Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I recognize James Williams, a spring intern in my Washington, DC office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

James is a graduate of Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, FL. Currently, he is a senior at Catholic University of America majoring in politics and minoring in philosophy and theology. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor today because of the good news I have heard recently, that the Senate is going to spend the next couple of weeks, maybe the whole month, talking about tax policy. I think that is very encouraging, because this is one of the issues I was hoping we would deal with early on, when I got here last year. And I am, quite frankly, surprised it has taken this much time, a year and a half, to pivot to this issue. I am hopeful--I don't know if it has been determined yet--but I am hopeful on this legislation currently before the Senate, the minority will be given an opportunity

to introduce ideas. I think that is important for this place to work well.

I have read the history of this distinguished place and it only works well, it only functions when the ideas of both sides are allowed to be heard. I know we can count votes here, and from time to time we may have a chance to pass a few things, but when one is in the minority, as I am, it is harder to get ideas passed. But I would love to at least get a vote on some of these ideas we are hoping to push forward, and our hope is that will happen. So let's hope that works out.

What I want to remind us all about a little bit today is what our goal is. We can't arrive at the right solutions if we don't know exactly what it is we are trying to get to. Our goal, I believe--and there is a consensus now throughout this country, and it is actually something that unites both political parties--needs to be to grow the economy. That is our goal, to grow the economy. And what will result from growing the economy is that good will happen for everybody.

How does the economy grow is the first fundamental question we have to answer. The economy grows when two things happen: either someone starts a business or someone grows their existing business. That is what leads to economic growth. It is that simple. Someone starts a new business because they think they can make money at it or someone goes into their existing business and says, I think we can make more money, let's grow this thing. That is how the economy grows.

So the issue before us here as Federal policymakers has to be what can the Federal Government do to help that kind of growth. In essence, what the Federal Government can do is to encourage people and make it easier for people to either start a business or to grow their business. So if that is our goal, then every time a measure comes before this body--tax policy, regulatory policy--what we should ask ourselves is, does this make it easier or harder for someone to start a business? Does it make it easier or harder for someone to grow an existing business? Does this measure make it easier or harder for the economy to grow? Because if we are indeed united by this goal of growing the economy, that should be the measure of anything we take on. And it is through that lens that I want to examine some of what we are talking about right now. Because it seems to me, at least in some of the policies I have heard proposed this week, that maybe some folks have the goal wrong. Because if we closely examine some of these policies, it sounds as if the goal is, let's take a limited economy that isn't growing and let's divide it. And primarily it sounds like, let's take this limited economy that isn't growing and let's allow us to take money from people who are maybe making a little too much, give it to the government, and the government can then spend it on behalf of people who maybe aren't making enough.

I know that may sound appealing to the folks who are among those Americans who aren't making enough money, but I want you to know something: It never works. That idea never works. Here is why it never works. It actually never works because, first of all, the money doesn't get to you. When you give government money to spend, it invariably doesn't usually spend it very well. In fact, when you give government money to spend, the people who end up getting that money are the people who can afford to hire people to come to Washington and influence how the money is spent. So sometimes the money never even gets to you, if in fact you allow the government to do this.

But it is more complicated than that. It can actually cost people their jobs, and here is why. How you create businesses or how you expand an existing business is pretty straightforward. Someone is in business, someone makes some money or gets a hold of some money and they decide to take that money and invest it. They use the money they have made and they reinvest it in their business so the business grows or they use the money they have made to start a brandnew business. This stuff works. This is how the American economy has grown and how we became the most prosperous people on Earth.

I know this works not just because I read about it in a magazine. I know it works because I have lived it. As I have detailed and talked about in the past on this floor, my father was a bartender. He worked at a hotel as a bartender. My mother had a lot of different jobs, but for a while she worked as a maid in a hotel. The reason I talk about this is to explain how and why my mom and dad had a job that paid them money to raise us and give us a chance to do all the things my siblings and I were able to do. Someone made some money, they took that money and opened up this hotel. That is why my parents had a job. They didn't have a job because the President of the United States back in 1965 or 1975 gave them a job. They had a job because someone who made money took that money and used it to start a new business or to grow an existing business and hire them. They also had a job because other people who had money decided to use that money to go on vacation and they came to Miami Beach or to Las Vegas, when I lived in Las Vegas, and they spent that money at these hotels.

The point is, people had money, and they either invested it or spent it. And that allowed a bartender and a maid--my mother and father--to raise my siblings and me and to give us opportunity. That was true in the 1950s, in the 1960s, in the 1970s, in the 1980s, in the 1990s, and it is still true. That is what is needed to grow this economy. And the problem is, if we go after these people, if we go after the money they have made and give it to the government, maybe they will decide not to open that new business or maybe they will decide this is not the year to take that vacation or instead of taking the 5-day vacation, they take the 3-day vacation. And you know who gets hurt? The bartender and the maid and the people who work in these places. Because money has to go somewhere. If you are taking it out of the hands of the people who invest it and spend it, they can't invest it or spend it, and it is people who are trying to make it--like my parents were--who get hurt by it.

So we have to get our goal right. Because if our goal is to grow the economy, we don't have to call trick plays. What we can do at the Federal level to grow the economy is pretty straightforward. All we have to do is talk to the people who grow the economy. If we go out and talk to the people who have a great idea and are trying to start a business, they will tell us what they are looking for. It is pretty straightforward stuff: tax reform.

What do we mean by tax reform? Simple. We want a Tax Code that is stable, predictable, and affordable. Of course we have to have taxes. Government needs revenue to be able to pay for what we all expect from government. But it has to be a predictable system and it has to be an affordable system. If taxes get too high, people may decide not to invest it in this country or to leave it in the bank, and that doesn't help anybody. So the point is we need to have a Tax Code that is stable, predictable, and affordable.

