weeks ago. I hope our quick and unanimous action will allow the House to quickly reconsider the modified measure and get the bill signed into law as soon as possible.

As we are going into this traveling season--we have been through Thanksgiving, and we are now approaching Christmas. The bill is not going to be implemented by this season. They cannot do it in 2 weeks. But surely by the next holiday season, our trusted travelers, the members of our military and their families, will be able to have this expedited procedure. I hope that as they are traveling in this year's rush through the processes to get home to their loved ones, they will know we are working on something that will make their lives easier and expedite their travels while they are home on leave from fighting the war that is protecting our freedoms and our way of life.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1801 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be agreed to, and I urge passage of the bill, as amended.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table and that any statements related to the measure be printed in the Record.

I am very pleased we have been able to pass this bill for the expedited travel procedures for our military personnel. The TSA will have about 180 days working with the Department of Defense to get procedures in place to do this.

I hope our military people, wherever they are in the world, know how much America appreciates their service. We know they are fighting for our way of life to prevail for our children and future generations.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from North Dakota because Senator Hoeven has been a leader on this issue, knowing how important this find is, and how much more capacity we will have for affordable energy in our country if we can extend the pipeline.

This is a pipeline that is not just starting from Canada into the United States. The Keystone Pipeline was started in 2008. The initial line moves 590,000 barrels of oil per day from northern Alberta to points in Cushing, OK, and Patoka, IL. The XL extension--which is what we are talking about that is being held up by the State Department--is currently under review. It would expand the system by 700,000 barrels per day--so more than double what we are getting already--and bring the line further south to Texas.

Well, now, why is that important? It is because 25 percent of the refinery capacity in America is in Texas. It is in the gulf coast of Texas. That is where the refiners are. We are talking about producing now more affordable energy for all the consumers in our country by bringing it straight down and having it refined and sent back out to all points in America. Otherwise, what my colleagues have just been talking about--Senator Isakson and Senator Hoeven--is that we will see Canada export this to other countries, whether it be China or other countries, and eventually it is going to be coming back into the United States much more expensively to be refined in Texas and sent out.

So specifically for Texas, it would put our State's 26 refineries into probably 24 hours' of business, which means lots of jobs in Texas. That 25 percent of U.S. production is approximately 5 percent of worldwide capacity. So we are talking about lowering the price of energy throughout our country and the world.

It would produce an estimated $2.3 billion in new spending and generate more than $48 million in new tax revenue for my state alone. It would result in 700,000 barrels of oil a day, as I have said. We know the Canadian find--the sands that have been found there--is the third largest capacity, next to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, in recoverable oil in the world. So we have the third largest reserve in Canada and we know we have the ability to bring that oil down, have it refined, and go out to the United States because dependence on the Middle East and North Africa has certainly led to price spikes. Venezuela is certainly not a reliable partner right now and supply interruptions threaten our economy and our national security.

So the Keystone XL Pipeline would certainly be a boom to Texas and Texas jobs. But more than that, it is going to benefit every consumer of energy in America. It will more than double what we can buy from Canada, and think of the reliability of our Canadian relationship. The reliability of our trade and our relationship with our neighbor to the north, Canada, is among the most solid we have in all of the globe.

It is essential we build this pipeline. As the leader said earlier, this is a no-brainer--as close as you can get to a no-brainer for building our economy, creating jobs, and creating more tax revenue that will bring down the deficit we have heard so much talk about on the other side--but this would do it the old-fashioned way: by giving people the ability to provide for their families and contribute to the economy of our country.

That is the way we want to see increased revenue in this country: with more jobs and paying taxes, not collecting benefits because they cannot find work. It is right here, and it does not cost the government a dime because it is private investment that will bring this oil to the refineries and put it back out to the United States.

I urge the President of the United States to go to the State Department and say: Let this go. In lieu of urging the President, we have a bill that was started by Senator Hoeven, with 40 sponsors, that will tell the President: Now is the time--it is long past due time--for us to create the jobs in this country that are not going to be taxpayer funded, that are going to be privately funded. They are going to create cleaner, better, cheaper, more efficient energy; and they are going to create jobs which people want in this holiday season and on into the future years.

So I thank my colleague from North Dakota for giving us this chance to tell the American people we have an answer to jobs and to bringing down the deficit and increasing revenue the way people want to: by providing for their families and paying taxes with the money they are earning. It is a win for everyone. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for leading this effort.

Mr. President, I am pleased today to support the nomination of Mr. James Rodney Gilstrap to serve as a Federal district judge for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, TX.

Mr. Gilstrap attended Baylor University where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in religion. Following his graduation, Mr. Gilstrap continued his studies at Baylor University Law School, where he served as associate editor of the Baylor Law Review and received his juris doctor in 1981.

Mr. Gilstrap began his professional career in Marshall, TX, where he still resides today. In August of 1989, Mr. Gilstrap was appointed county judge of Harrison County and was then elected to the same position for the next three terms. In 2002, he retired as a county judge and returned to private practice at Smith & Gilstrap, where he still practices today.

Mr. Gilstrap has earned the respect and esteem of the legal community he has served and his professional credentials will continue the strong history of the Federal bench in Texas.

Mr. Gilstrap's impressive career is complemented by his dedication to his community. In addition to serving for years as county judge, Mr. Gilstrap has served on the board for the Harrison County Historical Society, the United Way for Harrison County, and the Trinity Episcopal Day School. He also served for 16 years on the Courthouse Preservation Council to help with the renovation of the Marshall courthouse that was completed in 2009. Mr. Gilstrap's passion for his work and his community will be a tremendous asset to the Marshall bench.

I join his family in congratulating him on all his outstanding accomplishments: his wife Sherry Sullivan Gilstrap, his daughter Lauren, who is continuing her medical studies at Harvard Medical School, and his son Stephen, who graduated from Yale Law School this year.

I am pleased to recommend his confirmation to my colleagues.

Nomination of Caitlin Halligan

Mr. President, I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Missouri for managing the bill for our side because there are three appropriations bills included in this package. I am also pleased that we are actually passing appropriations bills that have been amended and debated in the Senate the way it ought to be done.

I am also very pleased to talk about the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies bill, which is the subcommittee on which I am the ranking member. The chairman, Senator Mikulski, has already spoken earlier this evening on the bill and what is in it and how we put it all together.

I can't thank Senator Mikulski enough for being the kind of chairman who could really bring people together, bring the House Members together, where we had some significant differences. I believe she and I were on the same page, that we have national priorities in this bill, and we ensured that those priorities were met because they are so important for our country. It wasn't easy. As has been said by everyone who has spoken, difficult choices had to be made. We had an allocation that was $583 million below the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution level. It was $4.7 billion below the President's request.

