Floor Statements

Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about a bill that I have the pleasure of helping to lead with several of my colleagues, particularly Senator Grassley, who has been my long- standing partner and a wonderful cochair of the foster care caucus. There are any number of us, Republicans and Democrats, who have our eyes on and our hearts connected to the 500,000 children who are technically being raised by the government.

The government does many things well, but raising children isn't one of them. So it is our responsibility, when we enter into or respond to a case of abuse, gross abuse, neglect, or gross neglect, that we respond appropriately by removing children from homes who have, unfortunately, been tortured at times by their own parents. That, of course, is inconceivable to me and to many, but, unfortunately, it happens.

So we remove children--hopefully temporarily--until the situation at home can be addressed with community services, faith-based services and support, where the children can be reunited with parents who have been healed, possibly, of their situation. That is not always the case, and we work as quickly as we can to find responsible and able relatives to take in the child--willing and able relatives, the law says, to take in the child with sibling groups intact. If that is not possible, then we seek to find a family in the community that will adopt these children.

The thing I want to say about these wonderful children is that while their families may be broken--families may disintegrate for all sorts of reasons, including mental health, drug abuse, uncontrollable violence, criminal activity that disintegrates the family, and children are most certainly affected--these children, in many instances, aren't broken. Their families are broken. The possibility of these children, from the ages of zero to 1 or 2 or 3 or 9 or 12 or 15, being given an opportunity to be adopted into the loving arms of a stable family who will raise that child or children as their own or to be reunified with loving family members is ideal.

As I said, governments do many things well, but raising children isn't one of them. Human beings raise other human beings, and we need to do a better job of placing our children in quality, temporary foster homes, and then finding permanent, loving homes.

We have this crazy notion in America and around the world that children are grown when they are 18, so we put all of their belongings in a plastic bag and we say goodbye to them, and we tell them: Please forget my cell phone number because you have aged out of the system.

Several of us have been working for years, including former Senator Chafee, for one, to create more permanent opportunities for extended, independent living. While I support that--it is much better than putting their things in a bag, their few little items after 18 years, and sending them on their way--we now can extend that help until they are 21. However, what we really need to be doing is finding families for these children.

I am 57 and I still need my family. I still talk to my mother and father almost every day. I was with my family this weekend. They will be with me and have been with me for every important moment of my life. When did somebody get a notion that children don't need a family after they are 18? It is a silly notion, and it is not even true. We would not send our own children into the world alone by themselves. So our whole foster system needs great reform, and we are working on that.

But one piece of this system that needs reform is what we are trying to address today by introducing the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which is a bill that Senator Grassley and many others, including Senator Begich, Senator Blunt, Senator Boxer, Senator Franken, and Senator Klobuchar have graciously agreed to cosponsor and provide their leadership. Congresswoman Bass is a U.S. Representative from California's 33rd District. She, along with Congresswoman Bachmann from Minnesota, Congressman Marino from Pennsylvania, and Congressman McDermott from Washington State, has introduced the same bipartisan bill in the House. So we are very excited about the strong bipartisan support for this bill.

All this bill says--and it makes such sense I can't believe it is not in the law already--is that when a child comes into the care of the government, the government agency responsible for the care of this child--now it is not parents any longer because the parents' rights either have been terminated or are in the process of being terminated-- the government will have the right, or the agencies representing the government, to their academic records.

What is happening now is foster children are getting lost not only in the system but lost in their schools because of the difficulty in getting access to education records under the guise that these records should be private, et cetera.

What is happening is some of these privacy rules are not protecting the children, they are protecting the system that is broken, and that is the problem. We are doing everything we can to protect the privacy of the child, but what is happening is some of these privacy rules are putting up a screen so that we can't find out that the school is not doing its job on behalf of the child, or the social workers are not doing their job on behalf of the child.

So this simply streamlines the process of making sure academic records can be accessed by foster families--either adoptive families or guardians--without having to go through the courts for a long, extended timeframe.

I think this is an important change. It is one of probably 100 changes to this system that need to be made. Of course, we can make these new laws in Washington. A lot of this has to be carried out with heart and compassion and common sense, which, unfortunately, we cannot legislate from Washington. But what we can do is try, when we see a problem--this problem was identified not by me or by my staff. It was actually identified by foster youth who came up here this summer to intern and brought to our attention the issue that some of their records are not accessible to their foster families who are trying their best to raise them and to help them, et cetera. So the young people themselves have asked for this change. We are happy to accommodate that request.

Let me end by saying again, there are over 480,000--about 400,000 to 500,000--children who are in our foster care system representing less than one-half of 1 percent of all the children in America, which is about 100 million. But it is an important one-half of 1 percent because these are children whose families have failed them terribly. These are children who are vulnerable and need us to love them extra specially, to help them extra specially. That is what some of us spend a good bit of our time trying to do because they are willing and able to become great citizens of our Nation but need that extra special help.

So this Uninterrupted Scholars Act will give access, appropriately with protections, to their academic records. Senator Franken has a bill to give them choice in public schools to help give them stability in their public schools, so they can stay with their friends, their teachers, as they, unfortunately, have to move around in the system.

Many people will benefit--most importantly, the youth involved.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the importance of small businesses in the United States. It cannot be stated enough that small businesses are the economic engines of our country. Small businesses also represent the essence of the American Dream. They are creators of new jobs and innovative technologies. In fact, over the last 15 years, businesses employing less than 500 people have created 93 percent of all new jobs and employed 58.6 million workers. Businesses employing less than 20 people alone employed 21.3 million workers. In my home state of Louisiana, small businesses make up about 98 percent of businesses. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I remain focused on the needs of these small businesses. That is why I am here today to introduce a bill that I believe will help spur job creation among small businesses.

As you know, right now our country is still mired in an historic economic downturn. This economic downturn is disproportionately affecting small businesses and, in turn, stifling opportunities for them to generate economic growth for the country. Sadly, since November 2008 80 percent of the job losses have come from small businesses. 2.16 million jobs were lost in the private sector from July to February 2008--nearly half from businesses with less than 50 employees. While corporate layoffs get the headlines, small business layoffs increase the breadlines. Ten jobs lost here and five jobs there add up. These are the job losses that hurt our economy, our communities and our families.

With this in mind, I was proud to lead Congressional efforts to enact the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, Public Law 111-240. President Obama signed this legislation into law on September 27, 2010. This legislation focused on the three ``C's'' important to small businesses: Capital, Contracting, and Counseling. 332 community banks in 47 states have received $4.01 billion in funding from the Small Business Lending Fund in the bill, which is $9.3 billion in leverage potential for small businesses. Furthermore, a total of 54 states/territories applied for funding through the Small Business State Credit Initiative Program to support State-run small business lending programs. Approximately, $1.3 billion for 47 states and territories has been approved. Lastly, $30 million of Round 1 of State Trade and Export, STEP, export grant funding was awarded in the Fall 2011 to 52 states and territories to promote small business exports. To date, the Small Business Jobs Act has provided an important boost to small businesses looking to get credit or open new markets overseas.

Given the importance of small businesses to our economy, I believe that there is no better time than now for Congress to build off the success of the Small Business Jobs Act. But the key question is how to best assist our country's 28 million small businesses? This is complicated because Federal law defines a small business as ``those having 500 employees or less.'' They may all fit under the same broad category of small business, but they are not all the same. So it makes no sense for the Federal government or Congress to have a ``one size fits all'' policy for helping them grow. We must put a special focus on maximizing strategies to help those small firms that have the capacity to grow in the near term.

The approach I have taken is to focus on the entrepreneurial ecosystems in our communities. This is because an ecosystem is defined as ``a system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment.'' I am particularly interested in the relationship between entrepreneurs, the current environment for entrepreneurship, and how we can make them more robust. In my view strengthening these ecosystems is an avenue to spur small business growth, create jobs, and grow our economy.

Babson College, one of the country's top colleges for undergraduate/ graduate entrepreneurship programs, has looked into what makes up an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Babson has identified the ``six domains'' of any entrepreneurial ecosystem: a conducive culture that rewards innovation, creativity and experimentation; enabling policies and leadership that provide regulatory and capital support; availability of appropriate finance, including micro-loans, private equity and public capital; quality human capital that include both skilled and unskilled workers from at home and abroad; venture-friendly markets for products by creating distribution channels and entrepreneurship networks; and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports, including incubation centers and legal and accounting advisers.

Building off this research and with feedback from other stakeholders, late last year my committee began preparations to conduct a series of roundtables on strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem for small businesses. The goal of these roundtables, which were conducted between February and April 2012, was to take the ideas that come out of these discussions and use them as the foundation for a major piece of legislation to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The first roundtable on February 1, 2012, was entitled ``Developing and Strengthening High-Growth Entrepreneurship.'' This roundtable set the stage for our discussions by exploring the recent success of high- growth firms in job creation and why it is so important that we replicate that success. The second roundtable was on March 22, 2012, and was entitled ``A Spotlight on Small Business Investment Companies and Their Role in the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.'' That roundtable looked at how we could enhance an already successful program that gets capital into the hands of America's job creators. The last roundtable was on April 18, 2012, and was entitled ``Perspectives from the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Creating Jobs and Growing Businesses through Entrepreneurship.'' That roundtable discussed how different stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are creating new entrepreneurs and growing businesses. It brought together key stakeholders from different levels of an entrepreneurial ecosystem: universities and entrepreneurship programs, Federal and local officials, investors, private sector accelerators, mentors, and successful entrepreneurs.

As a result of these three roundtables, my committee received almost 60 specific policy recommendations from the 41 participants. Some of these recommendations fell under the

jurisdictions of other Senate committees, while other proposals had a significant cost associated with them or lacked the strong bipartisan support necessary to move them forward in the Senate. After further consulting with my colleagues on the committee, I was able to identify our own six ``domains'' of proposals to focus our efforts on: Tax and Finance; Access to Capital; Access to Global Markets; Access to Mentoring, Education and Strategic Partnerships; Access to Government Contracting; and Transparency, Accountability, and Effectiveness. These domains form the six titles of the Success Ultimately Comes from Capital, Contracting, Education, Strategic Partnerships, and Smart Regulations, SUCCESS, Act of 2012.

First, Title I of the SUCCESS Act provides almost $12 billion in tax incentives to assist small businesses. All five tax provisions within the SUCCESS Act were based on parts of legislation, S. 2050, that was introduced in January by Senator Snowe and myself. S. 2050, the Small Business Tax Extenders Act, reflects the work of many of my Senate colleagues, including Senators Snowe, Kerry, Merkley, Cardin, Isakson, and Shaheen.