We need regulations that are the same: stable, affordable, and predictable. Look, we need regulations; right? I want this water to be clean. I don't want the water to poison me. We don't want to walk out on the street and breathe in air that will hurt us. There is a role for regulation. The problem is that most Federal regulations are set by bureaucrats who work for the government, and all they think about is can this regulation maybe help. They do not think at all about the impact of that regulation on businesses. That is not part of the equation. When they sit down and write a regulation, that is not part of the equation at all. So we end up having these regulations that may not even help that much but hurt a lot; that help wipe out entire industries, but the impact on helping the environment or whatever else is nebulous at best. So we have to change that.

That is why we need to pass a law here like the REINS Act, which says any regulation that has an economic impact beyond a certain amount of money should have to be approved by elected people, who are accountable, who have to measure both the effectiveness of the regulation but also whether it is going to cost jobs or wipe out an industry. Because that is important too. Protecting our industries and our sources of job creation is as important as some of these other things we

are trying to protect through regulations and they have to be balanced against one another. We do not want to simply be making decisions in a vacuum.

Along those lines, something that is both a tax and a regulation is ObamaCare. Look, we have a health insurance problem in America. There is no denying that. But there are better ways to deal with it. The problem is this bill that passed has created a tremendous amount of uncertainty. For example, it says if you have more than 50 full-time employees, there are certain requirements you have to meet. So imagine if you are a company with 48 or 49 employees. This may not be the year to hire the 50th. And maybe you are going to be the 50th, but now you don't get hired or, worse, maybe you will decide this is the year to turn all your employees into part-time employees. That is not good for the workers. Yet that is the impact this law is having, not to mention the fact it is a tax increase.

That is what the IRS does. The IRS collects taxes. And guess who you have to prove you have insurance to. And not just any old insurance, but insurance they deem to be acceptable. The IRS. Millions of Americans now every year will have to prove to the IRS they have insurance or they will owe the IRS money. That is a tax, and that is not going to help job creation, especially if you are a small business.

I outlined this last week. Imagine a small business run by a husband and wife with two kids, and the business--not them, but their business--makes $95,000 a year. It will cost them between $4,000 to $6,000 to buy health insurance. If they do not, they will owe the IRS $2,000. Tell me that is good for that business. Or imagine if you are thinking about going into business and you realize this is what is going to happen to you and you decide not to go into business. That is not good for growth. That is why this law needs to be repealed and it needs to be replaced.

Something else we need in this country is a pro-American energy policy. Do people realize the American innovator has come up with this technology over the last 5 years that now has made us a very energy- rich country? I don't know if people fully understand how energy-rich America is. If you want a small glimpse of what it can mean to our future, go to North Dakota. They are having a jobs boom. They can't find enough people to work there.

Energy is important and we need to start behaving like an energy-rich country, with a true all-of-the-above strategy where the energies we choose are decided by the marketplace and not by politicians. When politicians decide which energy source to use, you know who wins? The people with the best lobbyists. The people with the best lobby. The people with the most political influence. That is how we got a Solyndra-type situation, where a company that was going to go bankrupt got all this money--your tax dollars--and meanwhile America is sitting on over 100-some-odd years of natural gas at our disposal and no concise national energy policy to utilize it.

Let me tell you why energy matters. If we can get energy costs down and stable and predictable, manufacturing will start coming back to America. That is one of the leading costs of manufacturing, energy. We are an energy-rich country. Some of those factories that closed, we can actually get them to come back here. Imagine what that would do for economic growth, not to mention the fact that America could potentially now begin to sell overseas as well, creating yet another industry and all the things that come with it.

How about free and fair trade? There is an emerging middle class all over the world now. One of the great things that has happened over the last 20 years is that all over the world there are now people who a decade ago were living in poverty and can now afford to buy the products we invent and build, people all over the world, by the way, who can now afford to take vacations. And do you know where they want to come? To the United States of America. They want to come to Florida. They also want to come here.

I think that is fantastic, that now there are millions of people all over the world who can afford to visit the United States and leave their money at our hotels, at our restaurants, and at our amusement parks. That creates jobs, that creates growth, free and fair trade, that allows the American people to build things we can sell overseas to other places and lowers the cost of buying certain things here.

Last year, we ratified the free trade agreement with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. We are already seeing the economic benefits of that in south Florida. Imagine if we were able do that with more countries in a free and fair way. It has to be fair.

One last thing we could probably do to help grow this economy is deal with the long-term debt. And that is what it is, it is a long-term debt problem that hovers all over all of this conversation and creates uncertainty. People are afraid--especially people with lots of money are afraid--to invest in the American economy because they look at this debt problem, they look at this political process's inability to deal with it, and they think, Do you know what. That country is destined for confiscatory tax rates. They are going where Europe is going. We don't want to invest in a country that is going to wind up like Europe in 5 years. That is why we have to deal with the long-term debt, and the sooner the better.

To deal with the long-term debt, by the way, you have to deal with what is causing it. That is why it is so important we save Medicare. Medicare is a very important program. My mother is on Medicare. I would never support anything that hurts my mother or people like her. But people in my generation need to understand that if we want to keep Medicare the way it is for our parents and if we want Medicare to even exist when we retire, Medicare is going to have to look different for us, for 41-year-olds. We have to save Medicare. And to deal with the long-term debt, we have to deal with that. That is what is driving part of the debt. That is not being driven by foreign aid, which is less than 1 percent of our budget. The debt is not being driven by food stamp programs. The debt is not being driven by defense spending.

Look, if money is being misspent or wasted, it is never a good idea to do that. If there are ways to save money on foreign aid, we should save it. If there are ways to save money in the food stamp program, we should save it. If there are ways to save money in the defense budget, we should save it. But that is not what is driving our long-term debt. To pretend we are going to get 100 percent of our savings from 25 or 20 percent of our budget leads to the kind of catastrophic cuts we talk about in this town, because no one wants to touch the big issues that have to be dealt with.