This bill is also in accordance with the Budget Control Act that passed on August 2, 2011. I just want to mention

on that point that all of the appropriations bills that have gone through the Appropriations Committee this year have met the Budget Control Act requirements. That is something I think we should have done and certainly something we were expected to do.

There are some Members, however, who will be speaking against these bills. They wanted a different standard from the standard we set, which was below the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution and below the President's request. But that is the standard we should have met, and we did.

We struck a balance between the competing interests of law enforcement, terrorism, research, and competitiveness through investing in science. I think the chairman, Senator Mikulski, spoke about the specifics of that, but I want to highlight some of the programs of national interest that I was particularly insistent that we focus on.

We have worked hard to ensure that law enforcement receives the priority funding needed to protect our Nation, our communities, our children, and the victims of crime. That was a particular point that Senator Mikulski made and with which I agree.

We have also made sure the FBI has the resources it needs to continue its major role in the global mission of counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Director Robert Mueller has seen the largest transition of the agency certainly in modern times, but maybe ever--a transformation from a traditional crime-fighting organization into an intelligence-driven, threat-focused law enforcement organization and a full member of the U.S. intelligence community since 9/11.

A lot of people are going to say: Well, gosh, why would you increase the FBI? Well, because they are a part of our national security today. They are no longer just a domestic crime-fighting agency--though very important but nevertheless a smaller function. They are part of our U.S. intelligence agencies that are helping us fight terrorism all over the world. So we funded them, and I am glad we did.

We have also included language to encourage the Department of Justice to maintain its current fiscal year 2011 level of funding that focuses on the southwest border. This is so important, as we read about the atrocities happening in Mexico and on our border, some of which have begun to spread across the border, and drug cartels are becoming increasingly emboldened.

I was talking to someone in the law enforcement community today who has had very high positions in our government, and he said those drug cartels are terrorists. I agree with him. Those drug cartels are terrorists. What they are doing to innocent people is atrocious. So we are encouraging and we have given the money to the Justice Department for the southwest border.

The El Paso Intelligence Center is another important program that is one of our first safeguards along the border. It is a national tactical intelligence center that supports law enforcement in the United States, Mexico, and the whole Western Hemisphere. It is the Drug Enforcement Administration's most important intelligence-sharing entity focusing on all things related to our borders.

Another important program in this bill is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program which we funded to provide Federal assistance to the States and localities that are incurring the costs of incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens who have been accused or convicted of State and local offenses. We know there are counties throughout our country that do not have big budgets. Yet we have illegal alien criminals who are being put in county jails and city jails and it is important for the Federal Government and it is the Federal Government's responsibility to pay for housing those illegal alien criminals. We have done so in this bill.

I was also pleased to work with Senator Mikulski and Jon Kyl, the Senator from Arizona, to include more money for the U.S. Marshals Service for its mission along the southwest border, including detention construction and security upgrades in southwest border Federal courthouses.

The last thing I wish to mention is that we had a very moving ceremony yesterday honoring the significant astronauts--they are all significant, but some of those who took the first chance to go where no human being had ever been, and we honored them with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest honor Congress can bestow on a civilian: John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first and second men to walk on the Moon, the Americans who did that, and they were ferried there by Michael Collins, who landed Apollo 11.

We talked, and the speeches were very uplifting, about the importance of space exploration and what it has done for our country. It has clearly been an economic boon to this country. It has created jobs, it has created better quality of life, and it has also inspired generations of scientists. With the significant support of Senator Mikulski, we were able to give NASA the funding it needs to assure that we have not only the vision that was established by Congress in the 2010 authorization bill but the funding to achieve the vision going forward.

Since our space shuttle program has been shut down, we are now on a mission to provide a commercial crew vehicle to take our astronauts to the space station, where we are doing scientific research, and we have fully funded the launch vehicle that is going to take our astronauts beyond Earth orbit and into the asteroid and, hopefully, Mars. That funding has started with this appropriations bill that is going through this year.

So we will have our launch system and our Orion capsule that will be the next generation of space exploration for our country, and Senator Mikulski and I agreed on that priority, along with the Webb telescope, which is a very significant scientific priority, that we would assure that those priorities were met. We support the emerging commercial space companies to bring cargo and astronauts to the space station, and our investment for discovery on the space station as well as the science that is gotten from these wonderful, incredible telescopes that fly out there in space and gather information.

NASA has now released its design for the heavy launch vehicle that will be able to carry our astronauts in the Orion crew vehicle to the Moon, the asteroid, and beyond. Now that that decision has been made, we can focus on the future and on moving human exploration forward. NASA has announced its commitment to the path that Congress authorized, and now we are providing the funds to accomplish the development of that rocket.

Chairman Mikulski and I have strived to produce a bill that reflects not only the Senate's priorities but the needs of our Nation. Not only do I commend her and all the Senators who have a part in passing these bills and the House Members who also have a significant part, but our staffs did a lot of the work in making sure these priorities were met. Her staff, Gabrielle Batkin, Jessica Berry, Jean Toal Eisen, Jeremy Weirich, and Molly O'Rourke did wonderful work and were so close in concept and in close relationships and working relationships with my staff, James Christoferson, Goodloe Sutton, and Allen Cutler.

I recommend our bill. I think we stayed within the budget resolution, the Budget Control Act we passed, but we set the priorities, and I am very pleased to offer it to the Senate tonight.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, over the past 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without burdensome regulations from Washington. With the strength of free market forces behind it, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation. It has spurred business development, much needed job creation, millions of jobs in fact. If we are going to keep an open and free Internet and keep the jobs it spawns, we should reject the FCC regulation on net neutrality.

The FCC reversed its successful hands-off approach last December by passing net neutrality rules where the FCC has essentially granted itself power over all forms of communication, including the Internet. Congress did not explicitly delegate this authority to the FCC, and it is our responsibility to hold on to the power that only we authorize regulations where they are needed. Unelected agencies do not get to decide on their own that something needs to be done that Congress has not, in its congressional and constitutional responsibility, decided is necessary.

These regulations on broadband providers establish the FCC as the Internet's gatekeeper--a role for which government is not really suited when innovation could be stifled. Instead of spending their resources on new job-creating investments, on new products, on new services, Internet providers are going to have to spend money on lawyers and lobbyists to comply with and go through the processes the FCC will require. Congress has never given the FCC this authority.

Regulators and bureaucrats all across the government are overstepping their bounds in many areas--the NMB, the NLRB, the EPA--and it is time for Congress to push back, and we can do it today. Regulators should not regulate without the explicit authority of Congress. The court said so in the Comcast case.