Section 102 of the SUCCESS Act extends the 100 percent exclusion from tax the gain on the sale of qualified small businesses, QSB, stock that non-corporate taxpayers purchase in 2012 and 2013 and hold for 5 years. Qualifying small business stock is stock of C-corporation whose gross assets do not exceed $50 million, including the proceeds received from the issuance of the stock, and who meets a specific active business requirement. The amount of gain eligible for the exclusion is limited to the greater of ten times the taxpayer's basis in the stock or $10 million of gain from stock in that corporation. Until 2009, non- corporate taxpayers were allowed to exclude 50 percent of the gain from the sale of stock of QSB if the taxpayers held the stock for 5 years. The Recovery Act of 2009 increased the 50 percent exclusion to 75 percent and the Small Business Jobs Act and subsequent legislation increased and extended the exclusion to 100 percent through 2011. However, as of January 1, 2012, the 100 percent exclusion has reverted to 50 percent and startup investments are no longer entitled to preferential capital gains treatment.

Senator Kerry, a senior member of my committee as well as the Finance Committee, has been a leader in the Senate in getting this provision extended in previous Congresses. I also note that this proposal has bipartisan and White House support. President Obama has repeatedly called on Congress to make permanent the 100 percent capital gains exclusion and included this proposal in his Startup America Legislative Agenda. Senators Moran, Warner, Coons and Rubio have all called for making this provision permanent and included a version of this provision in S. 3217, the Startup Act 2.0 that was introduced in May. According to a Kauffman Foundation paper published earlier this year, the 100 percent exclusion ``boosts the after-tax returns on such investments in startups and should induce substantial levels of new investments in startup firms.'' They further estimate that making this provision permanent would increase risky investments by conservatively 50 percent more than overall cost of the provision.

Section 103 of the bill extends the increased deduction for business start-up expenditures in 2012 and 2013 from $5,000 to $10,000, subject to a $60,000 threshold. Under current law, taxpayers can elect to deduct up to $5,000 of ``start-up expenditures'' in the taxable year in which they start a trade or business. The $5,000 is reduced--but not below zero--by the amount by which start-up costs exceed $50,000. Examples of startup costs include studies of potential markets, products, labor markets, or transportation systems; advertisements for the opening of a new business; compensation for consultants and employees undergoing training and their instructors; and travel for the purpose of securing suppliers, distributors, and customers.

The Small Business Jobs Act temporarily increased the amount of start-up expenditures entrepreneurs could deduct from their taxes in 2010 from $5,000 to $10,000, with a phase-out threshold of $60,000. We need to bring this provision back to aid our small businesses.

I note that there is also support within this chamber and from the White House for this proposal. As part of his Startup America Legislative Agenda, President Obama has called for making permanent the increased deduction for start-up expenditures. Senator Merkley successfully fought for the initial increase in deduction to be included in the Small Business Jobs Act. Over the past several years, this proposal has been repeatedly endorsed by the National Association for the Self-Employed and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, NFIB. Furthermore, according to a Kauffman Foundation survey, on average, new firms inject about $80,000 into their business during the first year of operation. The vast majority of small business owners--between 80 percent and 90 percent--also invest significant amounts of their own money into their businesses. These budding enterprises are also more dependent on personal capital at startup than after they become established businesses. Doubling the deduction for start-up costs puts cash in the hands of small businesses owners who need it most--those who are just getting started. According to estimates from Third Way, a non-partisan group, this proposal would help the more than 600,000 Americans who start their own business every year.

Under current law, when a corporation becomes an S-Corporation, it is required to hold its business assets for 10 years or pay punitive taxes. This 10- year holding period is too long and ties up assets that could be sold to raise capital. In 2010, Congress reduced this holding period to 5 years to better match business planning cycles. Section 104 of my bill will extend the 5-year holding period for 2012 and 2013, costing $251 million over 10 years. As with other provisions in the SUCCESS Act, this provision has bipartisan support. Senator Cardin has fought to make this proposal permanent. Senators Snowe, Vitter, and Roberts have also been long-time supporters and are co-sponsors of legislation introduced by Senator Cardin to make this provision permanent. By granting this extension, we will give the more than 4 million S-Corporations in the U.S. the flexibility they need to raise capital.

Section 105 would allow sole proprietorships, partnerships and non- publicly traded corporations with less than $50M in average gross annual receipts for the prior 3 years, to carryback unused general business credits earned in 2012 and 2013 for 5 previous years. Under current law, if a business has no tax liability in its current tax year, it may carry the general business tax credit back to the previous tax year to offset taxes paid in the previous year and obtain a refund. If the current credit exceeds taxes paid in the previous year, the remaining credit may be carried forward for 20 years, without interest, and used to offset tax liability in future years. The general business credit is limited to the difference between the regular tax liability of a business and the greater of its tentative minimum tax or 25 percent of regular tax liability in excess of $25,000. The general business tax credit is comprised of several different tax credits including the R&D tax credit, energy credits, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

This extension would provide tax refunds to businesses that were previously healthy but are currently running losses. It would improve the effectiveness of business credits that are intended to expand investment and employment, in the case of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. It would also allow businesses greater immediate benefit from credits designed to encourage specific types of economic activity, such as hiring disadvantaged workers or investments in renewable energy. By providing businesses with greater opportunity to claim business credits, the provisions would also give an infusion of cash to businesses, which might promote investment. This could be particularly important if businesses have trouble borrowing because of financial market problems.

Section 106 of the SUCCESS Act extends a generous Section 179 provision that allows small businesses to immediately write-off up to $500,000, up from $250,000, for tangible personal property

and up to $250,000 for improvements to leasehold property and retail property.

Under the Small Business Jobs Act and other subsequent legislation, for taxable years beginning in 2010 and 2011, small businesses could write-off for capital expenditures for ``qualifying Sec. 179 property'' up to $500,000 and the phase-out threshold has been increased to $2,000,000. These thresholds were up from prior law thresholds of $25,000/$200,000. In addition, for the first time, the Small Business Jobs Act allowed taxpayers to expense $250,000 of the cost of improvements to real property including qualified restaurant property and qualified retail property. To qualify for the section 179 deduction, property must have been acquired for use in the trade or business. Examples of qualifying property include machinery and equipment; property contained in or attached to a building, other than structural components, such as refrigerators, grocery store counters, office equipment, printing presses, testing equipment, and signs.; gasoline storage tanks and pumps at retail service stations.; livestock, including horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, and mink and other furbearing animals.

Extending the enhanced Section 179 deduction has bipartisan Senate support, White House support, and industry support. The President supports extending Section 179. My colleague Senator Snowe is a strong supporter of the enhanced Section 179 provision that allows businesses to expense improvements to restaurant and retail property. She developed this particular proposal in connection with her work on the Small Business Jobs Act. Finally, 26 National business groups such as the NFIB, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Homebuilders, and the National Association of the Self-Employed endorsed extending Section 179 and including expensing for real property improvements in a May 21, 2012 letter to Congress.

The next title of the SUCCESS Act focuses on improving access to capital for small businesses. In particular, Subtitle A under Title II was previously introduced as S. 3253, the Expanding Access to Capital for Entrepreneurial Leaders, EXCEL, Act. It provides necessary and timely enhancements to the Small Business Investment Company, SBIC, program. SBICs are government backed and regulated private equity funds which invest in U.S. small businesses. The SBIC program was created in 1958 by then Senator Lyndon Johnson and Senator William Fulbright, and signed into law by President Eisenhower. During a Senate hearing on the creation of the program, Senator Joseph Clark said the legislation is ``necessary to increase the availability of long-term credit and equity capital for small businesses.''

Since 1958, SBICs have invested $56 billion in over 100,000 small businesses. The core debenture program operates at no cost to taxpayers. SBIC success stories include: Apple Computer, Callaway Golf, Costco, Outback Steakhouse, Jenny Craig, Annie's food company, and Center Rock of Berlin, PA, the manufacturers of the drill bit that saved the Chilean miners in October 2010.

The SBIC program has seen strong growth in the past few years. For example, the program grew 50 percent in fiscal year 2011 alone. However, the authorization level has not been permanently raised since 2003. To continue fulfilling the intent of the original legislation, it is time to make some improvements. The Landrieu-Snowe EXCEL Act has two main components. First, it raises the statutory cap for the SBIC Program from $3 billion to $4 billion. Second, it increases the amount of leverage by SBIC licensees under common control from $225 million to $350 million ``Family of Funds''. The components of this provision were also included in the President's Startup America legislative package.

Subtitle B of Title II was originally introduced as S. 2364 by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Isakson and Shaheen. The 504 loan program is a long-term financing tool for economic development that provides small businesses with long-term, fixed-rate loans to help them acquire major fixed assets and real estate for expansion or modernization. The Small Business Jobs Act allowed small businesses to use the 504 loan program to refinance certain qualifying existing debt for two years, but the SBA did not promulgate regulations to implement the refinancing provision until February 17, 2012.

This subtitle would extend for a year and a half a provision allowing small business owners to use Small Business Administration, SBA, 504 loans to refinance existing commercial mortgages. Extending the 504 refinancing program is a common-sense way to help small businesses and create jobs. By allowing small businesses to refinance qualified commercial real estate debt, this program lowers their monthly mortgage payments at no cost to taxpayers. That's right, this provision has zero subsidy cost. At a time when we are still facing high unemployment, this extension is one of many things that we should be doing to put more capital in the hands of America's job creators.

Subtitle C of Title II is a new proposal introduced for the first time as part of the SUCCESS Act. SBA currently releases some information publicly about SBA lending activity, but it is almost impossible to find and comprehend if you are not an SBA lending professional. If a small business, mayor, or governor wants to determine SBA lending activity in their area, they lack the ability to do so easily.

This subtitle would require the SBA to post a user friendly Lender Activity Index on the SBA website. Users will immediately be able to access the following data for any given bank: name of bank, number of SBA loans each bank made, total dollar amount of SBA loans of each bank, zip code of bank activity, not where every single loan was made, but a list of every zip code where the bank has made an SBA loan, industries lent to, hospitality, manufacturing, service, software, etc., stage of business cycle, new, or existing business, and business specific information, i.e. Women Owned Businesses, Minority Owned Businesses, or Veteran Owned Businesses. Data will be available for the year to date and users will be able to compare to 3 previous fiscal years. Both quarterly and annual data will be included.

Title III of the SUCCESS Act focuses on promoting exports from small businesses. The Small Business Jobs Act made major changes to the international trade work done by the SBA. Now that those provisions have been in place for several years, there are additional refinements and direction needed. I would like to specifically thank Senators Shaheen and Ayotte for their bipartisan export contributions to this effort. The export provisions of Tile III are taken from S. 3218, their Small Business Growth Act of 2012, as well as S. 3277, the Go Global Act of 2012 that Senator Shaheen and I authored this year.

95 percent of the world's customers are located outside of the borders of the United States, and in the last twelve months we have exported more than $2 trillion of goods and services to these consumers. Yet only 1 percent of our approximately 28 million small businesses export. Our agencies need to be working together to ensure our small businesses have the resources they need to expand their customer base and be part of the more than $180 billion in exports that the United States sends around the world each month.