What would happen if we did these six things? Let's say that tomorrow, overnight, magically these things happened: We got real tax reform, real regulatory reform, we repealed and replaced ObamaCare, we had a pro-American energy strategy, we expanded free and fair trade, and we had a plan in place that began to deal with the long-term debt in a serious and sustainable way. Let me tell you what would happen: explosive economic growth, primarily by the creation of jobs.

Do you know what more jobs means? It means, No. 1, more taxpayers. It means you can now generate revenue for government to pay for what we all want government to do, and you don't have to raise tax rates to do that. It means you have more taxpayers who are now paying into the tax system who give you the revenue you need to bring the debt under control. Everything gets easier if the economy grows. The debt gets easier, our budgets get easier.

Jobs also mean more customers for your business. If someone is unemployed, it is hard for them to spend money. It is hard for them to buy a house, much less the things that go in it. It is hard for them to take vacations. More jobs means more stability for your business or for the place you work in. More jobs means more taxpayers, it means more customers for your business. And, by the way, it means a more stable society, a place where hard work can earn them a decent wage so they can save money for their kids' college, so they can save money for their retirement, so they can buy a home and furnish it, so they can afford to take a couple weeks vacation a year with their families. Millions of Americans can't do that anymore.

Millions of Americans have done everything we have asked of them. They

went to school, they graduated. They were told if they did that, they could find a job that paid them a decent wage, and they are struggling to do that now.

By the way, all of the strategies for growth aren't at the Federal level. It is important that States take on the issue of education reform. It is important for us as parents to be honest with our kids. In the 21st century, it is going to be hard to find a job if all you have is a high school diploma. It is that simple.

If you look at the unemployment rate between people who have a college degree or a post-high school degree and those who don't, it is stunning. It is stunning. If you don't have more than a high school education, you are going to struggle to succeed in this new century. We have to let our kids understand that. It is our job as parents and as a community to do that.

By the way, it is important for us to work with the States, as I outlined earlier, to modernize our education system. Why have we stigmatized career education? Why can't we graduate kids from high school with both a diploma and an industry certification and a career? We need to begin to teach our kids to compete with the world, not just with other States. These are other things that have to happen as well.

The point I wanted to drive today is we need to remind ourselves of what the goal is here. The goal is growth. The goal is, What can we do at the Federal level to help grow the economy? Ultimately, the economy grows because of the private sector, because someone who has made some money takes that money and invests it by starting a new business or by growing their existing business. We should find ways to make that easier and encourage people to do that. That has to be our goal. It doesn't require trick plays; it doesn't require some complicated new gimmick. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. The American people haven't run out of good ideas. Americans haven't forgotten how to start businesses or even entire new industries. Even as I speak to you right now, I am 100 percent convinced that within walking distance of this building there is someone somewhere drawing up the great next American company business plan on the back of a napkin or a scrap piece of paper. And if we give them a chance to do it, they are going to do it.

We are still the same people we have always been. There is nothing wrong with the American people. They just need a little help from their government. I think if we get our goals right around here, we can do a few simple but important things that allow Americans to do, once again, what we do better than any country or any people in the history of the world, and that is create prosperity and create opportunity.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded and that I be recognized to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, as we know, the Supreme Court ruled on the health care law, and we have had a lot of phone calls and e-mails. People want to know what this means above the politics. Sometimes I think that in Washington everything is analyzed over what this means for the elections and what this means to the Republicans or the Democrats. What I hope to do today by coming to the floor of the Senate is to respond to some of my constituents from Florida, and folks around the country who have called as well, to show what this means in real life and what my position is toward this moving forward. So that is what I hope to do here today in the few minutes I have while the Senate waits on the pending matter.

Let's begin by understanding what has happened today. The Supreme Court doesn't decide whether something is a good idea or a bad idea; the Supreme Court's job is to decide whether something is constitutional. Today, by a vote of 5 to 4--four of the Justices disagreed, but five of the Justices, including the Chief Justice, decided that a key component of the health care law that passed the year before I was elected was constitutional. They said it was constitutional because it was under the taxing powers of the Congress. In essence, they said that this mandate, this requirement is constitutional because it is a tax.

That is curious, of course, because the President denied that it was a tax. I looked it up. I remember a specific interview the President gave while this was debated where he was asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC: Is this a tax? He denied it. He denied it and said there was no way this was a tax. If I could find the right quote in here just to make sure I am not misquoting anybody in this day and age of fact- checking, the President specifically said that the notion that it was a tax was wrong. However, months later, when this appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States, his lawyers argued that, no, this is constitutional because this falls within the power of the government to tax. So that is important because that is the reason this law still stands on the books today.

Let's remind ourselves of what a mandate is. This is not a mandate that the government provide an individual with insurance, this is a mandate that a person find insurance for himself or herself. For a mandate to work--and anyone who has been for a mandate will admit this to you--the penalty for not buying insurance has to be severe enough so that the person will decide to buy the insurance; otherwise, people will just pay the fine and not get the insurance.

So what does this mean in the real world? I found a blog post from 2009. The numbers may have changed a little bit, I am not 100 percent sure, but this is from when the House was deliberating at the time. An economist took this up on July 14, 2009, and he actually used a couple of real-world examples. This may be very similar to you, so listen carefully.