Madam President, the success of the Internet should not be tampered with. We need to pass S.J. Res. 6 that is before us today.

Madam President, have the yeas and nays been called for?

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, what about our second vote on the other Congressional Review Act?

I ask for the yeas and nays on that as well.

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

Mr. President, today's debate concerns S.J. Res. 6. In a larger context, though, we have been having this debate for 34 months. The theme is, the Obama administration's relentless imposition of new and destructive regulations has not helped us get into a recovery and, in fact, I think is freezing our economy.

We have seen it with the Environmental Protection Agency when it tried to regulate carbon emissions and greenhouse gases using the Clean Air Act, a purpose for which Congress never intended the law to be used. We have seen it with the National Mediation Board when it overturned nearly a century of precedent and issued a new rulemaking to allow unions to be formed more easily but harder to decertify.

We have seen it with the National Labor Relations Board when it took the shocking step of challenging Boeing's decision to create new jobs by building a new factory in South Carolina, simply because South Carolina is a right-to-work State.

Today's issue involves bureaucratic overreach into a symbol of American innovation and creativity, the Internet, because the Federal Communications Commission has now decided to regulate the Internet. Last December, three FCC Commissioners, on a party-line vote, voted to impose rules that restrict how Internet service providers offer broadband services to consumers. Those rules, known as net neutrality, impose 19th century-style monopoly regulations on the most competitive and important job-creating engine of the 21st century, the Internet.

This marks a stunning reversal from the hands-off approach to the Internet that Federal policymakers have taken for more than a decade. During the last 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without burdensome regulations imposed by Washington. Powered by the strength of free market forces, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation, spurring business development and much needed job creation.

The former Democratic FCC Chairman, William Kennard, stated in 1999 ``[t}he fertile fields of innovation across the communications sector and around the country are blooming because from the get-go we have taken a deregulatory, competitive approach to our communications structure--especially the Internet.''

The present FCC is reversing that policy that has been successful beyond our expectations. Broadband Internet networks have powered the information and communications industry, which in 2009 accounted for more than 3.5 million high-paying jobs and about $1 trillion in economic activity.

This industry has been an engine for major economic growth even during these difficult times. Yet the FCC's rules could severely jeopardize this industry's vast potential. Net neutrality is intended to limit how Internet service providers develop and operate their broadband networks. The net neutrality order allows the FCC to tell broadband providers what kind of business practices are reasonable and unreasonable. The FCC, however, did not bother to clearly define in its rules what the agency considers to be reasonable.

This point is vital to understand. With such an arbitrary and yet poorly defined standard, companies will be forced to err on the side of caution. Rather than risk possible punishment from the FCC, many companies will simply decide: Maybe we will not invest right now in new technologies. Maybe it is too risky to develop and deploy new services. At the very least, it will delay such investment.

This kind of regulatory uncertainty will be crippling for companies and particularly small providers. We have heard exactly that from a small wireless Internet provider in Wyoming called LARIAT. This is a provider that is serving remote areas and trying to expand to other unserved years.

LARIAT testified before Congress that these FCC regulations are already harming its ability to attract investors, grow its business, hire more workers, and serve new customers. Forcing broadband companies to ask the government for permission before moving forward is exactly what we should try to avoid when reviving our economy.

This FCC regime will lead to stagnation in Internet innovation in the United States, placing us at a disadvantage against overseas competitors who are not burdened with similar rules. Moveover, Internet providers will end up spending resources on lawyers and lobbyists in order to comply with the FCC's rules, rather than investing those dollars in innovation.

Small companies will find it even more expensive to navigate Washington, DC. This certainly will not help consumers, particularly in rural areas, and will only increase the costs they have to bear. Before any new regulations are forced on American businesses, it is the government's responsibility to clearly show, one, there is an actual problem that needs to be addressed. That should be foremost.

With the FCC taking such a large departure from the agency's previous light-touch approach, one might think the FCC could point to a long list of net neutrality violations and problems that need to be fixed. That is not the case here. In a 134-page regulatory order, the FCC spent only three paragraphs attempting to catalog alleged instances of misconduct.

Within those three short paragraphs, every alleged problem was addressed under the FCC's existing rule or, if not, it was fixed by the provider under pressure from the public or the competitive marketplace, where it should be fixed. As former FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker noted in her statement dissenting from the FCC's net neutrality order, the Commission was ``unable to identify a single ongoing practice of a single broadband provider that it finds problematic upon which to base this action.'' To put it simply, the FCC has issued new rules without even demonstrating that intervention is actually necessary.

Despite protests to the contrary, these net neutrality regulations on broadband providers clearly establish the FCC as the Internet's gatekeeper, a role for which the government is not suited. Innovation does not work on a government timetable nor does it thrive through a maze of roadblocks.

Ironically, supporters of net neutrality insist that providers are the ones who may become gatekeepers of the Internet. These people say the openness of the Internet is far too important to be left unprotected by the government. This is a false premise. In fact, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation since its inception, and it has not needed any sort of net neutrality rules from bureaucrats at the FCC.

To make matters worse, Congress has never given the FCC the explicit authority to regulate how Internet providers manage their networks. That is why the new rules represent an unprecedented power grab by the unelected Commissioners at the FCC. In fact, current law states: ``It is the policy of the United States . . . to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.''

That is the law today. The FCC has lost this fight already in the courts. Last year, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's 2008 attempt to impose net neutrality in the Comcast v. FCC case. The court ruled that the FCC was acting beyond the reach of its congressionally provided authority and cautioned that regulations should be imposed only with explicit congressional direction.

This was validation that regulatory agencies cannot make policy without congressional direction. Rather than back down, however, the FCC doubled down. The current FCC order tries an even more expansive interpretation of the law than was used in the Comcast case. FCC Commissioners inexplicably claimed the agency can impose heavy-handed Internet regulation under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. This was a section of the law that was intended to remove regulatory barriers to broadband investment, not to raise them.

If the FCC's legal theory is left unchallenged, the FCC will have nearly unbounded authority to regulate almost anything on the Internet. It is Congress's role, not the FCC's to determine the proper policy framework for the Internet. Over time, and aided by the current administration, regulators throughout the government have gradually tried to seize increasing control over so many facets of American life. It is time for the Senate to stop this overreach. We write the laws of this country, not unelected bureaucrats. That is why we are here today.

Thanks to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, former Senator Don Nickles, and the late Senator Ted Stevens, one of the tools Congress has to stop rogue agencies is the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to review a rule before it takes effect and even to nullify that rule if Congress finds it is inappropriate, or if it overreaches, or if Congress itself hasn't delegated this power to an agency.