This title aids our small business exporters by addressing federal government coordination, resources for rural businesses, and export control education. It establishes, in Section 306, an interagency task force of SBA, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Export-Import Bank, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation on export financing to review, improve, and increase collaboration on current finance programs. Then, to further coordination, Section 307(a) begins a cross training program with SBA and USDA to inform their respective export finance specialists more about each other's programs. Our small businesses face enough challenges--we should be bringing our resources to them. In Section 304, this bill requires SBA, in coordination with other agencies, to do at least one export outreach event per year in each state. Section 307(b) also aids our rural small businesses by posting a list of rural lenders who participate in SBA and USDA loan programs and a list of rural small businesses counseling and technical assistance resources. Jobs created by exports pay, on average, 15 to 20 percent more than jobs created by goods and services sold

in the United States. This bill will continue to support entrepreneurs who want to create and grow these employment opportunities for all Americans.

Title IV of the bill focuses on promoting small business access to mentoring, education and strategic partnerships. Subtitle A of this title was originally introduced by Senator Snowe and I as S. 3198, the Strengthening Resources for America's Entrepreneurs Act of 2012. The SBA Office of Entrepreneurial Development, OED, oversees a network of programs and services that support the training and counseling needs of small business. According to the SBA, OED helps hundreds of thousands of small business clients start, grow and compete in global markets by providing quality training, counseling and access to resources. SBA delivers these services through non-profit, college and university, and community-based organization resource partners. Through its network of over 1,000 resource partners across the country, OED programs include Small Business Development Centers, SBDCs, Women's Business Centers, SCORE, and Entrepreneurship Education. However, it is currently difficult to track effectiveness and ensure our resources are being used in the best ways possible. To solve this challenge, this subtitle has four primary components. First, it requires the SBA to coordinate and make consistent data collection and outcome metrics for Entrepreneurial Development programs. Second, it increases planning for utilizing Entrepreneurial Development programs to create jobs. Third, it increases coordination between Entrepreneurial Development programs and Resource Partners at the national level. Finally, it increases accountability measures and reports to Congress regarding the effectiveness of Entrepreneurial Development programs.

Subtitle B of the bill comes from S. 3197, the Women's Small Business Ownership Act which was sponsored by Senator Snowe and myself. This subtitle is focused on the SBA Women's Business Center (WBC) program. The WBC program was established in 1988 and implemented through the SBA's Office of Women's Business Ownership. It provides quality counseling and training services to all entrepreneurs, primarily women, especially those who are socially and economically disadvantaged. Through a network of over 100 non-profit organizations, WBCs help more than 150,000 clients annually to start and grow small firms in the local area in which they serve and to stimulate economic growth. Subtitle B reauthorizes the WBC program through Fiscal Year 2015 and makes improvements to the program, including a Government Accountability Office review of Women's Business Center program performance as compared with other SBA Entrepreneurial Development programs.

Subtitle C of the SUCCESS Act is Senator Snowe's Strengthening America's Small Business Development Centers Act. Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) are considered to be the backbone of the SBA's Office of Entrepreneurial Development efforts, and are the largest of the agency's OED programs. SBDCs are the university based resource partners that provide counseling and training needs for more than 600,000 business clients annually. From 2007 to 2008, the counseling and technical assistance services they offered lead to the creation of 58,501 new jobs, at a cost of $3,462 per job. Additionally, they estimate that their counseling services helped to save 88,889 jobs. This subtitle would reauthorize SBDC program at the current $135 million authorization level through fiscal year 15. Beyond reauthorizing the SBDC program, this provision also encourages SBDCs to improve outreach and communications to universities, community colleges, and junior colleges and allows the SBA Administrator to authorize out-of-state SBDCs to provide assistance in declared disaster areas.

Subtitle D of Title IV was originally introduced as S. 3281 by Senators Snowe, Kerry, and Coburn. This subtitle repeals Federal authorization of the National Veterans Business Development Corporation, TVC, eliminating an ineffective government program. The National Veterans Business Development Corporation, also known as The Veterans Corporation or simply TVC, has been ineffective and controversial since its inception as part of the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act, P.L. 106-50, in 1999. In December of 2008, former Small Business Committee Chairman Kerry and Ranking Member Snowe investigated TVC, and issued a report detailing the organization's blatant mismanagement and wasting of taxpayers' dollars. Since the issuing of the Small Business Committee's report, Congress has appropriated no further funding for TVC, and the Small Business Administration has incorporated the Veteran Business Resource Centers, VBRCs, that TVC previously funded into its existing network of Veteran Business Outreach Centers, VBOCs. At present, TVC still exists as an organization, and it is still technically federally chartered. At the same time, it receives no Federal funds, has no Department or Agency oversight. It is time for it to be eliminated.

Title V of the SUCCESS Act focuses on promoting Federal government contracting opportunities for small businesses. Section 511 under Subtitle A of Title V was originally introduced by Senators Cardin, Landrieu and Snowe as S. 2187, the Small Business Administration Surety Bond Increase Act. The SBA administers a surety bond guarantee program, designed to encourage sureties to issue bonds when they would otherwise determine that a small business presents an unacceptable degree of risk. Under the program, SBA may guarantee bid, performance, and payment bonds for individual contracts of $2 million or less for small businesses that cannot obtain surety bonds through regular commercial channels. In the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, Senator Cardin was able to temporarily increase the size of SBA surety bond guarantee from $2 million to $5 million. Section 511 would make that permanent. It would ensure that small businesses have the means to the secure the necessary surety bonding to compete for contracts during the economic downturn.

Subtitle B of Title V was originally introduced by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Enzi, Brown, Merkley, Cantwell and eight other senators as S. 633, the Small Business Contracting Fraud Prevention Act. Fraud in small business contracting programs has starkly increased over the years. Recently we have all read about instances where large businesses misrepresent their size and status to receive the benefits of SBA programs designed for small businesses. Firms that engage in this activity have long been subject to civil and/or criminal penalties under various laws and government-wide policies.

The provisions in Subtitle B provide the SBA Inspector General with enhanced tools to eliminate fraud in small business contracting programs by: imposing greater penalties for fraud; requiring that firms be debarred for five years if they misrepresent their status as veteran-owned for purposes of programs under the act; and requiring the SBA to submit annual reports to Congress on the number of persons debarred or suspended from government contracting, or considered for debarment or suspension from government contracting, for violations of the bill. This will deter fraud in government small business contracting and will keep Congress in the loop on small business fraud issues.

Subtitle C under Title V was originally introduced by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Gillibrand and seven other senators as S. 2172, the Fairness in Women-Owned Small Business Contracting Act. Currently, the Women- Owned Small Business, WOSB, contracting program caps contract awards to woman-owned businesses at $4 million for goods/services and $6.5 million for manufacturing. In addition, sole-source contract awards under the program are prohibited. In other words, this program has limits that no other contracting program has.

The provisions in Subtitle C would remove the contract award price limits for women-owned small businesses, create a provision allowing sole-source contract awards to WOSBs, direct the SBA to periodically conduct a study to identify any U.S. industry in which women are underrepresented, and every five years report the study results to Congress. From these improvements, more contracting opportunities will emerge for women-owned businesses in the Federal marketplace.

Subtitle D of the Title V of the SUCCESS originated with our colleagues in the House of Representatives as H.R. 3851, the Small Business Champion Act. The Small Business Act established an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business, OSDBU, within all major Federal Executive Agencies. The OSDBU is the primary advocate within each Agency responsible for promoting the maximum use of all small business programs within the Federal contracting process. The OSDBU is tasked with ensuring that each Federal agency and their large prime vendors comply with federal laws, regulations, and policies to include small businesses as sources for goods and services, both as prime contractors and subcontractors. Approximately 35 Federal Agencies have fully functioning OSDBU offices.

In an effort to assist agencies with meeting contracting goals, Subtitle D makes three major modifications to OSDBU offices. First, it elevates the OSDBU Director at each agency to the Senior Executive Service, SES, rank. Second, it prohibits combining the duties of the OSDBU Director with unrelated duties. Finally, it requires that agencies consult with the OSDBU office on decisions to insource work performed by small businesses. I would note that the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business approved H.R. 3851 by voice vote on March 7, 2012.

The final title of the SUCCESS Act is focused on improving Federal Government transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. A key component of this title is a result of the work of my colleague Senator Hagan from North Carolina. In particular, Subtitle A of Title VI is based upon Senator Hagan's legislation, S. 3194, the Small Business Common Application Act of 2012.

Whether it is applying for a grant, seeking technical assistance, or bidding on a contract, small businesses face a dizzying array of paperwork when interacting with the Federal government. As a result, many small businesses avoid Federal programs altogether, missing out on potentially lucrative business opportunities. Senator Hagan's bill aims to streamline assistance for small businesses facing layers of paperwork when they apply for a grant, seek technical assistance or bid on a contract from the Federal government.

Furthermore, according to a 2010 study from the SBA Office of Advocacy, it costs small businesses with 20 employees or less more than $10,500 per employee to comply with Federal regulations. When compared to their larger counterparts, it costs small firms over $2,800--or approximately 36 percent more--for each employee.

Subtitle A builds off provisions in S. 3194 by establishing an Executive Committee of 12 Federal agency representatives, headed by the SBA Administrator, to review the feasibility of establishing a Small Business Common Application. This Executive Committee would then provide recommendations to the Executive Branch and Congress within 270 days on establishing a common application and web portal for small businesses.

The small business ``common app'' would function much like the one that students complete to apply to multiple colleges and universities simultaneously. It would ensure that small businesses across the country can concentrate on growing and creating jobs--not wasting time, filling out mountains of repetitive paperwork.

Lastly, I recognize that it is important to provide sufficient oversight of the programs and assistance authorized in this bill. Subtitle B of Title VI would authorize a GAO review of the bill-- including whether programs receive necessary funding, have been successfully implemented, and are promoting job creation among small businesses. This report would go to the House and Senate Small Business Committees not later than 2 years after the date of enactment.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that the SUCCESS Act is a combination of numerous bipartisan bills that have been introduced this Congress. So these proposals are neither new nor untested--they are ready for prime time. On July 12, 2012 the Senate voted on the SUCCESS Act as part of Senate Amendment 2521 to S. 2237, the Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act of 2012. Although the amendment came up short of the 60 votes needed to end debate, Senate Amendment 2521 did receive a strong 57 bipartisan votes. My Republican colleagues Senators Snowe, Collins, Vitter, Scott Brown, and Heller all voted in support of the amendment. I thank them for joining with us to try to move this legislation forward in the Senate. It is my understanding that some of my Republican colleagues may have voted for the amendment if it did not contain the underlying provisions from S. 2237. Procedurally, it was necessary to include these provisions to ensure a vote on the SUCCESS Act. However, recognizing these concerns, our bill that is being introduced today only includes Subtitle B of Senate Amendment 2521--the bipartisan SUCCESS Act provisions. I hope that additional colleagues from both sides of the aisle will now support the SUCCESS Act, especially as we are only a few votes short of being able to move it forward here in the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the importance of small businesses in the United States. It cannot be stated enough that small businesses are the economic engines of our country. Small businesses also represent the essence of the American Dream. They are creators of new jobs and innovative technologies. In fact, over the last 15 years, businesses employing less than 500 people have created 93 percent of all new jobs and employed 58.6 million workers. Businesses employing less than 20 people alone employed 21.3 million workers. In my home state of Louisiana, small businesses make up about 98 percent of businesses. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, I remain focused on the needs of these small businesses. That is why I am here today to introduce a bill that I believe will help spur job creation among small businesses.