The first example he used is of a gentleman who is single and earns about $50,000 a year, which is four times the Federal poverty level, so he wouldn't qualify for the subsidies under the bill. Now, he is a single 50-year-old nonsmoker, small business employee. That means he works for a small business that doesn't provide health insurance and isn't required to because the law requires businesses that have more than 50 employees to provide insurance. If he works at a place that has five employees, they are not required to offer health insurance. So to reiterate, he is 50 years old, works at a small business that is not required to offer insurance, and makes $50,000 before taxes. He doesn't have insurance. Now, he cannot afford a bare-bones policy. This economist went through ehealthinsurance.com and found that the cheapest policy he could find was $1,600 a year. Depending on where you live in the country, when they start taking out taxes, $50,000 doesn't add up to a lot of money. This is middle class. He can't afford a $1,600-a- year policy, so instead he would have to pay a $1,150 fine, which is a tax. That is what he would have to pay. Guess what. Even after paying the $1,150, he still doesn't have insurance. This is the real-world impact of the mandate.

Here is another example. This one actually uses my home State, so I picked this one. A married couple with two kids has a small business. They run a small tourist shop in Orlando, FL. I am not sure if these are real people or if it is hypothetical, but I like the fact that they picked Orlando, FL. The husband and wife make $90,000 a year at their small business. That is what the business makes, again, before taxes. They have a small business making $90,000. Between all the expenses they have and all the other tax components that come up, it is middle class. This is middle class, OK? These are two employees, but their wages exceed the amount to qualify for the small business tax credit. Because their business is so small, there will be no financial penalty for a business that only has two employees, but as individuals they still have to buy health insurance for themselves and for their children.

So here they are, husband and wife, 40 years old, two kids, they own a small tourist shop, and they are the only employees, making $90,000 a year together. The cheapest insurance they can get is a high-deductible plan with about a $6,000-a-year annual deductible. It costs them about $3,800 a year. The fine is $2,000 a year. So that is probably what they end up having to do now. This is a $2,000 increase in their taxes through a fine, and they still don't have insurance to show for it.

This is the third example I want to give, and this is not part of the analysis. I pointed out that the law now requires any business with more than 50 full-time employees to offer health insurance. Now, offering health insurance is a good thing. We should try to encourage that and provide opportunities for businesses to do it. Imagine you are one of these businesses and you are asking yourself if you should hire the 51st or 55th employee. Should I grow my business? Well, as a result of this new mandate, maybe you decide not to now. How much will this cost us? It is $2,000 per employee if they don't comply. How much will this cost us? Maybe this is not the year to add a few jobs. Even worse, maybe they should become a part-time business.

I heard a lot about this in my campaign from franchises. Taco Bell and McDonald's are not owned by Taco Bell or McDonald's, they are owned by a small business owner. They are going to decide to make everyone part time because they can't afford to pay the fine. They can't afford to pay for the insurance. This would be a bad idea no matter what the economy is because now we are discouraging them from growing their businesses. No matter what the economy looked like, this would be a bad idea.

Let me explain why it is worse. No. 1, guess who gets to enforce all of this stuff. Guess whom they have to answer to. Guess who they have to prove they have insurance. Your neighborhood, friendly IRS. That is who is in charge of enforcing this. Millions of Americans now have an IRS problem because they don't have health insurance.

This idea that they don't have health insurance--because if we read some of these statements and interviews that the President gave when he said it wasn't a tax, it made it sound as though they don't want to buy insurance and they want to use the money for something else because they are irresponsible. They are not irresponsible. They can't afford it. There is not a private market for them to buy insurance because they can only buy insurance from their States. If they live in Florida and there is some company in California that wants to sell them insurance, too bad, they can't buy it. That is ridiculous. That is what we should be changing here. These people are not doing it because they don't want to be responsible. They can't afford it. Their house is upside down. They are making half as much and working twice as long. Their kids want to go to college. Everything has gotten more expensive, including gas, milk, their water bill, and electricity bill. On top of that, we are going to hit them with this?

We just got a report today that shows that the economy barely grew in the first 3 months of this year. It was less than 2 percent. Our economy is not growing. When it is not growing, the debt gets worse, the unemployment gets worse, everything gets worse. We should not be doing anything in Washington that makes it harder for people to grow this economy. Why would we do something such as this to people? Why would we hit the owner of a tourist shop with a $2,000-a-year tax or else the IRS is going to chase him around? Why would we hit this guy who is 50 years old, trying to make a living in the world working for a small business, with a $1,000-a-year tax when we are trying to grow our economy?

Health insurance is a real problem. It is. I wish more Americans could get their health insurance the way Congress gets it. We get it very simply. We get to choose, depending on which State we are from, between 8 to 10 companies, and we can decide. If we want a higher copayment, we pay less premium and vice versa. We get to choose. Most Americans don't have that choice. They get their insurance from their job and their job tells them: This is your insurance plan. Pick a plan out of this book. Those are the kinds of things we should be working on.

So apart from everything else, this is a terrible idea because it hurts our ability to grow our economy. This is the real-life impact of this bill. This is the impact it is going to have, and we are going to see it. We are going to see it in a further downturn in our economy and in slower economic growth. This is going to have a real impact. This is a big deal. People across this country and across Florida have every right and every reason to be worried about the impact this is going to have on them. This is a middle-class tax increase, and millions of Americans now have an IRS problem. People will now have to, for the first time in American history, prove they have health insurance or they are going to have to deal with the IRS. I guarantee that is not good for small business. I guarantee that is not good for the middle class. I guarantee that is not good for economic growth.

That is where we are today. If there is anything I hope we can do--I wasn't here when the health care bill passed, but I hope some of my colleagues who voted for this will think to themselves: This is not what we intended. We want to help people who are uninsured but not like this. This is never what we wanted to do. I hope enough reasonable minds will come together to either suspend or repeal this, and let's start from scratch. Let's come up with a real plan to help deal with the health insurance crisis in America.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 2166.

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

Madam President, this amendment would amend the National Labor Relations Act to allow employers to give merit-based compensation increases to individual employees, even if those increases are not part of the collective bargaining agreement. Essentially, this will make the union contract wage a minimum, while giving employers the flexibility to reward diligent employees for their hard work. The bottom line is that today, if you work at one of these firms and the employer wants to give you a raise, they can't do it because it goes against the collective bargaining amount. So this amendment would allow them to do that.

