Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the unemployment trust fund issue that has us basically stalled on Senate business; the fact that several weeks ago we had an unemployment benefit amendment that was part of the UC request for amendments to the FSC/ETI bill done, and yesterday it was in the queue to be considered; then after it was actually offered on the floor, after 10 minutes of debate and discussion, basically the amendment was pulled. Somebody objected to scheduling a vote on it.

For weeks we have been assuming there was a finite list of amendments and it was agreed that this amendment was going to be voted on. I don't even

know that we need to have more time to discuss it.

I know now that there are those on the other side of the aisle who don't want to have a vote on it. Maybe leadership will be able to work out an agreement to have a vote. But when we have moved toward giving the American people some hope that we were going to discuss unemployment benefits in support of those millions of workers who have lost their jobs, they find out now there may not be a vote at all.

I don't think it is surprising that the Dayton Daily News last month basically said the GOP leaders were still dodging the jobless. That newspaper, in a State with high unemployment, thought we were not doing our job here, that those on the other side of the aisle were still trying to dodge the issue. I can tell you we are not getting a vote. It certainly feels at this point in time as if somebody is dodging the issue.

I wonder if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, or my colleagues in general, have thought about the circumstances of the individuals in this country and the tough times they are facing. I know we see the face of the Iraqi people every night on television. Maybe it is too hard to put 1.5 million Americans who are unemployed on the 6 o'clock news. But they still exist. They, too, are still struggling. They, too, are looking for our support and help.

I want to share with you a letter I got from a constituent. It is posted to our Web site because we have had so many people responding and telling their stories. This one individual from my State said:

I am a 41 year old, recently divorced, with a 5-year old

daughter. I had worked for Nordstrom for over 22 years, when

I was suddenly without a job last August, and my unemployment

benefits just ran out, which put me into a bankruptcy

position. I only have minimal child support and no other

income at the moment.

I was earning $47,000 annually prior to my job elimination,

and had existing responsibilities based on that income, which

I can no longer pay since my benefits have been eliminated.

Being a single parent with a home and a 5-year-old to take

care of, I have never been in a more desperate position in my

life.

I want to work very badly. However, I have not been

successful in getting hired back at Nordstrom or any other

company. The IT market has declined, and my job was

eliminated due to 7-year restructuring of the IT Department,

which included the company's initiatives and achievements in

job elimination and head count reduction. Their objective was

to bring in contractors from India and use offshore

outsourcing IT services as well. In fact, for the last 3

years, I have had to work with the offshore folks from India

that took the place of hundreds of my fellow employees who

were laid off over the last 7 years.

I don't understand how a company or a Government can say

that they are compassionate for the climate, but create it by

having Americans eliminated and replaced by foreign workers

in the U.S. workplace.

My constituent says:

If the benefits are not reinstated, then I will have to

seek getting other assistance until something comes up. All

the jobs I have applied for, I have either not been called

back, am under qualified, or over qualified.

This shows the humor of my constituent:

Most of the time, there are no numbers to follow up on,

since they are handled via an automatic online HR recruiter.

So I am not even sure if there are real people out there

really looking for someone to fill a position. I have between

2 and 3 viable job opportunities per week that I apply for.

So far, I have been interviewed only 5 times. At the time of

my unemployment, I thought it would only be a temporary

position. However, the jobs are just not out there and I am

required to make at least $30,000 annually, even after my

bankruptcy, to maintain my home and my daughter's day care

responsibilities.

I live in a small house that was built in 1947 and pay

roughly $1,100 in monthly payments on the mortgage. My car is

15 years old and in need of repair. My average bills are

$2,000 a month, which are hard to keep up with, health care

being so expensive. I don't want to lose my home, since that

would not be in the best interest of my daughter. Besides, I

don't think I could get much cheaper rent than what my

current mortgage is. My property is my retirement.

I am scared to death that I won't have anything to fall

back on after working this hard for the last 26 years of my

life. I don't quite understand why I can't get the extended

benefits until there are more jobs available, or at least

until the Government puts an end to the outsourcing of jobs

to foreign countries. I have even pursued reeducation to a

different field, but was told that I made too much income

last year, and it would take a cost of $10,000 for retraining

in the health care field.

Now, without unemployment benefits, because my benefits

have been exhausted, a student loan would not be funded. Do

you have any suggestions how I can get food stamps or aid or,

in the meantime, how I can find any kind of time line when we

might actually get a vote? I don't understand why the

President would not want to help his own first, before those

suffering in other parts of the world.

I think that letter sums it up. This is not somebody who hasn't been in the workforce. She was in the workforce 20 some years. This is not a person who didn't have skills and didn't help her company actually try to modernize and improve productivity. She did that. It is not somebody who is sitting around not trying to find a job. She is doing that, too. As she clearly stated, she cannot find a job. So now she has been forced into a bankruptcy situation, is being threatened with losing her house, all because we are sitting on the Federal unemployment benefit account of $13.3 billion and basically saying, even though this is a fund paid into by employers for this very purpose, in strong times of economic downturn, we are not going to give her the assistance.

We are going to pass a FSC/ETI bill instead and give other tax breaks to a whole bunch of things--$2 billion for a green bond initiative that I say still probably will end up getting used for a Hooters Restaurant. There is over $2.8 billion in here for another incentive program, a credit for synthesized coal, which is a tax credit that is under investigation by another Senate committee--$2.8 billion. That is roughly the cost of what it could take to extend the unemployment benefit program for another 6 months--a little more than $5 billion. Yet we are very comfortable today in making a decision to give all these tax cuts and tax breaks away, but we are not going to help the American workers with a fund they have paid into. We are going to hold that hostage as some sort of mark against our deficit, when it is a trust fund they have paid into and, instead, we are going to pass a bill called a ``jobs'' bill without actually taking care of people that have not gotten the support.

I am amazed we are in this situation. I think the Dayton paper had it right. People are dodging the jobless. They are dodging this issue.

Let's talk about the specifics. There are 1.5 million Americans who are certainly without help and assistance. This is 1.5 million Americans who, as of December 31, exhausted their benefits such as the constituent I just mentioned. They are going through the same situation she is going through. They are trying to figure out, now that the State benefits have expired, and there are very few jobs created--certainly not in a fast enough time period--that they are going to have to be like my constituent; they are making very tough choices. Because we don't see those choices on the 6 o'clock news doesn't mean they are not happening.

Let's look at some of the toughest parts of the country that have had to deal with this issue. You can say maybe not every State is in this situation. Certainly different regions have been hard hit. Certainly the Midwest has.

This chart shows the number of people in these States that have exhausted State benefits. They are still unemployed and they would be helped by our Federal program. They would be helped by the $13 billion that exists in a Federal account--if only this body and the other body would say, yes, you can have access to it.

Illinois has almost 70,000 people, who are like the constituent I read a letter about, who need help and support. In other parts of the Midwest, Michigan has 66,000; Ohio, 42,000; Pennsylvania, 69,000, almost 70,000 workers who qualify for health and assistance.

I do not even know that these people understand that the debate on this proposal is being considered. I know many of my constituents do because they write to me all the time. These are not invisible people, and their problems are not invisible. In fact, the Presiding Officer's State of Texas has 95,000 exhaustees. That is the number of people in that region of the country. In my part of the country, the Northwest, we have one of the hardest hit economies, the highest unemployment rates for the last several years. We have 33,000 people who would qualify right now for this program if this body would just say yes.

What we really want to say is we know that job growth is going to happen. In fact, last month there were 300,000 jobs created. The bottom line is, we have lost over 2 million jobs, and it takes a while to recreate them. By that I mean it takes a while for the economy to recover.

The Center on Budget and Policy Analysis says it will take several months more of robust growth to whittle down the number of unemployed to a more typical size. The truth is, I think a lot of people are saying: Oh, well, gosh, Friday we will have new numbers. Maybe we will have another 300,000 jobs. Maybe we will have another 500,000 jobs, maybe another 600,000 jobs created. To me, it does not matter if there are 600,000 jobs created in the month of April. It simply does not matter if we have 1.1 million people who have already exhausted their benefits.

Even if we have 600,000 jobs created in April, we will still have a million people who will not have access to the benefits they deserve. To me, it is an issue of what are we going to do to sustain the economy while we are waiting for the job creation engine to restart.

A lot of people say: Oh, gee, the economy is actually getting better; productivity has gotten better. My constituent helped her company be more productive. Guess what. That, I am sure, added to the bottom line of that company. It probably added to the bottom line that got passed on to shareholders. But did it help my constituent actually get a job or get a new career? No, it did not. She is not asking for us to give her a job. She is only asking for what she and her employer already paid into, an account that was created for these tough economic times only to get some of those funds in the interim until new job growth and new job availabilities are out there. I do not think it is an unreasonable request.

Some people have said: If you have 1.5 million people, and they have exhausted their benefits, what is the rate by which those people will actually find jobs? The Joint Economic Committee and the Center on Budget and Policy Analysis came up with a formula. Basically, they said about 3 percent of those 1.5 million people would find a job each week.

Some people say: Maybe we will think about unemployment benefits for 7 weeks. Maybe we will say let's give people 7 weeks of benefits for another 60 days, and let's figure out how that helps. We did the calculation. After 7 weeks, using this 3 percent of people finding a job each week, which is the number that is used in both good and bad economic times, it is an average, after 7 weeks of benefits, 458,000 people would find jobs. So after 7 weeks, those 1.5 million exhaustees--those are people who have already exhausted their State support but are still jobless--how many of these people would have a job? Basically, 450,000 of them would have a job.