As you know, right now our country is still mired in an historic economic downturn. This economic downturn is disproportionately affecting small businesses and, in turn, stifling opportunities for them to generate economic growth for the country. Sadly, since November 2008 80 percent of the job losses have come from small businesses. 2.16 million jobs were lost in the private sector from July to February 2008--nearly half from businesses with less than 50 employees. While corporate layoffs get the headlines, small business layoffs increase the breadlines. Ten jobs lost here and five jobs there add up. These are the job losses that hurt our economy, our communities and our families.

With this in mind, I was proud to lead Congressional efforts to enact the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, Public Law 111-240. President Obama signed this legislation into law on September 27, 2010. This legislation focused on the three ``C's'' important to small businesses: Capital, Contracting, and Counseling. 332 community banks in 47 states have received $4.01 billion in funding from the Small Business Lending Fund in the bill, which is $9.3 billion in leverage potential for small businesses. Furthermore, a total of 54 states/territories applied for funding through the Small Business State Credit Initiative Program to support State-run small business lending programs. Approximately, $1.3 billion for 47 states and territories has been approved. Lastly, $30 million of Round 1 of State Trade and Export, STEP, export grant funding was awarded in the Fall 2011 to 52 states and territories to promote small business exports. To date, the Small Business Jobs Act has provided an important boost to small businesses looking to get credit or open new markets overseas.

Given the importance of small businesses to our economy, I believe that there is no better time than now for Congress to build off the success of the Small Business Jobs Act. But the key question is how to best assist our country's 28 million small businesses? This is complicated because Federal law defines a small business as ``those having 500 employees or less.'' They may all fit under the same broad category of small business, but they are not all the same. So it makes no sense for the Federal government or Congress to have a ``one size fits all'' policy for helping them grow. We must put a special focus on maximizing strategies to help those small firms that have the capacity to grow in the near term.

The approach I have taken is to focus on the entrepreneurial ecosystems in our communities. This is because an ecosystem is defined as ``a system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment.'' I am particularly interested in the relationship between entrepreneurs, the current environment for entrepreneurship, and how we can make them more robust. In my view strengthening these ecosystems is an avenue to spur small business growth, create jobs, and grow our economy.

Babson College, one of the country's top colleges for undergraduate/ graduate entrepreneurship programs, has looked into what makes up an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Babson has identified the ``six domains'' of any entrepreneurial ecosystem: a conducive culture that rewards innovation, creativity and experimentation; enabling policies and leadership that provide regulatory and capital support; availability of appropriate finance, including micro-loans, private equity and public capital; quality human capital that include both skilled and unskilled workers from at home and abroad; venture-friendly markets for products by creating distribution channels and entrepreneurship networks; and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports, including incubation centers and legal and accounting advisers.

Building off this research and with feedback from other stakeholders, late last year my committee began preparations to conduct a series of roundtables on strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem for small businesses. The goal of these roundtables, which were conducted between February and April 2012, was to take the ideas that come out of these discussions and use them as the foundation for a major piece of legislation to support the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The first roundtable on February 1, 2012, was entitled ``Developing and Strengthening High-Growth Entrepreneurship.'' This roundtable set the stage for our discussions by exploring the recent success of high- growth firms in job creation and why it is so important that we replicate that success. The second roundtable was on March 22, 2012, and was entitled ``A Spotlight on Small Business Investment Companies and Their Role in the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.'' That roundtable looked at how we could enhance an already successful program that gets capital into the hands of America's job creators. The last roundtable was on April 18, 2012, and was entitled ``Perspectives from the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Creating Jobs and Growing Businesses through Entrepreneurship.'' That roundtable discussed how different stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are creating new entrepreneurs and growing businesses. It brought together key stakeholders from different levels of an entrepreneurial ecosystem: universities and entrepreneurship programs, Federal and local officials, investors, private sector accelerators, mentors, and successful entrepreneurs.

As a result of these three roundtables, my committee received almost 60 specific policy recommendations from the 41 participants. Some of these recommendations fell under the

jurisdictions of other Senate committees, while other proposals had a significant cost associated with them or lacked the strong bipartisan support necessary to move them forward in the Senate. After further consulting with my colleagues on the committee, I was able to identify our own six ``domains'' of proposals to focus our efforts on: Tax and Finance; Access to Capital; Access to Global Markets; Access to Mentoring, Education and Strategic Partnerships; Access to Government Contracting; and Transparency, Accountability, and Effectiveness. These domains form the six titles of the Success Ultimately Comes from Capital, Contracting, Education, Strategic Partnerships, and Smart Regulations, SUCCESS, Act of 2012.

First, Title I of the SUCCESS Act provides almost $12 billion in tax incentives to assist small businesses. All five tax provisions within the SUCCESS Act were based on parts of legislation, S. 2050, that was introduced in January by Senator Snowe and myself. S. 2050, the Small Business Tax Extenders Act, reflects the work of many of my Senate colleagues, including Senators Snowe, Kerry, Merkley, Cardin, Isakson, and Shaheen.

Section 102 of the SUCCESS Act extends the 100 percent exclusion from tax the gain on the sale of qualified small businesses, QSB, stock that non-corporate taxpayers purchase in 2012 and 2013 and hold for 5 years. Qualifying small business stock is stock of C-corporation whose gross assets do not exceed $50 million, including the proceeds received from the issuance of the stock, and who meets a specific active business requirement. The amount of gain eligible for the exclusion is limited to the greater of ten times the taxpayer's basis in the stock or $10 million of gain from stock in that corporation. Until 2009, non- corporate taxpayers were allowed to exclude 50 percent of the gain from the sale of stock of QSB if the taxpayers held the stock for 5 years. The Recovery Act of 2009 increased the 50 percent exclusion to 75 percent and the Small Business Jobs Act and subsequent legislation increased and extended the exclusion to 100 percent through 2011. However, as of January 1, 2012, the 100 percent exclusion has reverted to 50 percent and startup investments are no longer entitled to preferential capital gains treatment.

Senator Kerry, a senior member of my committee as well as the Finance Committee, has been a leader in the Senate in getting this provision extended in previous Congresses. I also note that this proposal has bipartisan and White House support. President Obama has repeatedly called on Congress to make permanent the 100 percent capital gains exclusion and included this proposal in his Startup America Legislative Agenda. Senators Moran, Warner, Coons and Rubio have all called for making this provision permanent and included a version of this provision in S. 3217, the Startup Act 2.0 that was introduced in May. According to a Kauffman Foundation paper published earlier this year, the 100 percent exclusion ``boosts the after-tax returns on such investments in startups and should induce substantial levels of new investments in startup firms.'' They further estimate that making this provision permanent would increase risky investments by conservatively 50 percent more than overall cost of the provision.

Section 103 of the bill extends the increased deduction for business start-up expenditures in 2012 and 2013 from $5,000 to $10,000, subject to a $60,000 threshold. Under current law, taxpayers can elect to deduct up to $5,000 of ``start-up expenditures'' in the taxable year in which they start a trade or business. The $5,000 is reduced--but not below zero--by the amount by which start-up costs exceed $50,000. Examples of startup costs include studies of potential markets, products, labor markets, or transportation systems; advertisements for the opening of a new business; compensation for consultants and employees undergoing training and their instructors; and travel for the purpose of securing suppliers, distributors, and customers.

The Small Business Jobs Act temporarily increased the amount of start-up expenditures entrepreneurs could deduct from their taxes in 2010 from $5,000 to $10,000, with a phase-out threshold of $60,000. We need to bring this provision back to aid our small businesses.

I note that there is also support within this chamber and from the White House for this proposal. As part of his Startup America Legislative Agenda, President Obama has called for making permanent the increased deduction for start-up expenditures. Senator Merkley successfully fought for the initial increase in deduction to be included in the Small Business Jobs Act. Over the past several years, this proposal has been repeatedly endorsed by the National Association for the Self-Employed and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, NFIB. Furthermore, according to a Kauffman Foundation survey, on average, new firms inject about $80,000 into their business during the first year of operation. The vast majority of small business owners--between 80 percent and 90 percent--also invest significant amounts of their own money into their businesses. These budding enterprises are also more dependent on personal capital at startup than after they become established businesses. Doubling the deduction for start-up costs puts cash in the hands of small businesses owners who need it most--those who are just getting started. According to estimates from Third Way, a non-partisan group, this proposal would help the more than 600,000 Americans who start their own business every year.

Under current law, when a corporation becomes an S-Corporation, it is required to hold its business assets for 10 years or pay punitive taxes. This 10- year holding period is too long and ties up assets that could be sold to raise capital. In 2010, Congress reduced this holding period to 5 years to better match business planning cycles. Section 104 of my bill will extend the 5-year holding period for 2012 and 2013, costing $251 million over 10 years. As with other provisions in the SUCCESS Act, this provision has bipartisan support. Senator Cardin has fought to make this proposal permanent. Senators Snowe, Vitter, and Roberts have also been long-time supporters and are co-sponsors of legislation introduced by Senator Cardin to make this provision permanent. By granting this extension, we will give the more than 4 million S-Corporations in the U.S. the flexibility they need to raise capital.

Section 105 would allow sole proprietorships, partnerships and non- publicly traded corporations with less than $50M in average gross annual receipts for the prior 3 years, to carryback unused general business credits earned in 2012 and 2013 for 5 previous years. Under current law, if a business has no tax liability in its current tax year, it may carry the general business tax credit back to the previous tax year to offset taxes paid in the previous year and obtain a refund. If the current credit exceeds taxes paid in the previous year, the remaining credit may be carried forward for 20 years, without interest, and used to offset tax liability in future years. The general business credit is limited to the difference between the regular tax liability of a business and the greater of its tentative minimum tax or 25 percent of regular tax liability in excess of $25,000. The general business tax credit is comprised of several different tax credits including the R&D tax credit, energy credits, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

This extension would provide tax refunds to businesses that were previously healthy but are currently running losses. It would improve the effectiveness of business credits that are intended to expand investment and employment, in the case of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. It would also allow businesses greater immediate benefit from credits designed to encourage specific types of economic activity, such as hiring disadvantaged workers or investments in renewable energy. By providing businesses with greater opportunity to claim business credits, the provisions would also give an infusion of cash to businesses, which might promote investment. This could be particularly important if businesses have trouble borrowing because of financial market problems.