That is a brief explanation of the amendment.

Madam President, I disagree. And I know we are now going to vote on this matter, so I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I have followed with great interest this week the conversation in the Senate about student loans, the issue we are currently on, to proceed to a bill on student loan interest. I have followed it with great interest for a couple of reasons.

First of all, in the State of Florida, obviously, and across the country, there are thousands--maybe hundreds of thousands--of people who either have student loans and are paying them back or are relying on them to go to school in the future. So it is totally an issue that affects the State of Florida, where I come from.

I have a personal interest in the student loan issue as well. I think I have said on the floor before that my parents worked very hard, but they were never able to save enough money to pay for my college education. So I relied on grants and on loans for undergraduate education, but especially for my law school education. I came back to Miami to go to law school. I am glad I went to the University of Miami. I am proud to have gone there, and I think the education I got there, my legal education, was very good. It also happened to be very expensive. I relied on student loans to be able to pay that, so much so that when I graduated from law school in 1996 I graduated with a law degree and a significant amount of student debt that I had accumulated throughout 7 years of study.

In fact, I am still paying one of those loans today. I think--I may be wrong, but I know of one--I know of only one other Senator who is paying student loans right now. I pay, as I have joked in the past, about $723 a month to somebody named Sallie Mae, which is, all joking aside, a servicer that collects on these loans. So it is an issue I understand and care about on a personal level, as well as because of the people I represent.

This issue we are discussing this week has allowed me to use it as a point of illustration to the people back home who are watching this debate. After having spent my first year here, one of the questions I get the most is, What is it like in the Senate?

Let me begin by saying I am honored and privileged to serve here. There isn't a day that I don't walk into this building, even into this very room, and not be taken aback by the history that has been made on this floor, by the great men and women who have served our country from it, and by the wonderful Americans with whom I serve even now. I have bragged to people who are watching or to whom I have spoken that I have never had a bad experience with anyone in the Senate in the year and a half I have been here, and I am very proud to be a part of this institution.

However, there are things about it that trouble me. Particularly, at this moment in American history, and maybe as a result of what is happening this week, circumstances allow me to illustrate that better than any other week since I have been here.

Everyone agrees that interest rates on student loans cannot go up. Everyone agrees. There hasn't been a debate on that. I haven't run into anybody in either party who has come to me and said: Let the interest rate go up. Let students pay more. There isn't any argument about that. The argument is simply this: How do we pay for it? We have to pay for it because if we are going to keep the interest rates down on these federally subsidized loans, we have to pay for it. We have to find the money from somewhere to pay for it. So the debate and the disagreement, to the extent it is a complicated disagreement--and I don't believe it is--the disagreement is not about the student loan interest rate; the disagreement is about how we pay for the cost of keeping the rate low for another year. There is a difference of opinion.

I am new to the Senate. I am not new to legislation. I spent 9 years in the Florida Legislature and 2 years as the Speaker. We dealt with complicated issues there as well. What we would do in those instances where there was a disagreement, not on what we wanted to accomplish but on how to get there, is we worked on it. We would sit people down and say it is not that much money in terms of Federal standards--it sounds crazy to say that because we are talking about billions of dollars--but from a Federal standpoint, it is not that complicated an issue. Let's sit down. Let's get some like-minded people together and let's figure out a bipartisan way to pay for what we all agree we need to do. That is the normal, regular way to deal with an issue such as this.

That is not what has happened. Why hasn't that happened? Why have smart, well-educated, intelligent people who serve in this Chamber not met and discussed a way to pay for this? It is really not that complicated. It wouldn't take that long to come up with a way to pay for it that both sides agree on. Why hasn't that happened?

The answer to that question is something people back home are not going to like, and people who are here today visiting are not going to like to hear, and whoever is watching on television right now isn't going to like. The reason is because that is the way things have been since I have gotten here. It is about politics.

Shocking as that may be, there is politics in this process. That is what is influencing us today.

A few weeks ago, the President made a decision that this was an issue he wanted to use. His campaign folks made a decision that student loan debt and the interest rate was a perfect opportunity to use as, yet again, another wedge issue. The latest wedge issue, and we have seen a series of them, is let's campaign on the idea that Republicans are not in favor of students, and let's use the student loan issue as an example of that. Of course, those plans kind of got messed up when Republicans said: We agree with you. We can't let student interest rates go up either. So they were off balance for a couple of days.

By the way, the President continued to travel the country and campaign on keeping student loan rates down even though no one was against them. He was campaigning against his opponents on this issue even though there were no opponents on this issue.

But, nevertheless, after a couple of days of figuring out they were going to lose this wedge issue, they came up with a second way to deal with it; that is, let's bring this issue to a vote on the Senate floor, but let's build it in such a way--let's put a bill on the floor of the Senate that we know will fail, that we know Republicans can't vote for. It wasn't: let's meet and see where we can agree on how to pay for this so we can get something done. It was: let's put a bill on the floor that we know Republicans will never support, designed specifically to fail, so we can then spend the week talking about this on the Sunday talk shows and speeches on the floor and missives from the campaign. It is about messaging.

In a country where our national debt now equals the size of our economy; in a country where we are 5, 6 months away from catastrophic increases in taxes; in a country where just last Friday we learned that job creation and job growth is stagnant, where millions of Americans have been out of work for 2 years or longer; in a country where millions of Americans have stopped looking for work because they have become so depressed, the Senate has wasted yet another week on a show when, in fact, this is an easy issue for us to have come together and solved.

This is not new, by the way. This has been the mode of operation here for most of the weeks I have been in the Senate. It is a pretty familiar pattern. The campaign of the President decides on an issue they want to use to divide Americans for electoral purposes, the Senate offers up a bill they know Republicans will vote against, and then they spend a week giving speeches on it. The only difference is they are doubling down: We are going to vote on the exact same thing a second time, just to drive the point home.