As Senators Reid, Nickles, and Stevens said at the time of this bill's passage, ``Congressional review gives the public the opportunity to call the attention of politically accountable, elected officials to concerns about new agency rules. If these concerns are sufficiently serious, Congress can stop the rule.''

We believe the concern about the FCC's net neutrality rules is sufficiently serious to warrant the consideration of Senate Joint Resolution 6, the disapproval resolution Senator McConnell and I introduced to nullify the FCC's net neutrality order under the Congressional Review Act. The House has already passed its version of the resolution, and we need only a majority of Senators to send this bill to the President's desk. Even a net neutrality supporter, Senator Olympia Snowe, who has authored net neutrality legislation, is a cosponsor and supporter of our resolution today.

While Senator Snowe and I don't agree on the need for a net neutrality law, we are in complete agreement--and she stated it beautifully--that Congress, not the FCC, should determine what the proper regulatory framework is for the Internet.

If the Senate does not strike down these regulations soon, they will go into effect on November 20, further jeopardizing jobs in this fragile economy. I guess you could say that it will allow more lawyers to be hired, but

more innovators? Probably not. That is not the mix we need to assure that our economy will get back on track in this country.

Studies indicate that net neutrality rules could significantly affect our economy. If net neutrality reduces capital investment in broadband infrastructure by even 10 percent, it could cost our country hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade.

We must preserve the openness of the Internet as a platform for innovation and economic growth. We must keep the competitive advantage that we have in this country for innovation. The last thing we ought to be doing is putting restrictions on our providers, when many countries that are also advanced in this area are not doing the same thing. So when we go to global competitiveness, we are putting our companies at a disadvantage. Why would we do that?

We must stop the job-killing regulatory interference by our government today in so many areas, and we can start right here, right now, by keeping the Internet free, voting for this resolution of disapproval, and saying to the regulatory bodies in this town: Congress must authorize a delegation of authority for your agency to pass rules, and especially when Congress is in disagreement with those rules.

This is a key policy decision for our body. We need to step up to the responsibility that Congress has. Our Constitution divided the powers between three branches of government. If Congress doesn't stand up for its one-third of the powers of this government and lets unelected bureaucrats run over our prerogatives, we will become a weaker branch, and our government will become weaker for it. We need to have three equal branches of government, and that means each branch must fulfill its responsibilities under the Constitution. Congress must delegate its authority explicitly for a rule to be made. That is the way the Constitution intended for Congress to fulfill its job as the elected representatives of the people of our country.

The House has passed this resolution. I hope the Senate will tomorrow. I hope the people will speak and say that even if you disagree on the basic issue of net neutrality, it is not the right of the FCC to pass sweeping regulations that will affect the economy of this country without explicit authority from Congress, which it does not have.

Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to come to the floor if they want to speak on this resolution. There is 4 hours, equally divided, and that time is now running. I say to my Republican colleagues that we have quite a list of those who want to speak. They must know that the time will run out in about 3\1/2\ hours now. I ask them to contact me if they wish to speak.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on our side I have Senator Wicker and Senator Shelby, who have been here waiting, and I would like to give them 15 minutes from the time on our side. I know there are others here, but these Senators have been waiting for quite a while.

Up to 5 minutes for Senator Wicker and up to 10 minutes for Senator Shelby.

Madam President, I know the Senator from Minnesota has been waiting to speak, and I certainly will yield to him. I would like to be recognized after he speaks to answer some of the concerns that were raised by the Senator from Massachusetts.

Madam President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator from Alaska.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

Sixty?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I have been looking for a time when the floor was open to refute some of the comments and concerns raised earlier on the Senate floor. I want to start by taking on a comment that was made by the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Franken, who said YouTube started above a pizzeria in 2005 and sold for $1.6 billion 2 years later to Google, and that wouldn't have been possible without net neutrality.

Well, Mr. President, I must point out that we didn't have net neutrality in 2005. We haven't had Federal regulation of the Internet in this country such as we have seen during this last year put forward by this administration. In fact, YouTube and Google were both created in a marketplace without net neutrality regulations. Other online successes--Facebook, Hulu, Twitter, and new devices such as the Apple iPhone and Amazon Kindle--all happened without net neutrality regulations. These are innovations that have changed communication patterns not only in our country but around the world as well. So we have had these innovations without the heavy hand of government.

It is very interesting to hear the debate on the Senate floor because we seem to hear that net neutrality is something that will keep the Internet open. The opposite is true. It is beginning to put the clamps on the successes that we have had by having an open Internet. All these companies they are talking about needing net neutrality to come forward and blossom and grow are the companies that have done exactly that without net neutrality regulations.

What we should do is assure that we don't put a blanket over the Internet and start saying to everybody who has a new idea or a new product or a new service provider: You better go to the FCC before you go forward with that or you could be in jeopardy. You could be penalized. You could be thought to have an ``unreasonable'' product on the Internet because we don't know yet what is reasonable. We just know you have to be reasonable because we have a new regulation now that says you must be reasonable, without any definition of what this FCC-- which had no authority to go into this area--is going to determine is a ``reasonable'' product that would not interfere with anything else.

Mr. President, we haven't had net neutrality before. All the successes I hear talked about in this debate have happened without the heavy or the light hand of government stopping the originality and innovation that has marked the success of our country.

Earlier, Mr. Kerry, the Senator from Massachusetts, said the Internet made the 1996 Telecommunications Act obsolete 6 months after it was enacted. But if the 1996 act did not sufficiently address the Internet, thus making it obsolete, how can that same law be the genesis and basis of the FCC's assertion it has the power to regulate the Internet? We have to have one or the other, and it is our assertion the FCC did not get specific authority to regulate the Internet that is required for Congress to give it in order to make rules in this area. So Senator Kerry can't have it both ways. He can't say the Telecommunications Act was obsolete but it is also the basis of these new restrictive regulations.

Senator Kerry sent a ``Dear Colleague'' letter to everyone in the Senate asking them to vote against this resolution. What I think Senator Kerry was saying in that letter is that net neutrality is not a regulation of the Internet because it is just a regulation of the onramp. In other words, we are not trying to support the FCC regulating the whole Internet; they are just doing the gateway, they are just doing the onramp.

Well, that was the position the FCC took when they made this regulation. But we can't argue that net neutrality is not regulation of the Internet because the Internet service providers are the only onramps to the Internet. It is a misleading statement to say that just regulating the onramp isn't regulating the Internet. The Internet is the entire global network of millions of computer networks. It uses the Internet protocol standard to interconnect with each other. Internet backbone providers and last-mile Internet service providers serve as the foundation of the Internet. So they are the foundation.