The issue is, after 450,000 of them would get employed after 7 weeks, we still would be looking at 1.1 million people without a job, without support, being in the same situation as my constituent of bankruptcy, potentially losing her home and in a desperate situation.

Let's be realistic. We are not going to solve this by saying here is 7 weeks of unemployment. It is not going to happen. This economy will get better. It will. But it is going to take a while. You cannot recreate 2 million jobs overnight. You cannot.

The good news is, when you have a Federal program, which the UI trust fund is, at $13 billion, you can use a little bit of those funds to help those people in the meantime and actually generate stimulus in the economy. For every dollar we give these unemployed workers, it generates $2 of stimulus. Who is helped by my constituent basically having to declare bankruptcy and maybe not able to make mortgage payments? Who is helped by that? She is not, but neither is the bank and not the businesses with which she does business. Certainly her 5- year-old daughter who would rather have a home is not receiving any benefits.

If we adopted my proposal, a 6-month extension with 13 weeks of benefits, after that 6 months, the account, which was $13.3 billion, would still have $9 billion in it. So the account will be a very healthy account at the end of that period. Yes, we would pay money out to those individuals, but the account is continually paid into by other employers. That is the way it works. That is why it is a healthy account today, and it will remain healthy under the Cantwell-Voinovich proposal.

This is a bothersome debate to me in the sense of why are we having this discussion when we have a healthy account? We know what the individual problems are. We know people need to have support and assistance. We know even after a short plan, 1.1 million people will still be unemployed. Why don't we just do this? Is it because we are using the money for something else, and we do not have it available to us? Is it that we believe the economy is so much better that even a few trickling of jobs at 300,000 or another 300,000 announced on Friday is somehow going to solve our problem?

I do not think that is what other people have said. In fact, Alan Greenspan said recently before two different committee hearings that the unemployment extension benefit is a good idea largely because of the size of the exhaustees, the number of people who exhausted the benefits, those 1.5 million people. We have the chief economist for our country basically saying this is a good idea based on the fact we have 1.5 million people, and they are not going to be back in the workforce tomorrow. They are not going to be back in the workforce from the April numbers or the May numbers or the June numbers. So who are we kidding? The economy is not going to be that red hot to take care of 1.5 million people tomorrow.

The question is, What do we want to do about it? I think BusinessWeek said it best. They basically said the Senate must act. The Senate must bridge the gap that will help the economy cross over this extended valley of almost nonexistent hiring. They just said that on March 22-- nonexistent hiring. Let's not fool ourselves. Americans know it; that is, if you poll them and ask them the question, Is the country going in the right direction or the wrong direction, they say the wrong direction because they know that we do not have job creation happening.

So it is up to us to make a decision. I know my colleagues are saying we do not want to have a vote. Somebody, in one of the afternoon journals, basically said, on the GOP side, that even having a standalone vote on my amendment is a nonstarter.

I am hoping wiser heads will prevail and that people will come to their senses and say: Let's have a vote on this issue. Let's find out where the Members of the Senate stand on getting their constituents' support in tough economic times.

Let us see where the Members of the Senate stand on following the advice of Alan Greenspan who says doing unemployment benefits would be a smart idea given the number of exhaustees. Let us find out where the Senate stands on having a solution to the issue of whether individuals should have access to the money they have paid into a $13.3 billion account through their employers.

Let us find out where the Senate stands on giving a solution on whether they think the economy is recovering fast enough or whether they want to help people in the times when economic recovery is still slow.

I hope we come to some resolution of this issue. I hope my colleagues will listen to their constituents and heed the words they are saying about the tough economic times we are seeing. It may not be on the 6 o'clock news, it may not be on the front page with four or five other stories as is the situation in Iraq and the Middle East, but there is still a struggle for Americans and their struggle deserves the help and support of the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I remind my colleagues we are here talking about a JOBS bill. That is what we are talking about, how we keep jobs in America. So I think it is more than appropriate to be talking about one of the biggest problems in our country right now, the fact we have not created jobs. We have lost 2 million jobs since this administration began. It is more than appropriate to be discussing the unemployment benefits American workers need because they have lost jobs, through no fault of their own, since 9/11 and have been struggling to get recognition by this body and the other body on unemployment benefits.

We still have 1.5 million Americans who have exhausted State benefits and have not gotten assistance from this body, the Senate, which now wants to talk about a JOBS bill. Well, the most important jobs issue we are facing in America right now is that people who are trying to go back to work would love to be getting a paycheck instead of an unemployment check, and yet we are not giving them the option to have support in a program they have already paid into through their employer for unemployment benefits.

So what are people across the country saying? As the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out, we have had

something like 15 different attempts to get unemployment benefits for workers who are trying to find jobs but are not finding jobs available. They are certainly people who would rather work.

The Dayton Daily News recently said:

What's troubling . . . is how some Republican leaders are

hoisting another ``Mission Accomplished'' banner, this one to

hide the struggle for more than a million unemployed workers

who have exhausted state benefits without finding another

job.

That is not what this Senator is saying. That is what a newspaper in one of the hardest hit States is saying about this particular problem, the fact we cannot simply say on a certain day the economy is better and Americans are back to work, when, for the first part of this year, with last month's numbers, we only created somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 new jobs. We have lost 2 million jobs since this administration has been in power.

We had an economic report by the administration that they were going to create all sorts of jobs in 2002. That did not come about. In 2003 there was another projection. That did not happen. Now we are in 2004. And even though the administration said they thought they were going to create, I think the number was 2.6 million jobs this year, the President's own economic advisers backed off of those numbers and said: We don't know how many jobs are going to be created.

Well, I can tell them, having been in the private sector, trying to determine whether a company is growing at a rate in which you can resume hiring is a tough question. So I get that this is a complicated issue, and we do not know how fast our economy is going to grow. But we know this: We are not going to find 2 million jobs in the next 6 months. We are not going to hire 2 million Americans who basically have lost their jobs, and in many cases through no fault of their own, and put them back to work in that short a period of time.

The question is whether we want to give the American worker who is unemployed an opportunity to receive the Federal benefit this program was created for, what they paid into through their employer so there could be assistance in tough economic times.

Well, if the last year and a half does not qualify for tough economic times, I don't know what would. Newspapers across the country are saying it is time we deal with this.

The Dayton Daily News again said early last month:

Maybe there are brighter days ahead. But that's no comfort

now to the unprecedented number of laid-off workers, who have

scrambled without success to find a job and . . . lost the

little bit of help given under state unemployment benefits

programs.

It cannot be any more plain than that. The President is on a bus driving through a State that is basically saying, as crisply and clearly as they possibly can: We need additional help and support. The State program has expired. People are still unemployed, and they cannot find a job. These people would gladly go back to work, gladly go back to getting health benefits, gladly go back to getting the other benefits of being employed, but the jobs are not there. So the question is whether we are going to do the job we have said we were going to do.

In fact, you can take the economists who are also looking at this, because I think part of the other side of the aisle would like to say: Don't worry, it is all going to get better. But even if we double last month's numbers, even if in the next 2 months we created 500,000 or 600,000 jobs, it still isn't going to be enough jobs for the 2 million Americans who have lost their way. So why not put some stimulus into the economy.

That is why the Miami Herald said last month: Mixed messages, the White House gets a boost from strong job growth, but economists say unemployment will remain a problem.

That is because economists are looking at the numbers and they are saying: You are still going to have unemployment.

It is no surprise that Alan Greenspan came before a House committee and, when asked about whether we should expand Federal unemployment benefits, basically said: I think it is a good idea, largely due to the number of exhaustees that are out there in America. By that he means the number of people who have fallen off the State program and could qualify for Federal assistance.

I know some of my colleagues have said they want to cut this program off at some point in time: Why should we keep doing it; the economy is starting to pick up.

You do it because these exhaustees don't have a job. They can't pay mortgage payments, take care of health care. Their employer paid into this program for this very benefit. This is the best economic stimulus this country could get right now. Giving employees access to the assistance of the Federal program for the next 6 months would generate $11 billion in economic stimulus. That is for every dollar spent on unemployment benefits, it generates $2 of economic stimulus.

I think about the States that have been hard hit, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Washington, Oregon, Alaska. Those are States that certainly could use the economic stimulus in their States to keep companies from not defaulting on mortgage payments, keep families in their home, and provide additional stimulus to those sagging economies.

People on the other side of the aisle say: At some point in time, the President's economic plan is going to kick in and work. But I don't think anybody can say it is going to kick in and work in the next 2 months to the degree necessary to take care of the number of unemployed. It is not going to take care of 1.5 million. It is not going to take care of 2 million people who have lost their jobs and 1.5 million who have already exhausted State benefits.

The question is whether this body is going to stand up and do the right thing and come up with a program to expand unemployment benefits for the next several months so unemployed workers in America can have some certainty they are going to have a future where they can stay in their home.

I am having a tough time convincing the other side of the aisle. Maybe they haven't heard from their constituents on this issue. I think there are one or two States that may not have lost any manufacturing jobs. Maybe their constituents don't feel the same pain that we do in the Northwest. In 2002 alone, we lost 72,000 jobs in our State, mostly as a result of the downturn after 9/11 and its impact on the aviation industry, but certainly other industries as well. So we have had a lot of people who have continued to look for jobs. We have heard from a lot of these individuals. We have a Web site anybody can access at cantwell.senate.gov that tells you the stories of these individuals in their own words.