Section 106 of the SUCCESS Act extends a generous Section 179 provision that allows small businesses to immediately write-off up to $500,000, up from $250,000, for tangible personal property

and up to $250,000 for improvements to leasehold property and retail property.

Under the Small Business Jobs Act and other subsequent legislation, for taxable years beginning in 2010 and 2011, small businesses could write-off for capital expenditures for ``qualifying Sec. 179 property'' up to $500,000 and the phase-out threshold has been increased to $2,000,000. These thresholds were up from prior law thresholds of $25,000/$200,000. In addition, for the first time, the Small Business Jobs Act allowed taxpayers to expense $250,000 of the cost of improvements to real property including qualified restaurant property and qualified retail property. To qualify for the section 179 deduction, property must have been acquired for use in the trade or business. Examples of qualifying property include machinery and equipment; property contained in or attached to a building, other than structural components, such as refrigerators, grocery store counters, office equipment, printing presses, testing equipment, and signs.; gasoline storage tanks and pumps at retail service stations.; livestock, including horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, and mink and other furbearing animals.

Extending the enhanced Section 179 deduction has bipartisan Senate support, White House support, and industry support. The President supports extending Section 179. My colleague Senator Snowe is a strong supporter of the enhanced Section 179 provision that allows businesses to expense improvements to restaurant and retail property. She developed this particular proposal in connection with her work on the Small Business Jobs Act. Finally, 26 National business groups such as the NFIB, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Homebuilders, and the National Association of the Self-Employed endorsed extending Section 179 and including expensing for real property improvements in a May 21, 2012 letter to Congress.

The next title of the SUCCESS Act focuses on improving access to capital for small businesses. In particular, Subtitle A under Title II was previously introduced as S. 3253, the Expanding Access to Capital for Entrepreneurial Leaders, EXCEL, Act. It provides necessary and timely enhancements to the Small Business Investment Company, SBIC, program. SBICs are government backed and regulated private equity funds which invest in U.S. small businesses. The SBIC program was created in 1958 by then Senator Lyndon Johnson and Senator William Fulbright, and signed into law by President Eisenhower. During a Senate hearing on the creation of the program, Senator Joseph Clark said the legislation is ``necessary to increase the availability of long-term credit and equity capital for small businesses.''

Since 1958, SBICs have invested $56 billion in over 100,000 small businesses. The core debenture program operates at no cost to taxpayers. SBIC success stories include: Apple Computer, Callaway Golf, Costco, Outback Steakhouse, Jenny Craig, Annie's food company, and Center Rock of Berlin, PA, the manufacturers of the drill bit that saved the Chilean miners in October 2010.

The SBIC program has seen strong growth in the past few years. For example, the program grew 50 percent in fiscal year 2011 alone. However, the authorization level has not been permanently raised since 2003. To continue fulfilling the intent of the original legislation, it is time to make some improvements. The Landrieu-Snowe EXCEL Act has two main components. First, it raises the statutory cap for the SBIC Program from $3 billion to $4 billion. Second, it increases the amount of leverage by SBIC licensees under common control from $225 million to $350 million ``Family of Funds''. The components of this provision were also included in the President's Startup America legislative package.

Subtitle B of Title II was originally introduced as S. 2364 by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Isakson and Shaheen. The 504 loan program is a long-term financing tool for economic development that provides small businesses with long-term, fixed-rate loans to help them acquire major fixed assets and real estate for expansion or modernization. The Small Business Jobs Act allowed small businesses to use the 504 loan program to refinance certain qualifying existing debt for two years, but the SBA did not promulgate regulations to implement the refinancing provision until February 17, 2012.

This subtitle would extend for a year and a half a provision allowing small business owners to use Small Business Administration, SBA, 504 loans to refinance existing commercial mortgages. Extending the 504 refinancing program is a common-sense way to help small businesses and create jobs. By allowing small businesses to refinance qualified commercial real estate debt, this program lowers their monthly mortgage payments at no cost to taxpayers. That's right, this provision has zero subsidy cost. At a time when we are still facing high unemployment, this extension is one of many things that we should be doing to put more capital in the hands of America's job creators.

Subtitle C of Title II is a new proposal introduced for the first time as part of the SUCCESS Act. SBA currently releases some information publicly about SBA lending activity, but it is almost impossible to find and comprehend if you are not an SBA lending professional. If a small business, mayor, or governor wants to determine SBA lending activity in their area, they lack the ability to do so easily.

This subtitle would require the SBA to post a user friendly Lender Activity Index on the SBA website. Users will immediately be able to access the following data for any given bank: name of bank, number of SBA loans each bank made, total dollar amount of SBA loans of each bank, zip code of bank activity, not where every single loan was made, but a list of every zip code where the bank has made an SBA loan, industries lent to, hospitality, manufacturing, service, software, etc., stage of business cycle, new, or existing business, and business specific information, i.e. Women Owned Businesses, Minority Owned Businesses, or Veteran Owned Businesses. Data will be available for the year to date and users will be able to compare to 3 previous fiscal years. Both quarterly and annual data will be included.

Title III of the SUCCESS Act focuses on promoting exports from small businesses. The Small Business Jobs Act made major changes to the international trade work done by the SBA. Now that those provisions have been in place for several years, there are additional refinements and direction needed. I would like to specifically thank Senators Shaheen and Ayotte for their bipartisan export contributions to this effort. The export provisions of Tile III are taken from S. 3218, their Small Business Growth Act of 2012, as well as S. 3277, the Go Global Act of 2012 that Senator Shaheen and I authored this year.

95 percent of the world's customers are located outside of the borders of the United States, and in the last twelve months we have exported more than $2 trillion of goods and services to these consumers. Yet only 1 percent of our approximately 28 million small businesses export. Our agencies need to be working together to ensure our small businesses have the resources they need to expand their customer base and be part of the more than $180 billion in exports that the United States sends around the world each month.

This title aids our small business exporters by addressing federal government coordination, resources for rural businesses, and export control education. It establishes, in Section 306, an interagency task force of SBA, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Export-Import Bank, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation on export financing to review, improve, and increase collaboration on current finance programs. Then, to further coordination, Section 307(a) begins a cross training program with SBA and USDA to inform their respective export finance specialists more about each other's programs. Our small businesses face enough challenges--we should be bringing our resources to them. In Section 304, this bill requires SBA, in coordination with other agencies, to do at least one export outreach event per year in each state. Section 307(b) also aids our rural small businesses by posting a list of rural lenders who participate in SBA and USDA loan programs and a list of rural small businesses counseling and technical assistance resources. Jobs created by exports pay, on average, 15 to 20 percent more than jobs created by goods and services sold

in the United States. This bill will continue to support entrepreneurs who want to create and grow these employment opportunities for all Americans.

Title IV of the bill focuses on promoting small business access to mentoring, education and strategic partnerships. Subtitle A of this title was originally introduced by Senator Snowe and I as S. 3198, the Strengthening Resources for America's Entrepreneurs Act of 2012. The SBA Office of Entrepreneurial Development, OED, oversees a network of programs and services that support the training and counseling needs of small business. According to the SBA, OED helps hundreds of thousands of small business clients start, grow and compete in global markets by providing quality training, counseling and access to resources. SBA delivers these services through non-profit, college and university, and community-based organization resource partners. Through its network of over 1,000 resource partners across the country, OED programs include Small Business Development Centers, SBDCs, Women's Business Centers, SCORE, and Entrepreneurship Education. However, it is currently difficult to track effectiveness and ensure our resources are being used in the best ways possible. To solve this challenge, this subtitle has four primary components. First, it requires the SBA to coordinate and make consistent data collection and outcome metrics for Entrepreneurial Development programs. Second, it increases planning for utilizing Entrepreneurial Development programs to create jobs. Third, it increases coordination between Entrepreneurial Development programs and Resource Partners at the national level. Finally, it increases accountability measures and reports to Congress regarding the effectiveness of Entrepreneurial Development programs.

Subtitle B of the bill comes from S. 3197, the Women's Small Business Ownership Act which was sponsored by Senator Snowe and myself. This subtitle is focused on the SBA Women's Business Center (WBC) program. The WBC program was established in 1988 and implemented through the SBA's Office of Women's Business Ownership. It provides quality counseling and training services to all entrepreneurs, primarily women, especially those who are socially and economically disadvantaged. Through a network of over 100 non-profit organizations, WBCs help more than 150,000 clients annually to start and grow small firms in the local area in which they serve and to stimulate economic growth. Subtitle B reauthorizes the WBC program through Fiscal Year 2015 and makes improvements to the program, including a Government Accountability Office review of Women's Business Center program performance as compared with other SBA Entrepreneurial Development programs.

Subtitle C of the SUCCESS Act is Senator Snowe's Strengthening America's Small Business Development Centers Act. Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) are considered to be the backbone of the SBA's Office of Entrepreneurial Development efforts, and are the largest of the agency's OED programs. SBDCs are the university based resource partners that provide counseling and training needs for more than 600,000 business clients annually. From 2007 to 2008, the counseling and technical assistance services they offered lead to the creation of 58,501 new jobs, at a cost of $3,462 per job. Additionally, they estimate that their counseling services helped to save 88,889 jobs. This subtitle would reauthorize SBDC program at the current $135 million authorization level through fiscal year 15. Beyond reauthorizing the SBDC program, this provision also encourages SBDCs to improve outreach and communications to universities, community colleges, and junior colleges and allows the SBA Administrator to authorize out-of-state SBDCs to provide assistance in declared disaster areas.

Subtitle D of Title IV was originally introduced as S. 3281 by Senators Snowe, Kerry, and Coburn. This subtitle repeals Federal authorization of the National Veterans Business Development Corporation, TVC, eliminating an ineffective government program. The National Veterans Business Development Corporation, also known as The Veterans Corporation or simply TVC, has been ineffective and controversial since its inception as part of the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act, P.L. 106-50, in 1999. In December of 2008, former Small Business Committee Chairman Kerry and Ranking Member Snowe investigated TVC, and issued a report detailing the organization's blatant mismanagement and wasting of taxpayers' dollars. Since the issuing of the Small Business Committee's report, Congress has appropriated no further funding for TVC, and the Small Business Administration has incorporated the Veteran Business Resource Centers, VBRCs, that TVC previously funded into its existing network of Veteran Business Outreach Centers, VBOCs. At present, TVC still exists as an organization, and it is still technically federally chartered. At the same time, it receives no Federal funds, has no Department or Agency oversight. It is time for it to be eliminated.