Web sites and services such as e-mail and voice-over IP, or VOIP, allow users to communicate on top of the foundation. The Internet is the whole online ecosystem put together. We can't have the edge without the core and vice versa. The onramp is as much a part of the information superhighway as are the cars traveling on it.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put it well in his dissent from the open Internet order that we are discussing today. He said:

To say that today's rules don't regulate the Internet is

like saying regulating highway on ramps, off ramps, and

pavement don't equate to regulating the highways themselves.

Mr. President, if we are going to say the FCC can regulate the onramp--and that is the first heavy hand of government that is going to start controlling and making decisions about what is reasonable and what is not--that means businesses are going to have to go to the FCC and say: Mother may I. If they have an innovative product, that is going to cost the consumer more because they will have had to go and hire lawyers to go to the FCC to get prior approval or it will delay the product getting out to consumers, possibly letting a European service provider that doesn't have these kinds of barriers get ahead of us.

Internet technology is the basis of hundreds of thousands of jobs and products in our country. We are in a crisis right now. We all know we have 9 percent unemployment and that our economy is even dead in the water. So we have to do something to jump-start the economy. The last thing we want to do is put a blanket on it to make it harder for it to come back. I don't think anybody in this country with any common sense is going to say we have a thriving economy right now. So it does defy common sense to say we are going to allow regulations Congress has not approved and that Congress has not authorized the regulator to make, knowing it will have the effect of either freezing or delaying the innovation that has been the hallmark of the success of the Internet and technology in our country.

There are several organizations that have banded together to ask that people vote for the resolution today. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from, among others, Americans for Tax Reform, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Hispanic Leadership Fund, and Americans for Prosperity.

Mr. President, in part, the letter says:

The FCC enacted these Net Neutrality rules despite a

complete lack of Congressional authorization and after being

told by a court that they lack jurisdiction.

Remember, this court, in the Comcast case, basically said to the FCC: You and all the other regulatory agencies that are independent must have specific authority from Congress to regulate in this area.

They found in the Comcast case they did not have such jurisdiction. Once again, citing from the letter in support of passing S.J. Res. 6-- which is signed by Grover Norquist, Phil Kerpen, David Williams, Thomas Schatz, and Mario Lopez--it says:

The FCC's order also runs contrary to the broad and

bipartisan conversation in Washington about how best to grow

the economy and spur job creation. President Obama and

Members in Congress on both sides of the aisle have called to

rein in overbearing regulations that harm economic growth.

Here we have yet another regulation on top of the EPA and the NLRB and the NMB coming forward to put a damper on our economy.

Mr. President, I would like to read from an opinion piece written by Phil Kerpen, who is with the Americans for Prosperity, and I thought this was relevant to the debate.

Network neutrality sounds nice. Originally, it was the idea

that all of the traffic . . . that travel over the networks

that comprise the Internet should be treated exactly the same

way. But engineers cried foul, because the routers that make

the Internet work are highly sophisticated with millions of

lines of code that necessarily prioritize different types of

traffic. Streaming video can't tolerate delays of a few

seconds whereas an e-mail could.

So network neutrality morphed into something even more

dangerous, empowering the FCC bureaucrats to play traffic

cops, micromanaging networks, and deciding which traffic can

or can't be prioritized. The result would be a precipitous

decline in private investment because the companies that

spent billions of dollars building networks could no longer

be certain how the FCC bureaucrats would allow those networks

to be used.

I am reading from this letter, and I will continue. The letter says:

A recent study from New York University found that hundreds

of thousands of jobs would be lost. The tech sector--the

brightest spot in our economy--would be burdened by Federal

regulations the way the rest of the economy has been.

So these are excerpts from Mr. Kerpen's opinion piece that say it is now crunch time to stop the FCC's Internet takeover.

I think these outside groups that are weighing in are showing that just regular consumers--I heard the list of groups that are supporting this rule that has come out. But the citizens who are for free markets and tax reform and for letting our businesses grow and thrive through the American innovation--I like some of the things they have said that I think are very important in this debate.

I urge my colleagues to look at whether we are exercising our responsibility as Members of Congress when we would vote against stopping a Federal agency that has not had a delegation of authority from Congress to regulate in this area. The House of Representatives has already voted in favor of this resolution. We need to send it to the President and say to the President: Congress did not delegate our authority.

It is overstepping its bounds, and furthermore it is going to put a damper on the most thriving part of our economy today, and that is the tech sector. It is where we are, hands down, ahead in the world because we have kept the free markets. Why would we give that up to unelected Federal agencies that have not been asked by Congress to regulate in this area? And if we did, we should be required--because it is our constitutional responsibility to do so--to say exactly what we would ask a policy to be in a new regulation. We have not done that, and we should not allow the Federal agencies, which are appointed but not elected, to take over this area that is so important for our economy.

If we have any guts at all in this Senate, we should stand up for our one-third of the balance of power in the Federal Government and assert ourselves to keep control over runaway Federal agencies that do not answer to anyone.

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

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I Thank the Chair. 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 yield up to 5 minutes of our time to the Senator from Oklahoma.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I yield up to 7 minutes to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. President, I would like to just wrap up, and then I will yield back the rest of our time and we can close this debate because our vote is going to come tomorrow.

I just want to summarize what we have heard today. I just heard the distinguished Senator from Washington State say that without net neutrality we would have more expense to consumers. I really do view this in a different way because I view the potential delay, the regulatory processes, the hurdles that are going to have to be overcome for any kind of preclearance to put a new product on the Internet, gatekeeping for innovation--that is what, in my opinion, is going to increase the cost and cause delays if not freeze many of the innovations that have occurred in our open Internet system.

We now have, because of the FCC's ruling, the requirement for reasonable standards for access to the Internet. There is no definition of ``reasonable.'' I heard the Senator from Minnesota say we need net neutrality in order for Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to be able to grow and prosper. Those entities have grown and prospered-- without net neutrality regulations. They have grown and prospered because we have had free and open access to the Internet. We and our competitors and our businesses that compete overseas have had open and free access. That has been the beauty of the success of the Internet.

Now we see government coming in and saying: You have to be reasonable in what you offer. So if there is a major dump of millions of pages onto the Internet and it is going to slow down, for instance, a hospital network offering rural health care on an emergency basis or some kind of video-streaming that is going out, we have to be able to let the providers have the judgment and let the marketplace work. If there is a problem it was not pointed out by the FCC when they decided to intervene in the Internet among 134 pages of regulations with just 3 paragraphs about possible problems, all of which concluded with the rules that are in place today.