Here is why this bothers me. No. 1, there are real issues this country faces, issues that deserve a sense of urgency, issues that deserve every single person who serves here to solve. This is one of them, by the way. We don't have time to waste on shows. It bothers me.

The second reason it bothers me is these are real people who are being impacted by this issue. There are real people out there who, because they can't find a job when they graduate, have to get a forbearance. Forbearance

means they have to call their lender and say they can't pay their loans. Do my colleagues know what happens when we get a forbearance on our loans? It compounds. It sits there. It is delayed. It is not delinquent, but it compounds. The interest rate is added to the principal. So by the time a person starts paying it, their loan is even bigger than the loan they took out to go to college.

There are other people who can only afford to make X amount of payments because they are not making as much money. Maybe they didn't find the job they thought they were going to get, so all they can do is pay interest. So that means by the time they finish paying off these loans, their kids will be in college.

Let me tell my colleagues what it means in the real life of someone who has these loans because I still have them. What it means in the life of a person who has a loan such as this is the following: They can't save for their own kids' college, which means not only will they have their student loan debt, but their children will be stuck with it as well.

What bothers me about this issue is that instead of solving it, we have spent the week playing a game with it while real people are out there scared to death--real students, real parents, real families who are facing the threat of not just an increase in the interest rate but of an economy that doesn't have a job for them.

Do we think the interest rate is the biggest risk these people are facing? It is not. The interest rate is a problem. Not having a job is a catastrophe. The interest rate could be zero. If a person doesn't have a job, how are they going to pay it? That is the No. 1 issue facing these graduates. No one is doing anything about it.

Here is what I suggest. If this was a place that was really working to solve problems, what we would have done and what we would do right now is stop this process, go back there somewhere, get a few people together who know how to solve this, and come back here. I guarantee that if we decided we wanted to solve it, it would not take long.

Here is what else I guarantee. This is going to get solved. My colleagues can mark my words. A few weeks from now they will come up with a deal or a bill that will have enough votes to pass the House and Senate, and this will get solved. But not before we score political points, right? This will get solved, but not before the people who care more about politics than policy score their political points on this issue.

Now, look, I have been around politics. I understand this is an election year and election year stuff is going to happen. But why are we playing with the lives of real people? These are real people who are hurting, and their lives and their experiences and their worries are being used as a pawn in a political game. And it is wrong.

I will make another prediction to my colleagues. Next week it will be another wedge issue of the week. Next week we will be right back here with another bill that was designed to fail on purpose so we can get another week's worth of talking points on yet another issue.

The good news is--people in this city, unfortunately, think they are smarter than they really are. People back home know all of this. They can see it for what it is. People aren't dumb. The American people certainly aren't dumb. They can see right through this stuff, and they understand exactly what is happening.

So my suggestion would be that on this issue, let's come together. Let's say this is one of the issues that is so important, that impacts so many people in such a significant way, that it should be above politics. Let's get together over the next 48 hours. It doesn't seem as though this place is overworked when we look around the room.

What are we doing all week? What is going on all week? We voted on a few judges, and we have given a bunch of speeches. Why don't we go somewhere and get a group of people to work on this issue and come back with a solution? This can be solved.

What is going on now is a disservice to the people who sent us here. They deserve better. They really do. The American people deserve better. The people we represent, the people who hired us to do the job we have now, deserve better than this sort of theater. The Senate has become a theater. It has become a show. That is why people get grossed out by politics. That is why people watch the news at night and just don't understand this whole thing. They have a right to be frustrated. They have a right to be upset. They have a right to be impatient with us because nothing is happening on the issues that matter to their real lives.

I hope this pattern will stop. I get it. There are still going to be plenty of other issues we are going to have arguments about during this election year, and that is good for our country that we have a good debate on the issues of the day. But on the ones we can solve, on the ones we agree on that impact the real lives of real people, let's stop the games.

Let's get something done.

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

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I think this is topical to the item we are debating, which is to proceed to the Violence Against Women Act, and I wish to take a moment to highlight a couple of egregious examples around the world where young girls and women are being threatened by violence in what remains a scourge throughout the planet, and then I will focus on here at home as well.

On April 17--and this is a pretty shocking incident--about 150 Afghan school girls were poisoned after drinking contaminated water. It appears by all signals that it was a deliberate contamination of the water. They are blaming this on conservative radicals who are opposed to female education. So there is evidence to suggest that 150 girls from Afghanistan were poisoned because they went to school. This is happening in the 21st century.

A new report from the Human Rights Commission on Pakistan says there were 943 Pakistani women killed in 2011 and they were killed for ``honor.'' Of the 953 victims, 93 were minors. Around 595 of the women killed in 2011 were accused of having ``illicit relations,'' and 219 of them were accused of marrying without permission. Again, this is the 21st century we are talking about where these things are happening. In fact, this same report, in 2010, says there were 791 honor killings of women in Pakistan.

Here is one that is really disturbing and very sick. In South Africa, a group of young males in Soweta were filmed raping a 17-year-old who was believed to be mentally ill. In fact, the term ``rapevideo'' was trending on Twitter in South Africa on Wednesday. It is estimated by some organizations that a woman is raped every 26 seconds in South Africa. There is a report with regard to this specific Soweta rape that the men promised the girl 25 cents if she kept silent.

Let's turn to our hemisphere for a moment, where, tragically, of the 25 countries around the world with the highest homicide rates for women, 14 are in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a recent survey by a Geneva-based research organization called Small Arms Survey. The three most dangerous countries for women were El Salvador, Jamaica, and Guatemala, respectively.