What each person tells over and over is how much they would like to have a job, how many job interviews they have gone on, only to find people five and six times more qualified than they taking the minimal number of jobs that are actually being created. That is why one of the chief economists in the country, Alan Greenspan, has said the size of the exhaustees alone should drive us to expand unemployment benefits. It would, in and of itself, give us the stimulus that would help us return the economy.

We had a vote not that long ago. Fifty-eight Members in this body voted in support of unemployment benefits. There was a similar vote, not the exact same language, in the House of Representatives. They voted to basically give an extension of unemployment benefits through the Federal program. So basically majorities in both the House and the Senate have voted for unemployment benefits. Yet still we do not have a benefit package.

The administration was asked whether they thought we should do this. Secretary of the Treasury Snow basically said it was something the White House wasn't objecting to. We asked the White House in their communications shop. They said they thought it should get done.

Now the question remains, who wants to hold up this benefit package? The American workers have paid into this. They want the money they paid into the Federal program to give them economic support so we can give people an opportunity to go back to work when jobs are created and not penalize them for the economic situation they are in today.

Mr. President, there are several other points I would like to make. I know some people are thinking, why not do this for a shorter program. Why not expand the program for maybe another 60 days. The point is, where are we going to be in 60 days? Even if, say, we get a report on Friday that says there are 300,000 jobs being created and the next month there are 300,000 jobs being created, you still have at that point 1.4 million Americans looking for work; that is, people who have completely exhausted their State benefits.

My constituents are making all sorts of choices. They are putting up their homes for sale. They are moving in with relatives. They are selling family possessions to pay mortgage payments. They are trying to hold on so this economy recovers. And they are hoping the next several months will bring good economic news, as I hope it does. I hope the next several months brings good economic news. But even if we have good economic news, we are not going to have the return of 1.4 million people or 2 million people back to work in the next several months. The question is, do we want to meet our obligation under the Federal program and help them.

In the 1990s we had a very similar situation. We had an economic downturn and the first Bush administration basically had to come up with a program for unemployment benefits. They actually had already had the program in place for more than a year and had good economic news. I think more than 600,000 jobs had been created. The administration still supported another 9-month extension to unemployment benefits.

Actually, they supported that 9-month extension, even with a richer program than what we are suggesting today. We are suggesting that the program ought to go for 13 weeks of Federal program and 13 weeks for very high unemployment States. At that point, the program was 20 weeks. So in the 1990s, the Bush administration decided, even though it had seen more than a half million in job growth--I think they had several million in job loss--even though they had seen the economy pick up, they made the decision that so many people had been impacted, laid off, and could not find work, that it was important to give them access to the Federal program. So they expanded the program for another 9 months.

Now, I know this administration is now, as I said, through various members of its Cabinet, backing away from its economic numbers for the year, but it is also saying they would support an unemployment benefit package that would come out of the House and Senate. I say to the administration, obviously, we are not getting this bill done in the timely fashion that would benefit most Americans. Maybe they can come and help in this effort because the preceding Bush administration did a great job supporting the package, even though jobs were starting to be created, to stem the tide of job loss and negative impact on the economy, and still the economy started to pick up again. So we should do the same.

I think the administration should take some time, as it is riding around Ohio--and some of these middle America States have been hard hit with unemployment benefits--and listen to the people who have lost jobs. They will tell them this program is important to them, as I just outlined from several newspaper editorials that have been in the Dayton paper, specifically. I am sure there are editorials from other places throughout the Midwest as well. I know we had editorials from more than a dozen newspapers wondering why we were not moving forward on this legislation.

So the point is, we have a case study in the 1990s--and a good one-- that this administration should follow. This administration should look at the success of that program, how jobs were being created, and still they expanded unemployment benefits because they knew it would take several months to put that many Americans back to work. That is what we are talking about today. We are talking about a jobs proposal that really is what we are going to do to incentivize or disincentivize corporations from moving overseas or doing business overseas. That is what the FCI/ETI bill is primarily about.

While we are debating what is good to massage the intention of corporations in America, we should be talking about what we are doing to support the American workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Why try to mastermind and guess about corporate intentions and incentive in the tax policy but then leave American workers who have a program that is designed to help them out in the cold without an opportunity?

We have fought this battle a couple of times now. We fought it last year when the benefits expired and got it reinstated. We fought it when people actually lapsed off of benefits and we had to get them to understand that when we came back into session, the benefits were going to be restored. But now many Americans have lost hope. It has been since January 1 these people have been without benefits. Given that information, Americans have tried to make the best they can out of a tough situation. They have made those tough choices, and if you read the stories on my Web site, or talk to constituents, you will see very heartbreaking stories of people who have struggled to make ends meet and would rather work.

I think it is very important that Congress act to move forward on this legislation. I know my colleagues would like to get the FSC/ETI bill done. I know they would like to say they passed something that dealt with jobs. Let's be honest. There haven't been a lot of jobs created in the last 3 years. We are at a net negative jobs. We are at a net negative 2 million jobs lost in America. So let's not kid ourselves. Job creation will come back. It will come back slowly. It will start to pick up, but that pickup is not going to be at the pace to give people relief in America and relief that is due to them.

Mr. President, while I am not making a unanimous consent request, I hope that my colleagues understand how important this is, and that tomorrow we will find time to vote on this amendment. Not to vote on this amendment, again, is to say it is more important to deal with corporations and their tax incentives and tax breaks than it is to deal with the American workers who have lost their jobs. I don't want to send that message to these high-unemployment States, to those individuals who thought they supported this concept of a Federal program, and then tell them we have almost $15 billion in a Federal fund that was paid into by their employers, but now they are not going to be able to access any of it. I would rather tell them this body decided to do the right thing; that while we are waiting for the private sector to return to a strong economic engine, we are going to do the right thing and give people access to the Federal dollars from the program they have already paid into; that we are going to help the American workers in their time of greatest need; that our body, this institution, and the other side, the House of Representatives, believe the American workers deserve to have support.

I hope tomorrow we can work out a time agreement so this amendment can be voted on, so we can move forward on not only getting the underlying bill done but getting this legislation moved, since both bodies have supported it and a majority of Members have supported the legislation.

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

Mr. President, on behalf of myself and Senator Voinovich, I call up our amendment.

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

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

I ask to speak for 20 minutes on two pieces of legislation.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss with my colleagues two bills that I believe we are being negligent as a body in not taking up and passing. I am sure many of my colleagues are heading to the airport feeling like this week we accomplished a lot, or maybe they feel they gave a lot of speeches. The world is obviously a very dangerous and threatening place right now, and maybe my colleagues think if we get up and we communicate about that, we have done our job in Washington, DC. Well, the discussion is good, but action is even better when it comes to the American people. And there are two critical issues--two critical issues we have bipartisan support on, two critical issues both the House and Senate have passed legislation in the past to deal with and on which we could pass legislation today--that we cannot put on the priority list to take up and take action to help the American people.

The first one is on the electricity grid and reliability. Now, some of my colleagues may remember that the blackout of last August 14 led to a report from a commission that was released more than two weeks ago. When the blackout occurred last summer, we said that we were going to get to the bottom of how it happened and what we should do about it. The No. 1 recommendation from that commission was to make reliability standards mandatory and enforceable, with penalties for noncompliance. People across America probably woke up after that blackout and thought, what happened? How did this whole situation happen to us?

I can tell them how it happened. We do not have any mandatory rules in place for the electricity grid to make sure we protect consumers, that there is a reliability backstop governing actions by these energy companies.

Why is there not? The independent system operators and utilities have rules, but they are not mandatory. In fact, the commission's report said First Energy, one of the key companies involved in last August's blackout, was not complying with the voluntary rules.

Well, I am sure they did not feel there was much penalty in not complying with these rules because they were voluntary. So the commission's report is being very specific about what we should do. Congress needs to get about our business in passing legislation to make these rules mandatory.

Now I know some people think, I have sat a night at home with candles or gotten the flashlight out or my fuse box goes out and it is not so bad. Well, I tell my colleagues, last August's blackout was a bad situation. We had people in New York who could not get down elevators and lived many flights up in apartments. We had an increase of people going to emergency rooms in New York because they were having heart attacks or other kinds of things were happening to them physically. Under the stress of trying to vacate many of the facilities in New York, we had major gridlock for hours. We lost $4 billion to $10 billion economically as the result of the blackout, and we put our senior citizens at great risk of harm because they did not have access to electricity on a hot summer day.

So the question is, what are we going to do about this and are we going to move ahead? Well, I came to speak about this a couple of weeks ago, before we adjourned for the recess. And since then, I find we have now 20 different newspapers across America that basically have asked, why hasn't Congress operated and gotten this done?

For example, the Miami Herald--it is starting to get warm in Miami. People are realizing summer is not that far off and the Miami Herald stated that, ``Another long, hot summer is looming.'' These reliability bills should be enacted and they should be enacted now. That is not surprising since they know what a blackout can do in the heat of a summer.

Another newspaper, the Boston Globe, stated that ``at the top of the commission's proposals is legislation that would make mandatory the grid reliability standards that are now voluntary. Congress should quickly pass a bill . . . that would do just that.''