Title V of the SUCCESS Act focuses on promoting Federal government contracting opportunities for small businesses. Section 511 under Subtitle A of Title V was originally introduced by Senators Cardin, Landrieu and Snowe as S. 2187, the Small Business Administration Surety Bond Increase Act. The SBA administers a surety bond guarantee program, designed to encourage sureties to issue bonds when they would otherwise determine that a small business presents an unacceptable degree of risk. Under the program, SBA may guarantee bid, performance, and payment bonds for individual contracts of $2 million or less for small businesses that cannot obtain surety bonds through regular commercial channels. In the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, Senator Cardin was able to temporarily increase the size of SBA surety bond guarantee from $2 million to $5 million. Section 511 would make that permanent. It would ensure that small businesses have the means to the secure the necessary surety bonding to compete for contracts during the economic downturn.

Subtitle B of Title V was originally introduced by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Enzi, Brown, Merkley, Cantwell and eight other senators as S. 633, the Small Business Contracting Fraud Prevention Act. Fraud in small business contracting programs has starkly increased over the years. Recently we have all read about instances where large businesses misrepresent their size and status to receive the benefits of SBA programs designed for small businesses. Firms that engage in this activity have long been subject to civil and/or criminal penalties under various laws and government-wide policies.

The provisions in Subtitle B provide the SBA Inspector General with enhanced tools to eliminate fraud in small business contracting programs by: imposing greater penalties for fraud; requiring that firms be debarred for five years if they misrepresent their status as veteran-owned for purposes of programs under the act; and requiring the SBA to submit annual reports to Congress on the number of persons debarred or suspended from government contracting, or considered for debarment or suspension from government contracting, for violations of the bill. This will deter fraud in government small business contracting and will keep Congress in the loop on small business fraud issues.

Subtitle C under Title V was originally introduced by Senators Snowe, Landrieu, Gillibrand and seven other senators as S. 2172, the Fairness in Women-Owned Small Business Contracting Act. Currently, the Women- Owned Small Business, WOSB, contracting program caps contract awards to woman-owned businesses at $4 million for goods/services and $6.5 million for manufacturing. In addition, sole-source contract awards under the program are prohibited. In other words, this program has limits that no other contracting program has.

The provisions in Subtitle C would remove the contract award price limits for women-owned small businesses, create a provision allowing sole-source contract awards to WOSBs, direct the SBA to periodically conduct a study to identify any U.S. industry in which women are underrepresented, and every five years report the study results to Congress. From these improvements, more contracting opportunities will emerge for women-owned businesses in the Federal marketplace.

Subtitle D of the Title V of the SUCCESS originated with our colleagues in the House of Representatives as H.R. 3851, the Small Business Champion Act. The Small Business Act established an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business, OSDBU, within all major Federal Executive Agencies. The OSDBU is the primary advocate within each Agency responsible for promoting the maximum use of all small business programs within the Federal contracting process. The OSDBU is tasked with ensuring that each Federal agency and their large prime vendors comply with federal laws, regulations, and policies to include small businesses as sources for goods and services, both as prime contractors and subcontractors. Approximately 35 Federal Agencies have fully functioning OSDBU offices.

In an effort to assist agencies with meeting contracting goals, Subtitle D makes three major modifications to OSDBU offices. First, it elevates the OSDBU Director at each agency to the Senior Executive Service, SES, rank. Second, it prohibits combining the duties of the OSDBU Director with unrelated duties. Finally, it requires that agencies consult with the OSDBU office on decisions to insource work performed by small businesses. I would note that the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business approved H.R. 3851 by voice vote on March 7, 2012.

The final title of the SUCCESS Act is focused on improving Federal Government transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. A key component of this title is a result of the work of my colleague Senator Hagan from North Carolina. In particular, Subtitle A of Title VI is based upon Senator Hagan's legislation, S. 3194, the Small Business Common Application Act of 2012.

Whether it is applying for a grant, seeking technical assistance, or bidding on a contract, small businesses face a dizzying array of paperwork when interacting with the Federal government. As a result, many small businesses avoid Federal programs altogether, missing out on potentially lucrative business opportunities. Senator Hagan's bill aims to streamline assistance for small businesses facing layers of paperwork when they apply for a grant, seek technical assistance or bid on a contract from the Federal government.

Furthermore, according to a 2010 study from the SBA Office of Advocacy, it costs small businesses with 20 employees or less more than $10,500 per employee to comply with Federal regulations. When compared to their larger counterparts, it costs small firms over $2,800--or approximately 36 percent more--for each employee.

Subtitle A builds off provisions in S. 3194 by establishing an Executive Committee of 12 Federal agency representatives, headed by the SBA Administrator, to review the feasibility of establishing a Small Business Common Application. This Executive Committee would then provide recommendations to the Executive Branch and Congress within 270 days on establishing a common application and web portal for small businesses.

The small business ``common app'' would function much like the one that students complete to apply to multiple colleges and universities simultaneously. It would ensure that small businesses across the country can concentrate on growing and creating jobs--not wasting time, filling out mountains of repetitive paperwork.

Lastly, I recognize that it is important to provide sufficient oversight of the programs and assistance authorized in this bill. Subtitle B of Title VI would authorize a GAO review of the bill-- including whether programs receive necessary funding, have been successfully implemented, and are promoting job creation among small businesses. This report would go to the House and Senate Small Business Committees not later than 2 years after the date of enactment.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that the SUCCESS Act is a combination of numerous bipartisan bills that have been introduced this Congress. So these proposals are neither new nor untested--they are ready for prime time. On July 12, 2012 the Senate voted on the SUCCESS Act as part of Senate Amendment 2521 to S. 2237, the Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act of 2012. Although the amendment came up short of the 60 votes needed to end debate, Senate Amendment 2521 did receive a strong 57 bipartisan votes. My Republican colleagues Senators Snowe, Collins, Vitter, Scott Brown, and Heller all voted in support of the amendment. I thank them for joining with us to try to move this legislation forward in the Senate. It is my understanding that some of my Republican colleagues may have voted for the amendment if it did not contain the underlying provisions from S. 2237. Procedurally, it was necessary to include these provisions to ensure a vote on the SUCCESS Act. However, recognizing these concerns, our bill that is being introduced today only includes Subtitle B of Senate Amendment 2521--the bipartisan SUCCESS Act provisions. I hope that additional colleagues from both sides of the aisle will now support the SUCCESS Act, especially as we are only a few votes short of being able to move it forward here in the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am proud to join so many of my colleagues in speaking out tonight at this late hour to try to call attention to a very serious issue before the body; that is, whether political contributions of over $10,000 should be disclosed.

As Senator Begich eloquently stated, I think people are concerned and very troubled by the fact that we are even having this debate; it so defies common sense. I think people at home are saying to themselves: Why is this even an issue? Why are we debating this? Why didn't one Republican step up to join a group of Democrats to say: Obviously, if you are contributing to the political process $10,000 or more, you should make yourself known.

I think Senator Begich, the Senator from Alaska, listed many important points. I wish to underscore the point he made about transparency.

Our government is far from perfect. It is the oldest democracy, but it is the best we know of. What are the reasons our democracy is the best and it works most of the time pretty well? It is because it is, most of the time, transparent. The press can come here anytime and write about what we speak. Every word is written in a public record. All the records, vital records of the United States, are public. We publicize our real estate transactions in almost every jurisdiction I know of. There is so much public information available. It is one of the reasons our democracy works pretty well.

So this is a real step backward. And it is a dangerous step backward to have a democracy that prides itself on transparency and here we have half of this Chamber running out the door after they basically voted to keep contributions secret. What is it they are ashamed of? I mean, what is it they are trying to hide? If they are proud of who they are supporting, if they believe in the causes to which they are investing, why not let people know? As the Presiding Officer said, he is a member of the NRA. All of us are members of different organizations. I most certainly do not mind the organizations--I am chair of the Adoption Caucus. I love to see publicity about the members and what we do, and I am proud of what our organization does. It is nonpartisan, of course. But I believe in and we advocate for those principles.

I am alarmed at the stubbornness and the position our friends on the other side of the aisle have taken to not want to let their constituents know who is contributing and for what reason. So I believe that transparency clearly is in jeopardy tonight over this DISCLOSE Act, and I hope we can have

another vote and persuade more people to join us, to open up, let the sunshine in, let people see what is actually going on.

The other point I wish to make is that the middle class in this country is under assault. There was a very startling article in the New York Times last week that talked about in the last 2 years the income, the net worth of the average American has fallen by 40 percent because of secret deals on Wall Street, because of secret collusion of some of the largest financial institutions in the world, because of a lack of transparency in our financial system, and a number of other reasons; but that was primary--and the lack of enforcement, of having good regulations and the enforcement of good regulations. You would think people would be moving forward to open the process to make it more transparent. This is going in the opposite direction.

The middle class is under assault. Congressional rating is at an all- time low. So what do we do? We say it is OK to give tons of money to elections, and to cover it up, and to be secret about it, and to not tell anyone who is giving and for what purpose.

Our poll numbers for Congress are down. I think they were down to 3 percent or 13 percent or something. It is going to go negative. And I would not blame people. We will be a negative number in the polls. Because people are losing confidence in the system. This is an example of why they should lose confidence in the system.

I am disappointed it is just those of us on our side of the aisle who seem to be concerned about this. And the other Members, I am not sure what their points are in the debate because not one single person has come to the floor, at least in the last several hours. I know the minority leader made some weak attempts at explaining their position earlier in the night. If they felt so strongly about this being a pillar of our democracy, they most certainly should be on the floor talking about why, but they are not. They ran out of the Chamber, and they are not here.

And so with the middle class under assault, with people understanding and thinking and seeing special interests having their day in Washington, letting some sunshine in most certainly would not hurt.

The DISCLOSE Act is a necessary piece of legislation to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United.

This legislation, as we said, does not limit the amount of money outside interest groups can spend on campaign expenditures. It simply requires disclosure. We are doing a better job of disclosing our income, our stock transactions. I think our records should be public, our tax returns. I have submitted many of my own in elections. I hope Mitt Romney steps forward to submit more than 1 year of his tax returns. I think it helps to build confidence when those of us who hold public office have full and complete disclosure.

But the money that is being spent in these campaigns is exorbitant. It is billions and billions of dollars. I think this campaign cycle is setting records--and to have this all done in secret. So you are being attacked on television or positions are being taken, and no one watching the ads has any idea who is behind them because there is no requirement for disclosure.

I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership. Senator Merkley has also been very active, other Senators. Senator Schumer has taken a leadership role as well. I appreciate the committee that has come together, and I am happy to be of assistance to them in this effort.

But again, this does not limit the amount of money anyone can give to a campaign. It just says, if you give over $10,000, you should disclose it. It does not limit free speech. It does not limit the amount of money that can be spent by an outside organization. It simply says that during this election cycle, you would have to report expenditures of over $10,000.

Of the more than $140 million that has already been spent during this election cycle, the first Presidential election cycle since Citizens United--more than $140 million has already been spent. Why would these groups be spending this much money if they were not going to ask for something? What is their motive? What are they expecting? These are wealthy individuals. These are not organizations of thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Many of these are individuals who are contributing and want to hide behind the recent ruling of the Supreme Court.