As a region, a U.N. study found in 2011 that the Americas, including the United States and Canada, were ranked

second only to Africa for female homicide rates. While females represent only 10 percent of the murder victims in the Americas, the sheer level of violence in the region, particularly in Latin America, puts women at risk.

Here at home, I was honored a few weeks ago to sign a letter, along with Senators Kirk, Blumenthal, and Cornyn, which we wrote to about 40 organizations back on April 12 to inform them that the parent company of the Village Voice publications they advertise on owns backpage.com, an online classified advertising Web site linked to dozens of child- trafficking cases in this country. We asked these companies, charitable organizations, and public, educational, and cultural institutions to work together to use their economic influence to stop this from happening, to stop this online child sex trafficking that is being facilitated by sites such as these.

I want to report to my colleagues today that there has been some progress. This letter is already having an impact. We have had representatives from two of the recipients of the letter respond that their companies will quickly act to end their advertising on the Village Voice publications.

The fact is what I just outlined now is happening here in the United States of America. I highlighted things happening around the world, and I highlighted a case of something we can be doing right now here in the United States.

The reason I come to the floor on occasion to speak about human rights violations that are happening around the world and in our own country is to remind us that atrocities are not just things that happened in history, they are happening today. If we just open a newspaper and open our eyes, we will find modern-day atrocities that rival things we have read about in history. Things we might believe are unimaginable or impossible are occurring in this century. Here in our country, we have instances such as this, where it is estimated that up to 300,000 children could potentially be at risk--300,000 people, young women, children, et cetera, in our hemisphere--to become victims of human trafficking. Part of that happens here in our own country. So we have an obligation to focus on these issues.

I will continue to use this forum and any opportunity I get to highlight human rights abuses that are happening across the world and in our own country because awareness is always the first step toward confronting these issues. The notion that one can somehow get away with this without condemnation encourages people to do more of it, encourages people to think they can get away with it, encourages people to think it may even be culturally acceptable. It is not culturally acceptable for any civilized people to stand by and watch human beings being enslaved, trafficked, abused, or targeted. We cannot stand by silently--and I am not claiming anyone in this Chamber does this--and argue that it is culturally acceptable to carry out an honor killing of a woman because she got married without permission. That is outrageous and it is absurd. It has no place in our world.

If this Nation is to remain a leader on human rights, then those of us who serve it have an obligation to use forums such as this to call attention to egregious examples, such as those I cited today, and to condemn them in the loudest voice possible. So in the weeks and months to come, I hope to continue to come to the floor and provide not just examples of abuses happening around the world but also examples, such as the one I finished with today. That is an example of how we can, working across the party aisle in this Chamber, work collaboratively to do something about it. This letter to the advertisers on backpage.com in the Village Voice is just one example of the things we can be doing to ensure we condemn and put a stop to some of these most heinous practices.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

We are as in morning business; is that correct?

Madam President, first, I want to thank my colleagues for coming to the floor today and talking about the issue of energy and energy independence and the rising cost of energy. It is critically important. I wish to talk about something else, if I could, for just a few minutes, something I think is of critical importance, eternal importance; that is, the issue of human rights.

As Americans, we have to remind ourselves our Nation was founded on the principles of human rights. If we read back to the earliest documents, the Declaration of Independence first says very clearly at the outset that one of the founding principles that led to the creation of this Nation, and the Republic and Constitution that followed that, was the notion that all of us are created equal. Every human being on the planet who was ever born, ever will be born anywhere in this world, was born with certain rights, and the source of those rights is our Creator.

Think about that for a moment. That is not a common belief. For almost all of our history people believed our rights as people came not from our Creator, they came from the government, from our leaders. Our rights are what the government allows us to have. That is not what founded our country. This country was founded on the very powerful idea that the source of our rights and our value as a human being came from our Creator.

Of course, that manifested itself in all sorts of things in this country, a constitution, for example, that in recognition of those rights created a system of government that said the job of the government was to protect these rights, not to grant them. And, of course, the American miracle has plenty of witnesses, myself included, and is well documented in the annals of history, particularly in the last half century, the American century, the 20th century, which is shown as an example to the world. Yet the issue of human rights continues to be a central one around the world and one of the places where I think an American example can make the biggest difference.

One of the issues that has interested me since I got to the Senate-- my background before I got here just a year ago was in State government, and before that it was in local government. One of the great things about being in the Senate is you have access to sources of information and individuals with information that I didn't have before. One of the issues that has fascinated me on a global scale is how human rights are still summarily violated all over the planet and how, in fact, these powerful ideas that are at the core of our founding as a country are still not widely accepted in many parts of the world.

This is a great time of year to be in Washington. People are on spring break, and they are bringing their kids up here to learn about our Republic. So I think it is a great time to remind ourselves that one of the things that made us different from the rest of the world is that we are one of the few countries on the planet that really believe that every single person who has ever been born has rights they are born with. We take that for granted. If you have been born here and lived here your whole life, you think that is the way it is everywhere. It is not. There are so many societies and countries around the world where people are told: You don't have any rights unless we give you rights. Unless your government or your leaders or your laws give you certain rights, you don't have these rights. In America, we almost take that for granted because we believe we are born with these rights. And the American example to the world has been what can happen when you actually believe that every single human being has worth and value and rights that they are born with and that you have no right to deny them.

Sadly, there is no shortage of examples around the world where those fundamental rights are violated. I think no nation on this planet has a larger obligation to speak out against it than ours. So what I intend to do over the next few weeks is come to the floor and highlight some of these egregious human rights violations because I think they go to the core of our exceptionalism. They go to the heart of who we are as a people and as a nation. They go to the center of what makes us different from other countries around the world and in many respects are at the heart of what is in debate at this very moment in the world.

As we enter this new 21st century, there are a handful of nations across the globe that do not want the issue of human rights to be central. They don't want this issue to be on the front burner because they don't believe in these things. What they seek is a new international order where the violation of human rights is nobody's business.