There is another newspaper that knows about this because its readers were impacted by that electricity grid blackout last August. They know the commission came back and recommended this is what we should do.

The reason I am bringing this issue up now is because I think some people on the other side of the aisle think we are just going to take another stab at the good old Energy bill. We are going to make another attempt to pass legislation that just about every newspaper in America has editorialized against--a bill that myself and my colleagues have called legislation for hooters, polluters, and corporate looters, because those are the kinds of provisions that were included in the Energy bill that drowned out the more notable items such as the reliability standards also buried in there.

Why are we going to continue to hold hostage legislation on reliability standards that would protect consumers across America from future blackouts, just to getting a big, fat energy bill for which there is never enough support? My colleagues know how bad that legislation is.

My colleagues want to continue to use the reliability standards, which all the blackout commissions and various organizations across America have said consumers deserve as protection, as the train driving the energy bill. My colleagues are going to say, no, we are going to keep holding reliability hostage. We want to see if Congress blinks and maybe will go ahead and pass that big energy bill.

Well, do not come to blame this side of the aisle when we do not get the Energy bill and we do not have reliability standards, because we are trying to pass these standards, just as various newspapers across the country are saying. In fact, I think the Detroit Free Press said it best. They said `` . . . the solution lies with Congress. Nearly 8 months post-blackout, it still has not passed mandatory standards. Voters should turn on their power and demand it.''

I think what they mean is that voters should be demanding that we do our job. Reliability legislation could have been brought up any day this week--Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I understand my colleagues have probably now gone to catch planes and meet other schedules, but this could be brought up next week. We could make a commitment to have it brought up. I do not think there is controversy over this particular legislation or the original provision as it was included in the Energy bill. It is just being used as bait and being held hostage.

So there are other newspapers across the country that say, ``a responsible energy policy would be to strip out the mandatory federal [reliability] standards and pass them as a stand-alone bill.'' This is from the Memphis newspaper. The people in Memphis, TN, are asking, why are you doing this? Why are you continuing not to pass good legislation just so you can get bad legislation attached to it? When people across America are asking, what is

going on here, we ought to come together as a body and figure this out.

I do not like to be partisan about it because I would rather get it done. I would rather pass it. But newspapers are starting to realize that it is getting partisan. The Philadelphia Inquirer said that Republicans were happy to consider the bill--meaning the Energy bill-- happy to consider taking up some of the Energy bill's tax incentives as part of a corporate tax bill. That meant we took those tax credits out of the Energy bill or were willing to consider some energy tax credit on the FSC/ETI bill. So if we can do that, why can we not break out the reliability measure, why can we not take the reliability measure as stand-alone legislation?

Now, the head of the North American Electric Reliability Council came and spoke before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee just before this report was being released. I asked him this very question. Their job is to try to provide reliability of energy to Americans throughout this country. I asked: Should we pass a stand-alone bill? His response was yes. Now, he was interrupted by the chairman, who then said: We do not need to do that now.

Well, I disagree with the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and I think we should consider moving ahead. I think that is what The Washington Post is saying. It said it would be a shame if there is insistence on the whole bill or nothing. That means holding reliability hostage. It means Congress would never get around to shoring up the electricity grid, and perhaps that is a shame, or perhaps shame is too mild a word.

Well, I know I think it is too mild a word because we have been waiting since 1999 to get this legislation passed. By that, I mean we have had blackouts in various parts of America since 1996, and every time we have had one of those blackouts in those regions, people have come to us in Congress and said that we ought to pass some rules so we can get a mandatory reliability scheme in place and so utilities have to comply.

We have had multiple blackouts since 1996. This picture shows across America where we have had blackouts since then. You can see the huge amounts of territory in various States: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Washington, up now to the northeastern part of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. I ask my colleagues, are we going to wait until every State in the country has a blackout and then finally say, ``Oh, I guess we get the message, I guess we ought to do something about it?''

I think the newspaper that said it best was the Indianapolis Star. These newspapers across America have shone a bright light on what has been an issue that most Members would like to get away from and not pay attention to. The Indianapolis Star said it best:

. . . if the lights go out again this summer, spare the

investigation. Congress is to blame.

I think that paper said it best. This is about us doing our job. This is about the attempt to bring up other legislation that may or may not have the agreement necessary for it to be passed, or to pass a cloture motion. There is support for this legislation. There is a report that demands our attention. There are consumers who are waiting for protection. We should do our job.

I ask unanimous consent the Senate now turn to Calendar No. 465, S. 2236, a bill to enhance the reliability of the electric system, that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, without any intervening action or debate.

How much time do I have, Mr. President?

Mr. President, that sums it up. I am going to be here every day next week that we are in session, asking to pass this bill and asking my colleagues why, in the name of the American consumer and the assurance of our economy that cannot afford to have an unstable electricity grid with no rules and regulations, and energy companies that do not have to meet mandatory requirements--why we are not protecting these consumers.

Many of my colleagues know there is another issue this Senator believes has not gotten the attention of this body. Each month another set of unemployment and job creation numbers come out. And each month the American public becomes more and more convinced that we are not living up to the prediction and promise of 2.6 million jobs that were supposed to be created this year. And because of that empty promise, the American people want to know when this body will take up and pass legislation to reinstate the unemployment compensation program.

This program was designed for times just like these. The Federal government has an obligation to make sure this program is in place. What do you do during tough economic situations? You pass a Federal program to help ease the pain of those who are unemployed and cannot find work.

In the Economic Report of the President, Mr. Bush's Administration projected that this year we were going to create 2.6 million jobs. We are nowhere near that projection. In fact, last month was the first month we saw any real job growth at all. But, after just one month of decent growth some people are saying that the economy is all better. But, there are many economists who disagree. The Miami Herald ran this headline:

Jobs Report: Mixed Messages. The White House gets a boost

from strong job growth, but economists say unemployment will

remain a problem.

Economists are saying it will remain a problem because the number of jobs being created is a long way away from what we need to get America back to work. There are 8.4 million Americans out of work. After the job creation in March, 8.1 million of those Americans will still be out of work.

Here's what the Dayton Daily News said:

Maybe there are brighter days ahead. But that's no comfort

now to the unprecedented number of laid-off workers, who have

scrambled without success to find a job and . . . [they have]

lost the little bit of help given under the State

unemployment benefits programs.

So now those laid-off workers are looking to us for help. They want to know why they and their employers paid into the unemployment insurance system if there's no program to help them when they need it. There is $15.4 billion in the unemployment insurance trust fund--a fund that was created for economic times like these--and the federal government is not going to help us through this unemployment crisis.

What is really happening in this recovery is that there are 1.1 million jobless workers who have exhausted their benefits and are not receiving additional support. That is the number. Those 1.1 million people and the people who are following behind them want to point out to this Congress that the economy is not getting better at a fast enough pace to help them put food on the table today.

I think that drawing a comparison to the first Bush administration is helpful because the first Bush administration faced a similar problem with the economy in the early 1990s. That recession was not as deep as the one we are dealing with today. In fact, during that recession we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs, while in this recession we lost a total of 2.6 million. But in the last recession, even after the economy had started to create jobs, George H.W. Bush still extended unemployment benefits. The reason that administration passed an extension, even though job creation had started, was because they knew that it was going to be a long road to get to a place where there were enough jobs for Americans who wanted and needed to work. They also knew that unemployment benefits are a stimulus for the economy--the people pay their mortgage, keep their health insurance, keep food on the table, until the job creation engine of the private sector started going again. That is what the temporary federal benefits are. They are insurance until the economy gets going again.

We have had this debate back and forth, too, about who is to blame about this issue, or what is the big holdup. We have the Treasury Secretary who actually came to my State and said: We don't really believe that 2.6 million job creation number. Yes, the administration said it, but we don't think it is really going to happen. We don't know what the number is going to be.

So, we have the administration saying they really don't know how many jobs will be created this year. Then we have had Mr. Greenspan, who most people respect, come before a variety of committees. He just came before the Joint Economic Committee this week. When he was asked if we should extend unemployment benefits, he said:

I do think it's a good idea, largely because of the size of

exhaustions.

What he is saying is that those 1.1 million people who have exhausted their jobs are out there to demonstrate that the economy isn't getting better at a fast enough pace. Therefore, we should continue the Federal program until we see more job creation.

That is what I think should happen. I see lots of people across the country who are very frustrated by this.

In fact, the Dayton News just in the last few weeks said:

GOP leaders still dodging jobless.

That is not this Democratic Senator saying this. This is a newspaper in a State that has been as hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs as my State has. Ohio and Washington are among the highest unemployment States. They are saying GOP leaders are dodging the jobless. Why are they saying that? Here's the answer of the Dayton paper:

What's troubling . . . is how some Republican leaders are

hoisting another ``Mission Accomplished'' banner, this one to

hide the struggle of more than a million unemployed workers

who have exhausted State benefits without finding another

job.

That is the Dayton paper saying that. That is not this

Senator.

I happen to agree with the paper's point, that we should take care of these 1.1 million people Greenspan says are not getting help. The economists are saying we are not recovering fast enough; give these people the benefit. I believe the Senate must act.

That is what Business Week said:

Government actions will act as a bridge that will help the

economy cross over this extended valley of almost nonexistent

hiring.

That is Business Week.

Why do they say that? Because they know the best thing for us to do is pass the unemployment benefits and create a bridge until we see substantial job creation.