So I am proud to lend my voice to the DISCLOSE Act. I am proud to be a cosponsor and want to join my colleagues in asking our colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Do we not need more transparency in government? Do you not think the middle class is under enough assault? Do you not think this would build some confidence that our government would be more transparent, people could see what was actually happening and understand why some of those contributions are being made?

So we have some time. We have opportunities to cast another vote. I hope our colleagues will, and the public will, demand that we have additional votes until we get the required votes necessary to pass such a commonsense solution to a real problem.

I yield the floor.

Yes.

Absolutely. The Senator is correct. As I said, the recent polling I have seen has the opinion of Congress and the way Washington government is operating at an all-time low. People do not believe they are getting the whole story, the full picture. This is going to contribute in a very negative way to that opinion, which is detrimental to the foundation, the essence of this democracy. I think our Founding Fathers would be horrified to actually think a small group of individuals can, through campaigns, buy the outcome of the election or buy the attention of the candidate or the cause, and not even have to disclose their identity or why they might be interested.

Everyone is entitled to free speech. I do not think people are entitled to secret speech or secret attacks. If you are going to get into a fight, you would like to know with whom are you fighting. Identify yourself. This system obscures the truth, which I think people have a right to know. I think it does cut at the heart of some of the strongest principles of our democracy.

The Senator is perfect to point that out and is an excellent student of history. He has demonstrated his understanding. Before Senators were directly elected, they were elected by the legislators of their States, and oftentimes literally sent to Washington by special interests--for instance, the railroads.

Instead of the laws being written to help people, average citizens or homesteaders or people trying to get a hand up and a helping hand, some of these Senators came, basically bought, sold, delivered, and packaged to Washington, DC, to argue on behalf of one special interest.

It is tough to keep things in balance here right now without us going back to these times. That is what is so frightening. I see Senator Whitehouse on the floor. He has been studying this and has many documents he is referring to, but that is what is alarming. I do not think people realize--I mean this is really moving backwards in time.

When Washington operates in secrecy, there is no way to get the information. Why would we want to do this at a time when the middle class is under assault? They have lost 40 percent of their net worth. At a time when our popularity and trust with the people is at an all- time low, this does not make any sense to me. I do not understand any benefit that would come from it.

Absolutely. That is why I said the Senator is correct; why I am astonished that people on the other side of the aisle who talk about good government, government for the people--you know, that is what the tea party movement is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about taking government back. This is not taking government back to the people; this is giving it away to people who have the most power and the most money, and you do not even know who you gave it to because you did not have disclosure.

I think this is going in the opposite direction of what the American people want us to do right now. If the middle class is not angry enough, they really should be angry about this because the consequences of secret, undisclosed, unlimited amounts of money puts the average person at risk. It disenfranchises them.

We have worked for over 230-something years to go through a process of perfecting our democracy to where every man, every woman, every person 18 and older has a right to vote and participate.

Now what do we do? Just wake up after 230 years and say: That is not working. Let's just give the government back to the rich, the few, and they do not even have to say who they are. They do not have to disclose anything about themselves.

This is absolutely going in the wrong direction at the wrong time. I hope people listen to this debate and not say, well, there they go again, but I hope they really understand the consequences of this kind of secret money in the system. It is corrupting. It is not right.

I will respond to that, if I may. The Senator hit the nail on the head. Some people--I am one of them--believe there is literally an effort to discourage people generally from believing that government can work at all by being so negative either to an individual or to the concept of government that it discourages people from voting and participating, and the end result of that is that a small group can manipulate the system.

If people think the system is rigged, which it seems like it is getting more and more because of laws and rules such as this that we cannot seem to get straight, what happens is people get despondent and turned off, and then the special interests can run the show if people don't vote and contribute. So it is a part of a whole strategy to kind of take the government away from the people and hand it over to a group of special interests with unlimited money, secret attacks to basically fashion and write the laws that benefit the few as opposed to the masses. It is completely against the concept of our democracy.

Again, I know there are people who have a lot more money than others, and they should be free to make decisions about what they do with it. I don't have a problem with that, although I have supported campaign limits. But it is the disclosure--the lack of disclosure, I should say, that is frightening here and the secret nature of this--to go on television night after night and tell people how this person is either wrong or the system is broken and people stay home and less and less people vote and the few people who have the power, access, and privilege write the rules even more in their own favor.

This is taking our democracy, in a dangerous way, in the wrong direction.

May I expand on the Citizens United? The Senator from Rhode Island and Senator McCain wrote a brief to the Supreme Court suggesting the detrimental impact of the decision the five Justices have made. Did they, in that decision--how did they treat corporations? Do they treat corporations as people? Is that what they did, on equal footing with Citizens United, or was it more of just there should not be limits on contributions? Did they say that corporations are like people and should be allowed to contribute unlimited amounts?

They don't have hearts, and they don't have minds.

It is actually giving more power to the people who control the corporation. Not only do they control their own vote and personal opinion, which is fine, but it gives them extra power because they have access to wealth and influence in the business structure.

It also occurs to me that if the tiny State of Delaware would take this one step further, they might be able to expand their congressional delegation in Washington because I think they have quite a few corporations that are evidently alive and well and walking around in Delaware. Since they have many corporations that are there, they should press this issue a little further and they might only be stuck with two Senators, but who knows how many House Members they could get--maybe equal to California.

This issue or decision the Court made is mind-numbing, doesn't make sense, and it flies in the face of what is good for our democracy and in the face of decisions that courts have made. That aside, which is troubling enough, then you take the next step, as the Senator from Oregon knows, and say that not only are corporations people and have access to their own vote and if you happen to run a corporation, you get a vote for that corporation as well and all the people who run it, then you can do it all in secret. It is very troubling.

It makes no sense. We can stay here all night, and I am not sure we can get anybody to understand it. We have to reverse this law and get transparency back into our electoral process.

Mr. President, I think we are on the Landrieu amendment.

Mr. President, I discussed this amendment in great detail yesterday, so there is no reason to review it. I thank many Members of the Small Business Committee on both sides of the aisle for putting forth some terrific, very popular, and effective ideas for small business: 100 percent exclusion of capital gains, decreased deductions for startup expenditures, S corporation holding period reductions, carryback on business credits, and expensing of 179--all very familiar to this body and absolutely critical for investing in our small business. The bill only costs $4 billion compared to some of the other numbers that are being thrown around here. We think it is very cost effective, and I ask for the support of the body.

Madam President, before we end the debate on the small business tax relief bills, I want to thank the 57 Members of this Senate who voted for the SUCCESS Act. The SUCCESS Act has been building support, strong support across the aisle

now for about 3 to 4 weeks. It is an outgrowth of not one, not two, but three very successful, high-profile roundtables the Small Business Committee in the Senate has conducted over the course of the spring, coming into the summer, in hopes that we could present a bill that could give a boost in the middle of this summer period to the small businesses that are really struggling to hire and to get stronger as this economy gains strength. Unfortunately, we fell only three votes short just a few minutes ago.

This bill is primarily a tax cut--very targeted, very specific, and very effective--to the small businesses we are counting on to grow and to accelerate the potential high-growth businesses, not just any startups but those that really have the capacity to grow.

We were hoping that despite the partisan posturing, we could have received the 60 votes to give this effort some more life. But we are not going to be discouraged.

I want to particularly thank Senator Shaheen, the Presiding Officer, for her help. I want to specifically thank Senator Cardin and Senator Hagan for spending time on the floor for the provision of streamlining applications for small businesses. That is in this bill.

I want to thank Senator Vitter, Senator Heller, and Senator Collins particularly for their support today. I want to briefly, for another minute, mention a few of the organizations that are supporting this effort, which is only a $4 billion cost. It has a $12 billion immediate impact but only a $4 billion score. It was very effectively written to create a score like that. I am proud of the staff work that went into this effort.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Lighting Association, the Rental Association, Association of Builders and Contractors, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, Financial Executives, Metal Services Institute, Independent Community Bankers--and just to name a few more-- the National Beer Wholesalers, National Association of Home Builders, Printing Industry of America, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, the U.S. Black Chamber of Commerce, many women's organizations, Women Construction Owners, Women's Business Enterprise, et cetera, et cetera.

We are very proud to be building in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce a very broad coalition that can see the value. Perhaps we cannot find common ground on a $40 billion tax cut bill or a $50 billion tax cut bill or even $20 billion. But I think we could find common ground on a bill that only scores and costs the Federal Government $4 billion has a $12 billion impact.

It is $4 billion over 10 years, but the benefit is right now, the way that we have structured it, to extend these tax credits and tax extenders for about a year and 3 months which would give us time as we move forward to revise the Tax Code and to see how we can reduce and eliminate our deficit and make our Tax Code more fair. At least it would give a strong signal to many of these small businesses they can count on the tax cuts that are in this bill.

So I am going to, on behalf of the 57 Members who voted for this bill today, file a stand-alone bill. It is going to be called the SUCCESS Act of 2012. I am going to ask all of those who voted today to join me as a cosponsor of the legislation. And let's see, we still have some time left in the summer before we leave. Perhaps, with the administration's support--and they do support the provisions of this-- and with the leadership shown by some of the Republican Senators today, who knows, we might be able to get something done.

Finally, we are working closely with the House leadership on the Small Business Committee. I am working very closely with Chairman Graves. They have passed some of this already through the House. So perhaps if we stay focused and work a little bit harder, we might be able to squeeze out another piece of legislation that will help the small businesses of America.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, as chair of the Small Business Committee of the Senate, I am pleased to come to the floor to give some supporting remarks for Senator Schumer's small business tax reduction bill. The bill will invest, basically, $20 billion to the bottom line of small businesses--owners of businesses that are dynamic and that are growing. I would like to make that distinction. It is not all small business that will get tax relief. It is small businesses that are dynamic and growing and adding employees or increasing wages.

The bill is smartly and narrowly targeted to motivate and to reward those small businesses, a subgroup of the 28 million small businesses that exist in the country today, many of which are in the Senator's State, Minnesota, that has some very high-growth, high-potential small business development in the medical field, I understand. In my State, it would be those businesses that are growing because of the increased demand for energy and the new technologies that are coming out, not only for oil and gas production, which is important, but also other sources of energy. In Ohio and Michigan, it could be those small business suppliers that are rallying around the emerging and strengthening automobile industry, which President Obama and the Democratic Members of this Congress had so much to do with salvaging.