This is clearly a problem that isn't there, which is being manufactured in order to put another government regulation on the books. When the Senator from Massachusetts said this order doesn't regulate the Internet, just the gateways or the on-ramps, that doesn't hold water because if we regulate the on-ramp, we are regulating the Internet. We are causing companies that are providing broadband to not have control of their networks but instead will now have to go before the FCC to justify a new product or service that will give emergency access or quicker access for users who need to have that kind of access.

I hope the Senate will say the FCC has extended beyond any authority Congress has given them, and I hope we will stand for our prerogative in Congress to make the laws and only have regulations come out when we delegate specifically to an agency to put out rules in a particular area, which has not happened in this case.

I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the bill before the Senate--the Rebuild America Jobs Act. The Rebuild America Jobs Act contains a variation of a bill that I cosponsored with Senator Kerry--we call it the BUILD Act. It is the Building and Upgrading Infrastructure for Long-Term Development Act, and so we call it BUILD. But the changes that have been made in the bill that is before us today are untenable, and I cannot support it.

Last March, I introduced the bipartisan BUILD Act along with Senators Kerry, Warner, and Graham. It puts forward a method of addressing our infrastructure needs that I think is the right way forward. The need and demand for greater infrastructure investment is unprecedented. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that a $2.2 trillion investment is needed over the next 5 years to restore our infrastructure to an adequate condition. Ignoring these needs hampers our economic growth, impedes the flow of inter- and intrastate commerce, and slows the development and distribution of domestic energy production. We should consider new, innovative ways of financing our infrastructure. Traditional government mechanisms alone cannot keep pace with our national demand.

Our legislation--Senator Kerry's and mine--creates the American Infrastructure Financing Authority. This would be an independent authority designed to facilitate private investment in critical infrastructure projects. It is designed like a bank, providing loans or loan guarantees for regionally or nationally significant projects in transportation, energy and water sectors.

Let me emphasize that this will not provide grants. Grants will not be given. They will not be allowed. Nationally significant projects or regional projects would be at least $100 million. There is a $25 million category for rural areas, but we are not looking at a stimulus where we go in and provide financing for small projects. This is for dams, for desalination plants, or for an electric grid that isn't working and causing brownouts in major areas.

We are talking about big dollars that are not easily raised in the government sector or the private sector alone because it doesn't make economic sense, unless we put the loans and the loan guarantees together. There is a prohibition against spending more than 50 percent of the project cost, and the other 50 percent has to have come from another source--a private source or a State or local government source.

In addition, there has to be a revenue stream that will have the ability to pay this loan back. We want the loans paid back so that more infrastructure can be built. So we are talking about a revenue stream from, say, water bills, if it is a water desalination plant that is going to provide water for economic development, or if it is a dam that is going to provide electricity, we have electric bills. But we have to have a revenue source. So we have narrowed our legislation so that it will have the ability to pay back the loan. It is going to be something that can work.

In its first 10 years, it is estimated that our BUILD Act would provide $160 billion in financial assistance for major projects like this. So if it would be highways or bridges, there would be a toll that would be necessary for the transportation--something that would have a revenue stream to pay these back but allow them to be built because the private sector is sitting on the sidelines right now.

The bank would not replace our existing Federal funding mechanism, but it would supplement them for the large projects that have a major public benefit. The bank administering this fund would apply sound underwriting principles to assess the risk of a loan or loan guarantee.

The BUILD Act would require an initial appropriation. Senator Kerry and I have committed to identifying a reasonable offset. Additional deficit spending has never been an option for the BUILD Act. So it would be $10 billion that would be taken from a program today and put into this long-term bank so we can match loans and loan guarantees with private funds or State or local funds and do big things, not little things, except in rural areas where there is a $25 million threshold. It is going to be $100 million or more, and no more than 50 percent of it can be from this program.

I appreciate the fact the bill before us incorporates some elements of the BUILD Act and seeks to correct some of the flaws in the previous infrastructure bank proposals that have been put

forward by the administration. However, I think the differences between our BUILD Act and the legislation brought forward by the majority leader take away the bipartisan appeal of the bill.

Let me also say there is in this legislation--in addition to the $10 billion in the long-term plan Senator Kerry and I introduced--a $50 billion stimulus package, which is why I couldn't possibly support this bill. It is another $50 billion stimulus package. I appreciate the need for investment--obviously, that is why I support the BUILD Act--but $50 billion in the bill in addition to the $10 billion bank is more of the same type of stimulus that has not worked. It is more debt. Well, I guess it isn't more debt because they pay for it with a tax, which is even worse. The bill before us has the $50 billion added to it, and it is paid for with a surtax on people who are making more than $1 million a year, and mostly from their businesses. That is why I can't support it. It proposes a permanent tax increase to pay for a temporary spending program. That is bad policy in itself.

Raising taxes on incomes that would harm business owners and job creators is part of the reason people aren't hiring today. The President keeps talking about more taxes on business. On top of the Obama health care plan, it is causing businesses not to hire people, and we have a 9-percent unemployment rate in this country.

So I think it is important we defeat the bill before us and try to come up with something that is more akin to the BUILD Act that Senator Kerry and I have put forward. Data from an August 2011 Treasury report says four out of five people who would be hit by the surtax are business owners--the same people we need to encourage to create jobs.

I think it is going to be essential, if we are going to try to create jobs in our country, that we stop talking about surtaxes on businesses. We have to stop talking about more costs, and we have to stop the overregulation. We have overregulation, the talk of more taxes, and we have the Obama health care plan that is going to have fines and taxes that are coming after the next election when that all comes together. Businesspeople are seeing this and saying: I am going to hold where I am now instead of hiring people and getting our economy jump-started.

So I think job creation should be the key of anything we do in this Congress. It should be our focus. It should be the priority, and that means we should have conditions in the private sector that will create job growth. The bill before us today is simply another $50 billion stimulus plan that we have already seen doesn't work, and it is paid for with a new tax that is going to further stifle business hiring.

Now more than ever we must focus our efforts in this Congress on commonsense measures that will jump-start the economy and make our businesspeople think it is worth hiring. Then we will have a surge in the private sector, which is the sector that can create jobs that will last.

So I am not going to be able to vote for the bill before us, but I would like to urge my colleagues to look at the Kerry-Hutchison bill that offers a long term approach. It is not going to be immediate because it would take up to a year to set up this bill. But we shouldn't be just talking about today. We shouldn't just be talking about something that will jump-start the economy between now and the end of the year. We should also be looking at the long term as well. We should be looking at the long term fiscal situation and how we assure that not only are we trying to jump-start right now but that we are looking forward to the future. That is what a true BUILD Act would do. That is what an infrastructure bank that is put in place with solid principles would do.