I can't think of a better source to listen to than Business Week, which analyzes business trends, or Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, when they say we ought to pass these benefits.

This is about the 16th or 17th time we have been to the floor. I know people say we are working on something. People say, Let's compromise. Let us cut the program in half. But, Alan Greenspan didn't say cut the program in half. The Dayton newspaper didn't say cut it in half.

Unanimous Consent Request

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now turn to Calendar No. 470, which is S. 2250, a bill to extend unemployment insurance benefits for displaced workers, that the bill be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table without intervening action or debate.

Thank you, Mr. President.

How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for another 30 seconds.

The Presiding Officer has been so kind to listen with interest to these two issues. I hope he and my other colleagues will take these two issues to heart. I am being pointed in my remarks today because I believe these are two issues this body has the responsibility to deal with. These are two issues we can't get done and we are holding the American people hostage by not addressing our basic domestic economic security needs by giving people jobs and the reliable security of electricity grids.

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

I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for yielding some time from this important debate on

pensions. Obviously it has been a busy day in Washington talking about a variety of different issues important to our country.

One issue our colleagues ought to realize is pending business on our calendar that could be brought up for discussion is, what should we do in light of the fact that we finally got a recommendation on reports about the blackouts that happened in our country from New York through the Midwest? We now have a report saying that liability legislation is needed to ensure consumers can be protected from the transmission grid and the blackouts that have been occurring.

Many of my colleagues may think of the latest New York blackout that happened just several months ago as a great catastrophe. Some of them may have forgotten that since 1996, we have had many blackouts throughout the United States. In fact, all of the States in black on this map show the number of blackouts we have had in various regions. In our Northwest region, in Washington, we had a blackout several years ago that cost consumers not only inconvenience, but millions of dollars of impact.

The question is, What are we going to do to try to get consumers more reliability in electricity? While a lot of my colleagues would like to say we will pass an energy bill, it has been clear for some time that the Energy bill has gotten bogged down with a variety of items involving pork barrel spending. The most famous line my constituents remind me of in the Energy bill: Hooters, polluters and Enron looters. What are we doing about getting the energy policy this country needs and moving it forward?

One piece of legislation that has been hung up has been the reliability standards legislation. We have, this week, a report issued by the United States-Canada Power System Task Force, their final report, asking, Why did the blackout happen in the United States and Canada and what do we want to do?

The No. 1 recommendation from the report is make reliability standards mandatory and enforce them with penalties for noncompliance. That was the No. 1 recommendation out of that report. Why don't we do that? If we cannot agree on the rest of the Energy bill, why don't we take this stand-alone piece of legislation and pass it so we can give consumers the confidence that we have some rules and regulations in place for reliability.

A lot of Americans woke up after the New York and Midwest blackout and said, geez, how did this happen?

I think a lot of people assumed there were rules and regulations in place on reliability, but there are not. There is no rule in place that says: This is how much electricity you have to have as a backup. There is no rule in place that says: This is how you need to make sure Akron, OH, or Toledo, OH, or someplace in New York has enough electricity, given the kinds of demands and the peak we are going to see in those areas. Those rules are not in place.

You can ask yourself why those rules are not in place, and what has transpired on energy policy and been debated over the last several years, as we moved towards deregulation. But the bottom line is, now that a majority of States across the country since 1996 have had blackouts, we have had a demand for reliability legislation. We also now have a task force that has said the No. 1 thing you need to do is pass this legislation. Yet this legislation is being held hostage to passing a larger energy bill.

If my colleagues think I am overstating this case, I would like them to think about the legislative history here, because my predecessor, Slade Gorton, introduced similar legislation after Washington State had a blackout. We had a blackout and said: Gee, this is crazy. How can you not have reliability standards? How can you not have rules in place to make sure there is enough power for consumers at peak times? He proposed reliability legislation that actually passed the Senate, and got held hostage in the House of Representatives because people wanted to see more energy deregulation, so the legislation never passed. Now we have been through two more Congresses where no reliability legislation was passed.

The interesting thing is the majority of Members in both the House and the Senate actually support this bill, this stand-alone bill, that now is sponsored by Senator Bingaman, Senator Snowe, Senator Clinton, Senator Jeffords, Senator Schumer, Senator Daschle, Senator Reid, and myself. This legislation, I believe, does have the majority of support by both House and Senate Members. People want to see it pass, but it continues to be held hostage to getting a general energy bill.

I can tell my colleagues we have had enough of the energy debate, and I think even that this latest FSC/ETI bill, in which some of the energy package was added to that legislation, is a sign of recognition by my colleagues it is going to be very tough to get that comprehensive bill this year. So why not do the responsible thing? Why not do the responsible thing and have this energy legislation pass now as a stand- alone bill and give consumers the confidence there are rules and regulations in place before we have another blackout?

The issue has been clear for some time now, and has been debated and studied by U.S.-Canada Power System Task Force. In fact, the task force even went on to say:

If reliability legislation had been enacted when first

proposed (in 1999), I believe that a blackout would not have

occurred.

That is a statement from the chairman of the North American Energy Reliability Council. He testified before the Energy Committee. I asked him this very question. I said: Do we need to pass this legislation? And should we pass it as a stand-alone? He said: Yes, we should. He was, I think, then followed by the chairman of the committee, who said: Well, it is not time to do that yet. Let's keep pushing on the larger Energy bill.

How many more weeks are we going to let go by with the American consumer not having reliability standards in place, having their energy supply in question about whether they are going to have reliability?

I know some people think: Well, gee, things happen. There is too much demand.

You have an impact. Consumers, individuals, in various regions of the country have dealt with it. People should understand the New York blackout cost us between $4 billion and $10 billion for those days that businesses did not have power, when people could not conduct business, and could not continue with their livelihoods. That is merely what we ended up losing in terms of revenue. Not only is it an inconvenience to consumers and unsafe--an issue where we have left a lot of elderly people without the resources and reliability they have counted on--we also have negatively impacted our economy.

While we are here in Washington talking about national security and how we make everyone more secure, the clearest answer is--at least with regard to the electricity grid--to pass this legislation, and pass it now before we adjourn for another recess and leave these standards again hostage to this Energy bill, saying we have to have a comprehensive energy bill to pass it. It is not responsible to the citizens of this country to leave them without these standards.

The legislation specifically gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the authority to make sure, working with the North American Energy Reliability Council, that these rules and regulations are in place. Again, for some of my colleagues who may not be familiar with our electricity grid and how the system works, we do not have somebody right now who determines, in the various regions of the country, how much power supply an organization must have, or penalties for not having that supply.

The way regional transmission organizations have been formed, and the way they operate, is it is only one entity pushes the electricity out and puts more power onto the grid. These RTOs have no obligation or responsibility to make sure there is reliability in the system.

I think that is shocking that our country, with a large economic engine and so many people depending on things such as e-commerce that are absolutely dependent upon electricity for millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, a day in transactions, can say that we have no reliability standards in place to protect consumers and businesses from these kinds of outages that have occurred in the past.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2236

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending bill be set aside and that the Senate now turn to Calendar No. 465, S. 2236, a bill to enhance the reliability of the electric system; that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, without intervening action or debate.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, I know we are here today to talk about TANF, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program. That program is a safety net for the American public. I want to talk about another safety net program--the safety net for American workers--that will provide its last benefit today, March 31. Today is the last day any American worker will receive benefits from the Temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which has been providing the last of the Federal unemployment benefits to those who came onto the program before it expired on December 21. As of today, there are 1.1 million people who have exhausted their State benefit without any Federal program to pick them up.

This is more than a dozen times that I have been to the floor to talk about this program and the need to reinstate the Federal unemployment benefits program. I think my colleagues clearly understand why I am here. In fact, we have had a majority of my colleagues in the Senate and a majority of my colleagues in the House support a reinstatement of this Federal program for unemployment benefits. The reason they have supported this program is that our economy has not recovered from the recession and has not created enough jobs to get America back to work. That means Americans who have been unemployed through no fault of their own, who are going out, hitting the pavement, trying to find jobs, can't find work.

The Federal program for unemployment benefits was created to take care of Americans during times like this. That is why we have, in the past 2 years, supported a Federal program that provides 13 weeks of Federal unemployment benefits to all states and 13 additional weeks for other States that have unemployment rates significantly higher than the national average.

I have come to the floor today because today we are leaving that last

person in America, who today is receiving his or her last bit of federal help, out in the cold. And we are going to continue to see thousands more Americans left out in the cold every week.

I met with many of my constituents who have had to cash in their pensions, or who have had to withdraw from long-term savings meant for college tuition, or who have had to take all sorts of extraordinary measures to make sure they can continue to pay their bills. They have had to take these measures because we have not owned up to our obligation, which is to help individuals and the economy in a time of recession.

Let's recap this issue and how we got to this point. Many people look at this debate and see what amounts to fairly minor job growth and conclude that the economy is going to get better. I am all for the economy getting better. I actually believe in the potential of many sectors in the American economy to lead us back to a stronger place. I believe in aviation and biotech and nanotechnology and software. Someday jobs are going to grow in America.

Right now, however, we are still feeling the aftershocks of a recession. Back in 2002, the Bush administration projected that the economy would lose about 100,000. What happened in 2002, however, was that we actually lost 1.5 million jobs in America. The Administration did not have a handle on what was going on with the economy, which resulted in job projection that were way off.