You see that today in Syria, where people are being murdered, where unarmed civilians are being pursued and shelled by an army, where there are horrifying examples of human rights violations on a daily basis. At least two countries--Russia and China--have taken the position that it is nobody's business, and one of those countries is the topic I want to talk about today; that is, China--an emerging power on the world stage that some people I think falsely claim will replace America on the world stage. I think that is an exaggeration.

By the way, we welcome the economic progress China has made. I think it is great news that there are millions of people in China who a decade ago were riding around on a bike and now have a car. Only a decade ago millions of people were living in deep poverty and today are part of the middle class. I think that is fantastic. But don't get ahead of yourself in believing that China is going to replace America on the world stage. This is still the richest, most powerful country in the world. This is still the most important economy on the planet, and our people are as smart and as creative as they have ever been, and that is not going to change.

But I think we have to look at China because if, in fact, they are this rising power, if they are going to be a growing influence on the international stage, we have to ask ourselves, What is their commitment to human rights? Sadly, it is not a very good one.

If you look at the issue of Tibet, it is a perfect example. These are peace-loving people who have sought a certain level of autonomy. They want to preserve their culture and their way of life. They have gone as far as to say: We are OK being under Chinese rule, but we want to protect some of the things that are innate and indigenous to our own culture and values. And China is systematically trying to erase their culture and their heritage through processes of re-education, through the jailing of people, through the oppression of people, through the destruction of a free press and systems of communication. It manifests itself today. I think yesterday was the latest incident of people in Tibet setting themselves on fire. By the way, we should not encourage that. It is horrifying to see that. We hope it stops. It just leads to an understanding of the level of desperation that exists in Tibet.

Let me ask you a question. If China is a growing influence on this planet, are these the values that are going to replace American values on the world stage? Are these the values that are going to replace our belief that all individuals were created equal, with certain rights that come from their Creator? Are we prepared to retreat from the world stage and allow that to happen without at least speaking against it?

We should not be surprised that China stands by and says: Do nothing. Don't even sanction. Don't even put out a nasty letter about Syria. We should not be surprised because a nation that doesn't care about the human rights of their own people is never going to care about the human rights of others. As Americans, the question we have is, Are we prepared to retreat from the world stage and, in fact, allow nations such as that to play a growing role in the world? Are we prepared to silence our own voice at the expense of their voice? I hope not.

So when we debate in this Chamber about issues of economic policy, we are debating issues about America's influence in the world. And I would say to you that if America is diminished on the world stage, whether it be by choice or by accident, if we fail to confront the issues this nation faces and we choose to decline, it won't be just the Americans who pay the price, it will be people all over the world, including the people who live in Tibet, because then there will be no voice on this planet that condemns human rights violations the way we do, because there will be no nation in the world that can prove that, in fact, you can have a functional society where the innate worth and the value and rights that our Creator gives every human being are respected. That is what is at stake when we debate America's influence and America's standing in the world.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to come to this floor and continue to highlight these egregious violations of human rights. Tragically, there is no shortage of them. In the weeks to come, we will talk about the problems of human trafficking that exist in our own country, in our own hemisphere, and all around the world. We will talk about the violations of religious liberties that exist in societies all over the planet. We will talk about how women have no rights whatsoever in many of these countries. There are some nations where a woman is counted as one- fourth of a man in terms of their worth or their ability to speak out. We will talk about other countries where people are systematically jailed, as they are in our own hemisphere, for putting out pamphlets that criticize the government. We will talk about what is happening in Syria and Tibet.

Human rights is at the core of who we are as a nation. It is at the core of our identity as a people and as a power on the global stage. It is an issue that doesn't belong to the right or to the left, to Republicans or Democrats; it is an issue that should unite us all in this Chamber and in this country, and we hope to be an effective voice in that regard in the years that God permits me to serve here in the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Today, I voted against final passage of the Transportation bill that was considered in the Senate.

While modernizing America's infrastructure is an important goal that government can play a role in advancing, S. 1813 crashes into our Nation's hard fiscal realities and makes it impossible for me to support. The bill spends too much, at a level of $109 billion over the next two years. This is despite the fact that the Highway Trust Fund is going broke, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that the fund will be insolvent sometime in 2013. Sadly, this is not a new issue. Taxpayers have already spent $34.5 billion to bail out the trust fund in recent years, and I see nothing in this bill that will prevent this from happening again. With our national debt on course to exceed $16 trillion by year's end and taxpayers already struggling under the weight of Washington's fiscal policies, this legislation paves the way toward yet another bailout.

Instead of making reforms that empower States instead of bureaucrats in Washington, the bill relies on Washington-style accounting gimmicks and proliferates costly mandates that sharply raise the cost of highway spending to the American taxpayer. I agree with my colleagues that we need to pass a transportation bill, but not when we cannot meet the financial obligations that the bill requires. Therefore, I did not support it.

Mr. President, today I recognize Michael Beck, a fall intern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Michael is a senior at Brigham Young University majoring in political science. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Katerina Erbiti, a fall intern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Katerina is a graduate of Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Coral Gables, FL. Currently, she is a freshman at American University. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Taylor Ferguson, a fall intern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Taylor is a graduate of Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach, Florida and Florida Gulf Coast University, where he majored in political communications. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Courtney Houston- Carter, a fall law extern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Courtney is a graduate of Tufts University, where he majored in political science. Last spring, he received his Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Taylor Kloustin, a fall intern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Taylor is a junior at Elon University majoring in public administration and political science and minoring in business administration. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Art Linares, a fall intern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Art is a graduate of the University of Tampa, where he received a degree in entrepreneurship. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

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

Mr. President, today I recognize Karen Mustiga, a fall intern in my Washington, DC office for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff and the people of the State of Florida.

Karen is a graduate of the University of Florida, where she majored in political science and economics. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience.

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