The Kerry-Hutchison bill is such a bill. The bill that is before us is not.

I hope we will be able to have a chance for our bill to go through the Finance Committee and to get suggestions from our colleagues on ways to strengthen it. But the bill before us today would hurt our economy, hurt job creation, and that is not the direction we should be going.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak against the Webb amendment to the bill. Senator Webb from Virginia spoke earlier about the purpose of this legislation. I believe if we had the time to work on this amendment we could accommodate the Senator's proposed goals for the commission. However, this has not gone through the Judiciary Committee. It is an authorization of a commission--it is called the National Criminal Justice Commission--which is purporting to look at the entire criminal justice system--Federal, State, and local.

This is an overreach of gigantic proportions. It is certainly within the purview of Congress to do a national commission to look at the Federal criminal justice system, but to go into State and local governments and purport to examine the criminal justice systems of our States and local governments is far beyond the reach of Congress, and it is certainly not a priority we should meet in appropriations bills when we are already in a deficit and debt crisis in this country.

I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the National District Attorneys Association and a letter from the National Association of Police Organizations be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, the letter from the District Attorneys Association looks at an earlier version of the bill which had a $14 million pricetag and the pricetag on this amendment is $5 million. So with that caveat I submit the letter, because the points the District Attorneys Association makes are very valid except for that one error of the amount of money.

However, let's talk about the $5 million. Is it the priority of the Justice Department to have a national commission that purports to go into State and local governments and look at their criminal justice systems at a

time such as this? They are taking the $5 million from the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs administrative account. That is the account that administers the following grant programs, all of which I will not read, but they include: the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Byrne-JAG grants, the National Sex Offender Registry, the Bulletproof Vest grants, the National Stalker Database, and it goes on and on.

So the Senator from Virginia wants to take $5 million from the administrators of this account and put it into looking into the criminal justice systems of our 50 States and whatever local governments they would choose to look at. The Senate position is already $118 million for that account, which is $64 million below the fiscal year 2011 levels. The House has put $79 million in this account. We would be taking away $5 million more for us to go to conference with to do an overreach against States rights in order to fund a commission that is going to look into programs, and take away from the fund grants that are so important to so many of our State and local governments, not to mention the people of our country.

Let's talk about the budgetary decisions of the States; for instance, New York and Vermont or the State of Virginia or Texas or Alabama. How are we going to look at the criminal justice systems with this national commission and say, Oh, we think the priority for New York State and its prison system or its number of district attorneys should meet the Federal standard? Would that be the same standard for the State of Vermont? This is such an overreach, and it is not a priority in these tight budgetary times, in my opinion.

The budgetary decisions of our State and local governments and the criminal justice systems should be done at that level. If there is a massive problem, there will be lawsuits about it. There would be a lawsuit against the Texas prison system. There was one, and it changed the way the Texas prison systems were even built and how much space there was in the cells. If there is a problem, there is a remedy. But we don't need a national commission to come in and tell the State and local governments they have a problem and rearrange the budgetary priorities of those States and local governments.

The GAO looked at this bill as a freestanding bill and they said the definition of ``criminal justice system'' is way too broad. A report on the Federal criminal justice system could be valuable to Congress, which I submit I would agree with. Maybe that would be important. But to be effective, the GAO said, such a report should be narrowly targeted on specific features of the Federal criminal justice system such as law enforcement, courts, detention facilities, number of prosecutors, whether there is a victims rights advocate--they can look at a lot of different things, but they should narrow the scope if they are going to be effective. If Congress is to responsibly and wisely use our taxpayer dollars in these economic times, I think it is essential that we narrow the scope.

Let me mention something that is also mentioned in the District Attorneys Association's letter, which is something that caught my eye when I read this amendment. The 14-member commission is on its face 7 members appointed by Republicans and 7 members appointed by Democrats. So we have a 14-member commission. On its face, seven from each party would pass muster for bipartisan. However, it has the President of the United States appointing two of the Republican members. If we want a commission that is seven and seven, wouldn't it be more fair or pass the test of bipartisanship if Republicans appoint the Republicans and the Democrats appoint the Democrats? This commission would essentially be nine to five, not seven and seven.

I don't know that we have partisan issues in criminal justice. In some areas we probably do but, in the prioritizing of the budget, probably not. Probably there are political differences in our priorities for the criminal justice system, so if we are going to have a fair commission that purports to have a seven-seven makeup, let's make it seven-seven.

The reason we have a rule in this Senate that says we can't authorize on appropriations bills is because we have authorization committees that have hearings, that mark up legislation, that make the necessary changes to accommodate the needs of the majority and the minority and assure that something has at least been vetted. This bill has not been authorized. This comprehensive amendment appointing this national commission to study the criminal justice systems of the Federal, State, and local governments needs a lot of work. I wish to reach out to Senator Webb to work with him to assure that it is a Federal commission looking at the Federal criminal justice system, and perhaps find out what his priorities are for his commission to study, and let's focus on those as the GAO said would be necessary. I would not take the $5 million from the accounts administering the very important grant programs to our State and local governments and to the people who are affected by missing and exploited children, to assure that the State Criminal Alien Assistance program, SCAAP, which helps our border counties in the States that are on the border, accommodate the incarceration of illegal alien criminals. In my State of Texas, the counties on the border don't have the money to incarcerate the prisoners who are illegal aliens and who are Federal responsibility. The administrators of these programs, such as the Mentally Ill Offender Grants, the Cybercrime Economic Program, the Coverdell Forensic Improvement grants, the Adam Walsh Act--we shouldn't be cutting the accounts that administer those programs. That would not be my choice if I had had the ability to work with the Senator from Virginia to accommodate his needs, as an authorization committee would.

This should not be in this bill. If we are going to have a 14-member commission--that is 7 Republicans and 7 Democrats--let's have a fair appointment of those 7 members on each side. To say the President of the United States would appoint two of the Republicans and that is an even distribution, it does not pass the test of what appears to be the fairness in the appointment of the commission.

So I oppose this amendment, and I would like to work with Senator Webb to have a national criminal justice commission that would focus on the national criminal justice system. We do not need to overreach into State and local governments. We do not need to set the priorities for the budgets of States and local governments. We do not have the capacity to do it. I will guarantee, with 14 members, they are not going to represent 50 States and the needs of the States that are small and the States that have large urban areas and the cities that are dealing with these crimes.

We are into vast overreach with this amendment, and it is not the priority, I believe, right now to take $5 million from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Byrne grants that are so important to our State and local governments and the border prosecution funding and the SCAAP funding.