In 2003, the Bush administration tried again. They projected that the economy was actually going to pick up. A lot of us, while we might not have agreed with the President's economic policies, wanted to hope for the best and wanted to see economic growth. We wanted those Americans who were without jobs to actually find employment. But, the economy in 2003 certainly didn't perform the way we thought it was going to perform. Even though the White House projected 1.7 million new jobs, the economy actually lost 406,000 jobs.

That leads us to 2004. The President and his economic advisers have projected that the economy will grow by 2.6 million jobs this year. And by God, this Member of the Senate would sit down and not say another word about unemployment benefits if this administration would say that they actually believe in their projection. I would sit down and not say another word on unemployment benefits, even though they were wrong in 2002 and 2003. But, in fact, three Cabinet Secretaries of the administration came to my State, and when asked about the projection of 2.6 million number jobs--their own projection--they basically said: Well, we don't really believe those numbers. It is kind of a rounding error.

I can tell you that the constituents of my State and across America are not a rounding error. They are people who are counting on a Federal program to help them. Their employers paid into this program for this very circumstance, when the economy is suffering from the aftershocks of a recession and there are no jobs to be had. That is why we want to help these individuals with a bill to reinstate the unemployment benefits program.

Let's look at the rest of the country because some of my colleagues seem to think that apart from a few states with high unemployment, things aren't so bad. I know Washington State has been hit hard. In fact, the Northwest as a region has topped the unemployment rate spectrum for some time. So, there are those who say this is a Washington state problem, or a Northwest problem. Yes, we were deeply affected by 9/11. Washington is heavily dependent on aviation. Yes, there was a huge downturn in the aviation industry. There is no surprise that people don't want to fly when you have an international recession going on. No wonder people don't want to travel. That has started to recover now, after almost 2 years. But this is not only a problem for the Northwest.

Look at these numbers throughout the country: In Ohio, 168,000 manufacturing jobs lost since 2001; in Texas, 175,000; my State, 66,000 jobs; California, 350,000; Pennsylvania, 154,000.

Practically all across America, save Nevada--maybe the Senators from Nevada could tell me why--and Alaska, every state has lost manufacturing jobs since Bush took office. This is only manufacturing jobs. In the Northwest we have lost jobs in software and in a variety of other industries. But this chart proves it is a nationwide problem. Everywhere in America, everywhere, we have lost manufacturing jobs. That has been a challenge to the American workers.

Let's talk about this as an economic issue because, having been in business, I want my colleagues to understand that this is a complex problem. We ought to celebrate the high productivity growth. This high growth means the economic pie is getting bigger but all that extra money in Gross Domestic Product has actually gone to corporate profits.

Now, it is not a bad thing for companies to be profitable. They need to be. They want to give a return to investors. There is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. But what is wrong is when we fail to recognize that investors are winning, but laid-off workers are not. Our economy is not behaving the same way it did in the past. We are seeing a growth in productivity growth, but that has not actually helped us produce jobs.

In the 1990s we had some job loss, but we also had tremendous job growth. People don't think about that. They think in the 1990s it was probably just go-go-go and everything was very nice for America.

We actually had a lot of job loss in the 1990s.

The point is we had more job growth than we had job loss. So, unlike today, the people who lost their jobs in the 1990s were actually able to go somewhere else and get a new job. Today, people don't have that same opportunity once they have lost a job to find other employment.

A Business Week article came out just a few weeks ago entitled ``Where Are The Jobs?'' I recommend it to all my colleagues. It goes through each of these issues and greatly amplifies the problems we are facing and why it is imperative for us to do something about jobs and unemployment benefits. We see executive salaries have gone up and corporate profits have gone up, but then number of jobs has actually gone down.

Again, I am not saying it is horrible that we have had productivity increases--not at all. I'm just saying that if we only look at Gross Domestic Product, we miss a key part of the story. Everything isn't fine if you are not creating jobs.

Let's take a look at a cartoon from one of my favorite cartoonists from the Seattle paper. I thought this cartoon depicted the problem best. While the CEO compensation is going up, middle-class wages and the number of workers with health insurance is going down. These workers are the people who are barely holding on in this difficult economy.

That is what we have to recognize--millions of Americans are barely holding on. I am not saying our colleagues are totally heartless about this. But when you know that there are 1.1 million people without a paycheck or an unemployment check, and you know that you have the power to do something about that and you don't, I start to wonder whether either there is some heartlessness, or whether it is just a fundamental misunderstanding about what is going on with the economy. You can't just simplistically say everything is great because gross domestic product and productivity are up. It doesn't work that way. We have to get serious about this.

As the Business Week article pointed out, because of technology, cost pressures, the price of health care and political and economic problems the link between strong growth and job creation appears to be broken. We don't know what is wrong.

That is a quote from Business Week. That is a business publication that talks to businesses, reports on businesses, reports on profitability. So when Business Week asked where the jobs are, they answered that the link between strong growth and job creation appears to be broken.

This article chronicles these pressures, which are quite obvious if you think about it, how technology is increasing productivity, how we have increased global competition, how we have skyrocketing health care costs, and numerous other things. So, employers aren't hiring, but then why hasn't the unemployment rate increased?

Some of my colleagues have pointed out that the unemployment rate is holding at 5.6 percent. They say that we don't have to do anything about the unemployment insurance at the Federal level. Well, we cannot hang our hat on the 5.6 number because that number hides what is really going on with jobs in America; chiefly, that people are dropping out of the labor force.

If we count the 392,000 people who gave up looking for jobs, we find the unemployment rate would be more like 7.4 percent.

But, my colleagues want to say all is fine at 5.6 percent. That is a great number. We should be happy with it. Don't worry. Let us all go home. We have jobs. We can pay our mortgage payments, but not everybody in America can. We have 1.8 percent of the labor force totally out of the picture. If we look at the unemployment rate, it would be more like 7.4 percent.

The question is whether we are going to keep hiding behind these economic indicators and claim the economy is rosy for American workers. It may be rosy for corporate America and for shareholders, but it is not so rosy for the American worker. We have to come to terms with whether we are going to do our job are reinstate the Federal program or not.

Is that such a bad idea? I don't think it is such a bad idea. I think it is pretty simple.

I am kind of amazed it isn't more clear to my colleagues how unemployment insurance fits in with a constructive economic plan. My support for this program is not because it as a social program. As a former businessperson I view it as economic stimulus. With these benefits, laid-off workers continue to put money into the local economy and pay the mortgage and everything else. That is helpful.

When Alan Greenspan testified before a committee this month, he said, ``Extending unemployment insurance is not a bad idea.'' In fact, he said, ``At times like this, I support extension of unemployment insurance.''

I wasn't surprised when later I heard that Treasury Secretary Snow last week at a hearing said, ``If Congress acts, the President will sign the legislation.''

Well, there is one hat in the hat trick gone of those who oppose this legislation. At least we know now the President is saying he is going to support it. I wish he would call on a few Members on the other side of the aisle. We could certainly use his help.

I am also bolstered by the fact that even the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, at a press conference after Snow's comments said, ``We have always said we would work with Congress on the issue of unemployment benefits.''

If that isn't an invitation to pass this legislation today, I don't know what is.

American workers who have been left out in the cold and who, with their employers, have paid into the unemployment trust fund ought to get the support they deserve.

I remind my colleagues that a majority of Members in both the House and the Senate--58 Members over here and 227 Members in the House of Representatives--have voted in support of reinstating this program.

The fundamental question for an unemployed person sitting at home-- whether you are in Detroit or Pittsburgh or in Washington State--is if both the House and Senate have a majority of Members voting for this, if we have the Secretary of Treasury supporting it, if we have the President's spokespeople saying they will work with the Congress on it, why can't we get unemployment benefits for the American worker?

I am not going to continue to belabor this point on the floor.

I go back to my business experience. I trust the fact that people who understand business and how to stimulate the economy know something needs to happen.

This Business Week article didn't give a knee-jerk reaction to our problem. There are probably 40 pages in this publication about this issue--why we have the unemployment rate, what our economy's illnesses are, and what we can do to recover. It is a very thoughtful piece. They conclude that Government action will act as a bridge and will help the economy cross over the extended valley of almost nonexistent hiring.

I think they have said it best. It is time for us to act. It is time for us to do something on this issue.

Unanimous Consent Request

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to calendar No. 470, S. 2250, a bill to extend the Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation Act of 2002 for displaced workers, that the bill be read three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table without intervening action or debate.

Yes.

I thank the Senator for his question.

I had not seen those specific numbers, but for the year 2004, the estimate was for 2.6 million jobs. And if you take that by a monthly basis, our pace should be more at 250,000 jobs. We have now seen the January and February numbers, and they are nowhere close to that. In fact, December and January were actually revised down from their original projections.

Now, we will either see, this Friday or the following Friday, what the numbers are for March. I do not expect them to be anywhere near close to the 250,000 range that would keep us on pace for the original 2.6 million projection.

But the Senator is correct in saying the job growth is not happening, which is the point I was trying to make. I see the other side of the aisle has objected to my unanimous consent request. I have made my point on this issue.

Does the Senator have another question?

Again, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Connecticut, and his question, because I think this must be about the 15th time or 16th time we have been to the floor to ask for unanimous consent to bring this issue up. It is a priority, we believe, for America, and it should be brought up.

As to your question, I have heard rumblings from House Members in positions of leadership from the other side that they, too, want a vote on it. They are interested in having us send them something. So I think the hat trick needs to stop. We need to tell America who is holding up this bill. We need to go forward in giving the American people the kind of security and support they need in this economic downturn.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator. This Senator has the utmost respect for him and his positions and his understanding of this issue. He is right. Productivity is something we want to embrace. It is good for America. You will not that I did not talk about the outsourcing issue. I talked about the fact that these things are good and there are lots of sectors of the economy that are going to be very robust for us in the future, issues the Senator is well advised on--nanotechnology, biotechnology, aerospace, and software. They are all going to be positive sectors.

The question is, what do we do in this particular recession when things haven't been so positive? I certainly respect the challenge the Senator has managing this particular legislation and moving it through the process. I have found him one of the most cooperative Members with whom to work.

But I feel compelled to ask: Is it possible, then, if we cannot pass this bill by Unanimous Consent, can we bring up amendment No. 2940 for an up-or-down vote which is a vote on the unemployment benefits and do that as part of the TANF legislation?

I thank the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, today we celebrate the life of one of America's greatest civil rights and labor leaders, Cesar Chavez. The effects of his work on behalf of farm workers and to improve civil rights are still felt across America today, from Salinas to Selah. Although Chavez is best remembered for his decades of work to advance these causes, the principles that guided him are universal and enduring.

Chavez's motto, ``si se puede'', it can be done, embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that made America great, and continues to make our Nation stronger every day. Although he labored to overcome tremendous obstacles, he is remembered not just for his grit and determination, but his optimism that those barriers could be surmounted.

Just as importantly, Chavez set goals to better the conditions not just of individuals, but of our society. As he once put it, ``We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community. . . . Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.''

The values and philosophy Chavez embraced are as important to the challenges we face today--from educating our children, to improving health care, to creating opportunity for all our workers--as they were to the causes he championed decades ago. When we honor these principles, Cesar Chavez's legacy lives on.

Mr. President, I rise today to begin the process of placing directly on the Senate calendar stand-alone electric reliability legislation.

As all my colleagues in this body are well aware, devising a comprehensive policy that will help this nation achieve its energy independence is a task that has divided the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on which I serve, the United States Senate and the Congress as a whole for three years now. Regardless, I believe that there is at least one thing on which every Senator can agree--and that is the need to pass legislation giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, working closely with regional entities, the statutory authority to put in place mandatory and enforceable reliability standards.

The call for legislation of the kind we are introducing today dates back to at least 1997, when both a Task Force established by the Clinton Administration's Department of Energy and a North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, blue ribbon panel independently determined that reliability rules for our nation's electric system needed to be mandatory and enforceable.

In response, the Senate passed stand-alone legislation on this matter, authored by my predecessor Senator Gorton, in June 2000. Since then, under the leadership of both parties, the Senate has twice passed consensus-based electric reliability provisions--most recently, last July.

There is no doubt that this nation's consumers and businesses cannot afford further delay in improving the reliability of the electricity grid. Last August's Northeast/Midwest blackout, which affected 50 million consumers from New York to Michigan, again sounded the wake up call for federal electric reliability legislation.

I would like to quote from a January 1, 2004 letter published in the New York Times from North American Electric Reliability Council President and CEO Michehl R. Gent. Mr. Gent wrote that interim steps NERC has taken to improve grid reliability since last August's blackout does ``not reduce the need for federal legislation that would provide authority to impose and enforce mandatory reliability standards. Whether legislation is adopted on a stand-alone basis or as part of a comprehensive energy bill, passage is essential. If reliability legislation had been enacted when first proposed [in 1999], I believe that the blackout would not have occurred.''

Mr. Gent reiterated this position in February 24, 2004 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I asked Mr. Gent whether in fact it wouldn't be irresponsible of this body not to pass reliability legislation this year, even if we are to pass it on a stand-alone basis. Quite simply, Mr. Gent replied, ``I agree.''

We are beginning the process of putting this legislation directly on the Senate calendar because we believe American consumers have waited long enough for Congress to take this simple step, putting in place mandatory and enforceable reliability standards to govern operation of the electric transmission grid--the backbone of our nation's economy.

There are those who will argue that we are ill-advised to take this step. They ill argue in favor of taking up and passing last year's failed energy bill conference report (H.R. 6), or S. 2095--the so- called ``slimmed down'' energy bill introduced this year, which happens to be 100 pages longer than the original. However, I am of the firm belief that we cannot allow these crucial reliability provisions to be held hostage to a flawed comprehensive energy bill.

Now, I know that the distinguished Chairman of the Senate Energy and

Natural Resources Committee has worked to strip one of the most outrageous provisions of the H.R. 6 conference report--the MTBE liability protection, which many Senators simply cannot abide--from the new version of his energy bill. But I am one of the many who believe that the bill that remains requires very, very substantial revision and thorough debate. With its origins in last year's conference report, there are far too many provisions in the new bill that the Senate Energy Committee has simply never considered. Moreover, if one of our primary policy goals is to improve the reliability of our nation's electricity grid, I am hard-pressed to see how many of the provisions in that bill are relevant.

How will weakening the Safe Drinking Water Act help keep the lights on?

Will providing MTBE producers with $2 billion in taxpayer-funded ``transition'' assistance in any way reduce the likelihood of outages?

How would delaying Clean Air Act implementation in our nation's most polluted cities ensure reliable operation of our electricity grid?

Can anyone really argue that exempting oil companies form Clean Water Act requirements will make our high-voltage transmission lines more reliable?

S. 2095 might not subsidize Hooters, but there remain plenty of handouts to the polluters and corporate looters--none of which have anything to do with bolstering the reliability of our transmission infrastructure. And that's before a non-existent conference with the House, the Leadership of which has publicly expressed its complete disinterest in revisiting the provisions of H.R. 6 most objectionable to the Senate. In fact, I ask my colleagues to consider the following passage, published in the February 14, 2004 edition of CQ Today.

``You can't start carving out pieces of a deal you already made,'' said Frank Maisano, a lobbyist who represents several MTBE producers. `What the Senate does at this point is irrelevant. This is just a vehicle to get to conference.' '' MTBE lobbyists--and perhaps our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol--believe that whatever the Senate does within the context of a debate on the new energy bill is ``irrelevant.'' As the saying goes, ``fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.''

So Mr. President, in view of the existing gridlock on comprehensive energy legislation, I believe the only responsible course is for this body to bring up and pass stand-alone electric reliability legislation. I reject the notion that passing comprehensive energy legislation--such as it is--is the sole path to improving the reliability of our nation's electricity grid. We can pass stand-alone reliability legislation. We've done it before. We can--and must--do it again. Good energy policy must not be held hostage to the bad, and I am pleased to begin the process of placing the bill directly on the Senate calendar.

Mr. President, I join my colleague from New Jersey in discussing jobs, job creation and whether we will have the opportunity to vote on two key amendments that will help stimulate our economy--one amendment addresses overtime pay and the other would reinstate the federal unemployment insurance program.

Many of my colleagues know that when we took a vote on reinstating the unemployment program on February 26, we actually had a majority of Members of this body supporting the program. On February 4, a majority of Members of the House of Representatives supported a similar provision.

Congress supports this program, and supports an extension. The reason we created the State and Federal unemployment programs was to provide temporary and partial wage replacement to people who are involuntarily unemployed and to help stabilize the economy during recession. That is why we created the program.

Yet, for some reason, we have put that notion aside and somehow think the economy is getting better and unemployed workers who have lost their jobs, through no fault of their own, somehow should not be able to participate in this Federal program.

My own newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, had an editorial this week that basically said: Let us put money in the pockets of those who are not to blame for being out of work. Such a move will help businesses that rely on consumer spending, help them stay afloat, and was one of the chief reasons for creating unemployment benefits in the first place.

What we are doing this morning is continuing to ignore the plight of the American workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. We are being irresponsible, not allowing Americans to participate in a Federal program that was designed to create opportunity for people and to allow them to sustain themselves in an economic downturn when there are no jobs being created.

So much has been bandied back and forth about whether we are actually recovering from this recession and whether and how many jobs will be created. I think it is important to look at the facts to see what economic projections have been made in comparison to what has really happened.

My point is not to place blame for what has happened. At this point my concern is with the unemployed workers who are struggling to make mortgage payments, pay insurance bills, put food on the table.

Any economist will tell you that sometimes projections are wrong. In the case of job creation in the past several years, we have been dead wrong about what was going to happen to the U.S. economy. In 2002, the Bush's Council of Economic Advisers said: We are going to have job loss, but it is not going to be that severe: We are going to lose about 100,000 jobs. But, in fact, in that year we actually lost 1.5 million jobs.

As a result, the President proposed his policies that were based on that projection. I didn't support his policies, but I am not going to spend a lot of time this morning critiquing whether or not they were sound. Instead, I am asking my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to not make this a partisan issue. I am asking them to make this about the American worker who needs our help utilizing a Federal program designed to help out in times just like this.

So, then in 2003, the President's economic forecast projected that the economy would create 1.7 million new jobs. But in reality, there was no job growth. In fact, we lost jobs. Instead of growing the economy, we lost 406,000 jobs.

This year, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying we don't have to keep the Federal unemployment benefits program going because the President has projected that we are going to have a record year--that we are going to create 2.6 million jobs. That was the actual forecast from the Council of Economic Advisors. I can provide to my colleagues the specific page, the specific citation.