It has not been vetted as we require in the Senate. Unfortunately, the agreement that was made between the majority and minority leaders last night said no points of order would be able to be launched against this amendment. I would have raised a point of order because it is authorizing on an appropriations bill. The reason is, it has not been vetted by the Judiciary Committee, which ought to have taken up this bill and corrected the problems in it before it came to be full blown in an appropriations bill.

I will reiterate that I will work with Senator Webb. I will work on a national commission that studies the national criminal justice system. If we can pinpoint it carefully to the needs he is trying to meet, I will be happy to work with him on that. I will be happy to work with him on the appointment of the commission. If it is supposed to be seven and seven, let's make it seven and seven, not nine and five.

I hope he will withdraw this amendment. I hope the Senate can defeat it, if he does not. Most certainly, if we go to conference with this amendment on this bill, I will do everything in my power to eliminate it, unless it is changed significantly to meet the needs of our country to assure a fair Federal system. We do not need to get into the State and local government

budgetary priorities in this appropriations bill.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Is there time remaining on our side?

Mr. President, this is the most massive encroachment on States rights I have seen in this body. It is $5 million on a priority we should not have.

I will work with the Senator from Virginia to pare it down so a Federal commission will look at the Federal system.

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from New Hampshire on behalf of the leader. She has brought to the floor an outstanding amendment that needs to be addressed because this is an issue that is certainly on a lot of people's minds, as to why we would be using our judicial system for enemy combatants. She has articulated it so well, as the former attorney general of New Hampshire, and we appreciate so much that she has brought this amendment. It is going to get a lot of support from the American people as well as Members of the Senate.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, today, very shortly, we will vote on President Obama's nominee to be the Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Mr. John Bryson. This is the most senior position in the Department, which is tasked with promoting business, creating jobs, and spurring economic growth. While this has always been important, it is very appropriate now, with the unemployment rate at 9.1 percent.

The administration has talked about job creation and the need for regulatory reform. But respectfully, I have not seen regulatory reform yet a priority on the President's agenda. You might not find a pricetag for regulation, but there is no question that businesses know when they are overregulated. It stifles their ability to create jobs. This year alone regulations are projected to cost U.S. taxpayers $2.8 trillion, and new regulations imposed by the administration in 2011 would cost over $60 billion. So during the confirmation process, when Mr. Bryson was before our committee, I asked him about his view on overregulation. He stated that he would be a voice in the administration for simplifying regulations and eliminating those where the cost of regulation exceed the benefits.

I believe his business background qualifies him to address that issue. It would give him the experience to be helpful in bringing back the regulations that are stifling the growth of business and therefore the job creation in our country.

I also appreciated that Mr. Bryson said in the confirmation hearing that the National Labor Relations Board was wrong in trying to keep Boeing from choosing where it would manufacture its products. On the corporate tax rate, the United States currently has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, behind Japan, which has said it will lower its rate, ultimately leaving the United States with the dubious distinction of having the highest corporate tax rate in the world. Lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate should be a substantial part of any tax reform, and although that tax policy is beyond the Commerce Secretary's responsibility, I did ask Mr. Bryson whether he believed our corporate tax rate was too high and would he be a voice for lowering it. He said he would. I thought that was a very important statement for him to make, and important for the Secretary of Commerce to commit to doing.

We have now passed the free-trade agreements that held up consideration of his nomination. If confirmed, I expect Mr. Bryson to take advantage of the agreements and work to assist our businesses with the efforts to reach out and expand new markets with these new free- trade agreements. Mr. Bryson made statements before the Commerce Committee supporting cap-and-trade legislation because he felt that the electric utility industry--he was the chairman of a major corporation in that industry--needed regulatory certainty. That was his reason for coming out for cap and trade. I disagreed with him on that. I agree with many of my colleagues that that is not the right approach for America. We should not have cap and trade, as some have called it, cap and tax. But Mr. Bryson again said that he had no interest in pursuing that kind of legislation if he is confirmed as Secretary of Commerce.

I would point out that Mr. Bryson has the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers. They will be major constituents he will represent in trying to build business for our country. He is also supported by six former Secretaries of Commerce, including Secretaries that served in the administrations of George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, and Richard Nixon.

In summary, I believe the President should be given deference in selecting the members of his Cabinet unless there are serious issues against the nominee. I have voted against a few of the nominees of some of the Presidents while I have been in the Senate, but I do it rarely and very carefully, because I think that elections have consequences. I believe the President has the right to make his decisions.

I do not believe there are issues that rise to that level in the case of John Bryson. He does have a business background. He is well regarded by many colleagues who have called me on his behalf, who have been with him in the business world. I do not see any issue that would cause me not to vote for his nomination. I will support his nomination. I will work alongside him to be a voice for job creation in our country. I hope he is confirmed. I think he will be confirmed. I would hope he would then work with other Members of Congress who want to help him be an effective voice for business and investment in America and create the jobs that will get this unemployment rate back down and get people back to work.

I do not have people on my side yet who are going to speak, but there are two others who wish to speak. I will put us in a quorum call until they get to the floor and then that will probably allow us to yield back. I will ask my colleagues, any who are listening, if they wish to speak on behalf of or against Mr. Bryson to please come to the floor now so we might be able to know that everyone has been satisfied and we will be able to take this to a vote. I do think Mr. Bryson has waited very patiently for a very long time to have this come to a conclusion. I hope we can do that on as quick a basis as we can, giving everybody the ability to talk if they so choose.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished senior Senator from Arizona. I want to say that he was chairman of the Commerce Committee and did a fine job. I am so appreciative that he put a perspective on the role of advice and consent in the Senate, because there are times when all of us have said the issues regarding a certain nomination are so great that they would not allow us to vote for confirmation. But that is not the case here. I do think Senator McCain made the eloquent statement that Mr. Bryson might not be his choice, but that is not the question before us. He is qualified for this job. He has the business background we need. We certainly need a Secretary of Commerce to be able to help our businesses grow and create jobs, and elections do have consequences.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for taking the time to come and make that part of the record complete. I am pleased we are having this kind of discourse. I think the record will be complete, and I believe that when our colleagues think about the importance of the President having his nominee for this job, and the qualifications that Mr. Bryson has, even if you disagree on issues--which I certainly do, Senator McCain does, and Senator Barrasso does, and we are going to disagree on issues; that happens every day. But does it rise to the level of voting against this nomination? That is the question we have to answer. I thought Senator McCain answered it very well.

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

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

Mr. President, every one who has asked for speaking time on my side has spoken, and I yield back the remainder of our time.