When several members of the President's Cabinet traveled to my state of Washington in February, they backed away from the projections. They said: We don't think that 2.6 million really is the number of jobs that are going to be created this year. We don't really think the forecast means what we thought it meant. I can tell you, the unemployed worker is not a rounding error; they are real people with real needs they have to meet on a day-to-day basis.

To reach this 2.6 million jobs by the end of the year, the economy would need to create between 200,000 to 300,000 jobs per month. That is not what is happening at all. That is not what happened in January and it is not what happened in February. It is probably not what is going to happen in March.

The real issue is that, while some people are saying the economy is better, and gee, things are rosy since the unemployment rate is only 5.6 percent, they are hiding the fact that the unemployment rate held steady last month largely because 392,000 people are no

longer counted as unemployed. Many economists and many newspapers around the country have said the national average would be more like above 7 percent if you actually included those people who aren't getting counted.

Some people question whether the Federal program helps or hurts in the end. They say, don't we want these people out looking for jobs? Well, I can guarantee they are out looking for jobs. I have had so many constituents who have come to my Web site and told me their personal stories about how they are trying to find a job, often competing with 20 or 30 other people for a job for which they are all overqualified because there are not jobs being created. Consequently, they are without the opportunity we all would like to see in their communities. They have lost a job through no fault of their own, they are working hard to find a new opportunity, but jobs are not being created.

What do you do when jobs are not being created? You utilize this Federal program that could provide opportunity to people for 13 weeks beyond the State program. And this program creates an economic stimulus. Even Alan Greenspan recently said he believed we should have programs like this one in times of economic downturn. In fact, he testified before the House Education and the Workforce Committee before we adjourned for our last recess and he said:

In times like this, I have supported the issue of extension

of unemployment insurance.

He said that is because it is important to stimulate the economy.

The program we are talking about right now would generate billions of dollars of stimulus that would go directly into the economy over the next 6 months. In fact, for every dollar spent on unemployment insurance, those individuals turn around and spend that money, $2, in our local economies. They pay their mortgage payments, their health care bills, their tuition for education, for their children to go to college. It helps sustain them until economic growth actually returns.

When the first Bush administration was faced with this dilemma, when they had a recession in the 1990s, the first Bush administration said: Let's extend the Federal unemployment insurance program. Actually, the economy had been creating substantial numbers of new jobs for several months when the first Bush administration extended the program. Why? Because they knew that it would take time for the economy to recover. They knew all of those people were not going to find jobs immediately. Even though jobs had been created, the Bush administration extended the unemployment benefit program for another 9 months. As we all know, that was the right policy decision and many people went back to work over a period of time and they had the wherewithal to sustain their families in the meantime.

I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it is time to get past the obstructionists who are holding this up. A majority of Members in both the House and the Senate want this legislation passed. They want to help the American worker. 5.6 is not the real number of unemployed people in America. It is not a fair representation.

Even Business Week did a fabulous story presenting the issue of jobs in America, ``Where Are The Jobs?'' I urge all my colleagues to read through it in detail and see where exactly the jobs are in America. In reading it, you will find there has been an increase in productivity. There has been an increase in productivity and consequently there have been fewer new hires. While corporate CEOs have made more money and the stock market has benefited from the efficiencies of business, the person who has not benefited is the American worker who has not found a job. Unlike the 1990s when there were millions of jobs created at the same time that we achieved gains in productivity, now we have productivity gains and no jobs are being created. It is going to take us longer to recover.

This Senator believes very much in the economy of the future. I believe there are some very strong sectors. As my colleague said yesterday, I believe we have to have the right fiscal plan, we have to have the right sectors--sectors like biotechnology and nanotechnology, software, and aerospace will continue to grow with the American economy. I think if we make this investment in unemployment now, we can give the American workers the help and the assistance they need during this time of job loss.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of Senator Lautenberg's amendment to provide additional resources for the Superfund trust fund. I think my colleagues would all agree on the success of the Superfund Program. Since its inception in 1980, we have cleaned up 890 of the most hazardous toxic waste sites in communities around the country, including 44 in my home State of Washington. The Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement of the ``polluter-pays principle'' has helped clean up these sites.

Unfortunately, since the Superfund fees expired in 1995, American taxpayers have picked up an increasingly large share of cleanup costs and today are bearing almost the entire burden of paying for sites abandoned by polluting corporations. That is why the amendment before us is really about fairness--it holds polluting industries accountable and protects public health and safety. I believe a recent editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer makes the point well:

Washington taxpayers paid only $7 million in 1995 for

Superfund program costs. Next year, we will pay between $25

million and $30 million. Americans are now paying for the

worst toxic waste sites in the country with our health and

our tax dollars.

This amendment will also help stem the ongoing erosion of funding for the Superfund Program. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, the overall Superfund appropriations have dropped 35 percent in real terms since 1993, even while highly contaminated hazardous waste sites continue to be added to the National Priorities List, the Environmental Protection Agency's list of the Nation's most contaminated sites. In fact, at the end of fiscal year 2002, the National Priorities List

had 1,233 sites in various stages of cleanup.

The Environmental Protection Agency's own Inspector General reported in January 2003 that the agency is facing Superfund shortfalls exceeding $174 million. That means the Bunker Hill site on the border of Washington and Idaho is only receiving $15 million this year, even though the Environmental Protection Agency estimated a need for $37.8 million. To put that in personal terms, I quote directly from the Inspector General's report:

The impact of reduced funds for the Bunker Hill site is

associated with risk to human health, particularly for young

children and pregnant women, from lead contamination in a

residential area.

I think this quote, directly from the Environmental Protection Agency, tells us all how critical it is we support this amendment. Reinstating the fees means that we can shift costs away from overburdened taxpayers, protect Americans from exposure to dangerous toxic chemicals, and revitalize properties that blight our nation and often inhibit urban redevelopment.

Waste sites still threaten more than 65 million Americans who live within 4 miles of a Superfund toxic waste site. And there are 40,000 other sites of concern that have not yet been listed on the National Priorities List. There was a very good reason for initiating a Superfund fee 23 years ago, and, until the remaining Superfund sites are cleaned up, we should reinstate and maintain this important environmental fee. I urge my colleagues to support this critical amendment.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Madam President. I rise today to express my support for amendment No. 2647 that, just yesterday, passed the U.S. Senate unanimously. I also thank every one of my colleagues for their support for what I believe is one of the greatest mechanisms for job creation and industry innovation. The amendment, of course, extends the research and development tax credit for 2 years.

The research tax credit, I believe, has demonstrated that it is a powerful incentive for companies to increase research spending. The tax credit lowers the cost of doing research in the United States, so it encourages companies to continue to make investments in critical R&D. And the bottom-line benefit is that research and development creates new jobs in the United States--something that is so vital right now for our Nation and for my State.

The current R&D tax credit is set to expire on June 30, 2004. Many of my colleagues, here, know we play this annual game of saying the R&D tax credit is important, but then not renewing it on a permanent basis, thereby denying companies and organizations the certainty they need to make these investments. The major investments in nanotechnology and biotechnology, in software, and in the computer sciences take several years of investments. Without a planning horizon of at lest several years, companies just won't put the money into R&D.

I am fully aware of the budget situation we are confronting, as Senator Hatch described yesterday. But, as my friend from Utah, stated, ``[i]ronically . . . a permanent credit costs no more than one that is regularly extended.'' And while I am a cosponsor of this amendment with a short term, 2-year extension because I fundamentally believe that the R&D tax credit is so imperative, I must also say that permanency of the tax credit remains a high priority for me. It is only in the permanency of the R&D tax credit that businesses can truly create a strategic business plan. As it stands, companies have to take into account the fact that Congress could allow the credit to lapse for a few months. That causes companies to hedge their bets, spending a little less on R&D, and our economy suffers as a result. By contract, permanency helps planning; and the sooner we make this permanent, the sooner companies can begin to enlarge and expand their research and development units, and the sooner their innovations will strengthen economic growth.

Who has created jobs in the last decade? Who has stimulated our economy to move forward? It is a lot of companies that have invested in R&D. It is the Microsofts. It is the Amazons. It is the variety of biotechnology companies from my state and others making investments that have increased the productivity of their workforce, allowing them to hire new people as new products and services are delivered.

The research credit creates jobs. More than 90 percent of the costs eligible for the credit are salaries and wages paid to researchers. The only way for a company to increase its credit is to increase its R&D payroll in the U.S.

First authorized in 1982, the credit has been reauthorized eight times, with a gap from June 1995 to June 1996. As I mentioned, the current credit expires in June 2004. However, its effectiveness is limited because businesses cannot rely on it in their long-term planning, and most R&D projects are long-term. In order to provide stability and broaden the reach of this proven incentive, Congress needs to make the credit permanent.

I cannot stress enough how important private investment in R&D is. R&D is the engine that brings us new medicines, new medical technologies, cleaner manufacturing technologies, advanced weapon systems and other tools in the war on terror. Furthermore, growth in our high tech economy depends on solid R&D, and there is no good reason to delay making the credit permanent. A permanent tax credit will go a long way to providing the planners and investors the certainty that they need.

This amendment, having passed unanimously, shows the Senate's strong support for R&D. We have taken this one step forward; but let us not force these companies that serve as the engine for job creation to come back year after year for an extension of the R&D credit. Toward that end, I ask that we take this amendment one step further and make the research and development tax credit permanent.