Our business is not just throwing money against the wind. It is taking precious taxpayer dollars and targeting them to those businesses that are growing. That is why, as the chair of the Small Business Committee, I strongly endorse Senator Schumer's proposal over the proposal that came from the House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives' bill basically is taking $40 billion that we do not have--we do not have the $20 billion either but one is half the cost--taking $40 billion and throwing it at businesses, 50 percent of which, according to the CBO study, will accrue to the highest income earners in the country--over $1 million. It is not targeted. It is just about business profits, which are important. I know businesses are in business to make profits. I have no problem with that. We want our businesses to be profitable. But the Schumer proposal, relative to the Cantor proposal, is targeted to those businesses making a profit and reinvesting it in the business to grow-- hiring workers and putting behind this recession we are coming out of-- a recession because of poor policies of previous administrations-- coming out of this recession to help grow the economy.

We can give tax cuts in a variety of different ways. If we had all the money in the world, maybe we could afford to do both, but we are not that fortunate. We have to make choices. That is what we do on the floor of this Senate every day, make choices, make distinctions between wise ways to spend money and poor ways to spend money.

I suggest, if we have $20 billion to spend, if everybody agrees we have at least that, that the Schumer approach is much more efficient, will be much more effective, will get much more bang for the buck than the Cantor approach.

I commend Senator Schumer for putting his bill on the floor, the Small Business Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. According to the National Economic Council, the tax credit would provide $20 billion in direct tax relief for businesses that hire new workers or increase wages, and it could encourage an additional $200 to $300 billion in new wages and jobs this year.

This tax credit, as I said, makes sense. It will help create jobs. According to the Congressional Budget Office report released last year, the CBO report from November of 2011, policies that have the largest effect on output and employment per dollar of cost in 2012 and 2013 are the ones that would reduce the marginal cost of hiring. That is exactly what the Schumer bill does.

Firms that make capital investments in 2012 would be allowed to deduct the full value of the investment on their 2012 return. We know this kind of targeted tax cut can spark demand that small businesses have been clamoring for. This tax cut is an extension of a tax provision that expires in 2011 and had yielded an estimated $50 billion in added investments and lowered the average cost of capital for business investment by over 75 percent, according to the National Council of Economic Advisers.

We have had a lot of experience in the Small Business Committee and in the Finance Committee, on which Senator Schumer serves, in the last couple years designing and implementing tax cuts for the middle class, tax cuts for the job creators. Again, if we look very objectively, considering the Schumer proposal costs half as much as the Cantor proposal and will probably do three times if not four times better, it is a no-brainer which one is more effective; that is, the Schumer proposal.

Our hope is if Senators come to the floor and begin to look more carefully at the Schumer proposal versus the proposal that came from the House, they will realize the benefit of the Schumer approach and give it the 60 votes we need to move it forward and will reject the Cantor approach as being too expensive relative to the other option that is on the table and much less effective. In the event the Senate decides to do neither, which might happen because there have been logjams around here for a while now, I have to say I was very proud of my colleagues Barbara Boxer and Jim Inhofe for working to break the logjams in a spectacular way just 2 weeks ago on the Senate floor when they finally negotiated a 2-year transportation bill, the flood insurance bill, the RESTORE Act, and the student loan reduction bill, which is the remarkable work the Congress did last week.

In the event the Cantor proposal fails and the Schumer proposal fails, I am hoping to offer an amendment that the leadership is considering now that was put together by the Snowe staff and the Landrieu staff over the course of the last several weeks. The only name on this right now is mine, but it has been put together by a variety of Senators who have been working across the aisle for months on items that are very important to the small business community.

Again, we have 28 million small businesses in America; 22 million of them are single employers. In other words, they are self-employed professionals who are doctors, lawyers, landscape architects, architects, other service providers, network professionals, and IT professionals who are working in their own business and employ themselves. They are very valuable. We encourage entrepreneurship in America. We may have more entrepreneurs per capita than any place in the world. We believe in it and we are excited.

We are also excited for our businesses that start with two or three employees, and before we know it they have 200 or 300 employees. Then, when we close our eyes and open them, they have 2,000 employees. That is very exciting. We

call them the gazelles. We look for accelerating opportunities.

As I said, we put this package together with the significant input of Senator Snowe and her staff, along with input from Senator Kerry, who has been an extraordinary leader in this way. Senator Merkley, Senator Cardin, and a list of other Senators whom I am going to refer to have been working for years on some of these issues. I wish to make sure I give them the credit for these issues.

First in our package is the very popular and very effective 100- percent exclusion of capital gains for investments in small businesses. It was part of the small business tax extenders package. President Obama has recommended this and Senator Kerry is the lead sponsor, along with Senator Snowe, on the Finance Committee.

Let me give a little background. Until 2009, noncorporate taxpayers were allowed to exclude 50 percent of the gain from the sale of the stock of a qualified small business if taxpayers held the stock for 5 years. The Recovery Act increased the 50 percent to 75 percent and the Small Business Act of 2010 subsequently increased it to 100 percent. As of January this year, it was reverted down to 50 percent and startup investments are no longer entitled to the preferred capital gain treatment.

Our proposal would basically take this up to 100 percent exclusion from the sale of capital gains that noncorporate taxpayers purchased in 2012 and 2013 and hold for 5 years. It has bipartisan support. As I said, Senator Kerry has been the lead advocate. Senator Snowe has worked side by side with him, and along with Senator Moran, Senator Warner, Senator Coons, and Senator Rubio have all called for this provision to be permanent. I wish we could make it permanent. This bill will not make it permanent, but we will extend it for another year and a half.

According to the Kauffman Foundation paper published earlier this year--and the Kauffman Foundation, for those who don't know, is the leading think tank. It is not political at all. It is just a middle-of- the-road, well-respected think tank on small business development. They published a paper earlier this year, the 100-percent exclusion ``boosts the after-tax returns on such investments in startups and should induce substantial levels of new investments in startup firms.'' They further estimate that making this provision permanent would increase risky investments by, conservatively, 50 percent more than the overall cost of the provision. So they are supporting this provision very strongly and would like to see it permanent, but we can only afford in this package to have it for the next year as we again build our way out of this recession.

I guess, from a conservative point of view, one of the good things about this provision--after we vote on the Schumer proposal and the Cantor proposal--it only scores at $4 billion. We get a tremendous benefit for a very small investment of taxpayer money, relatively speaking. Not that $4 billion is chump change, but compared to the $20 billion we are considering for the Schumer package and the $40 billion for the Cantor package, we think we can take that $4 billion and, similar to yeast, make it stretch and grow to affect a lot of people and to spur a lot of investment.

The next provision is the small business tax extenders, the increased deduction for startup expenditures. Again, this has been a Snowe and Merkley initiative. I think Senator Merkley has truly stood up to fight for this.

Under current law, taxpayers can elect to deduct up to $5,000 of startup expenditures in the taxable year in which they start a trade or business. The $5,000 is reduced--but not below zero--by the amount by which the startup costs exceed $50,000.

Examples of potential startup costs: studies of potential markets, products, labor markets or transportation systems; advertisements for the opening of a new business, et cetera; compensation for consultants who help get one's business started.

The Small Business Jobs Act temporarily increased the amount of the startup expenditures entrepreneurs could deduct from their taxes in 2010 from $5,000 to $10,000, with a phaseout threshold of $60,000. Senator Merkley fought to have this provision in the Small Business Jobs Act. This proposal has been repeatedly endorsed by the National Association for the Self-Employed and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

As part of his ``Startup America'' legislative agenda, President Obama has called for making this permanent. Again, my amendment doesn't make it permanent, but it does make it effective through 2013.

According to a Kauffman Foundation survey, on average, new firms inject about $80,000 into their businesses during the first year of operation. The vast majority of small business owners--between 80 percent and 90 percent--also invest significant amounts of their own money. I wish to underscore this. The way this amendment came together is we conducted in the Small Business Committee--and had very good turnout--about three or four high-level roundtables, where instead of just having 2 or 3 people testify, we had 20 people at a roundtable show up. For 2 hours, in a very informal setting, they were answering questions, such as: What is the best thing we could do to help you now? What are the barriers to growth? What does a healthy ecosystem for small business look like and what could we do to strengthen and make healthier that ecosystem in America? That is where these ideas came from.

Of course, Senator Merkley picked up on some of this and understood. The Kauffman Foundation was there. They said that even though I have talked a lot on the Senate floor about how small businesses need to borrow money--and many do--when they start a company, they don't want to borrow money unless they absolutely have to because the chances of it not working are pretty significant. Most new startups fail, and so people do not want to go into debt unless they have to or unless they are a little bit more sure their idea is going to work.

The benefit of this proposal is that we are actually rewarding the risk-takers who are digging into their savings and taking second mortgages out on their homes and putting some of their other savings at risk behind their idea. What we are saying is if they do that, we will give a significant tax break, considering it costs about $88,000 to start an average business. So this is targeted to those risk-takers. It is not just taking money out of the Treasury and throwing it at all small businesses. It is taking that money--and this is only $4 billion total--and saying: Ok. Let's target it to those individuals who are putting their lives on the line. They are putting their livelihood on the line and their future on the line. What can we do to support them? I am a very big believer in this provision, and I thank Senator Merkley for bringing it to us.

I see Senator Casey and Senator Shaheen are on the Senate floor to speak and that my time has expired. Since I am going to be on the floor most of the afternoon explaining this amendment, I would be happy to yield the floor.

I see Senator Sessions is here and ask unanimous consent that Senator Casey speak for 10 minutes, Senator Sessions for the next 5 or 10 minutes and Senator Shaheen for 5 minutes.

I will amend that to 10 minutes each in the order of Senator Casey, Senator Sessions, and Senator Shaheen.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New Hampshire for not only being such an aggressive and fine and thoughtful member of the Small Business Committee, but for her constant encouragement to me and to Senator Snowe to try to pull together some of the ideas that we all can agree on and move forward.

It may not be the most perfect package, it may not be the most extensive package, but as the Senator from New Hampshire said, it is a package that most all of us can agree to, and it has a pricetag of only $4 billion.

That is a lot of money. But compared to the Republican proposal that has come over here from the House at $40 billion, and the Schumer proposal, which I support because it is much more targeted and much more responsible at $20 billion, this $4 billion amendment could have a tremendous bang, a tremendous leveraging power for its cost. And the two proposals Senator Shaheen explained beautifully actually have zero cost because the 504 program is a program that pays for itself. All we are doing is extending its authorization so people--and there are thousands of them in Louisiana, in Rhode Island, in New Hampshire, and other States--who are caught paying higher interest rates on short-term loans for commercial buildings--and I am sure we all know someone in that category--can now, if this amendment passes, go to their local bank--it is not a government program; it is a partnership with the local banks and through the SBA--and refinance their building and get a longer term loan.

In fact, I am told that this program, this 504 program, is basically taking up the majority of the space in this lending, that still the lenders are very weak. They are not extending credit out in a long fixed rate. They are lending short term. They are lending with adjustable rates. As the Presiding Officer knows, and many others, when a person is starting a small business and taking so much risk, one risk that can be eliminated is the cost of their money. It is very comforting to a small business owner--who has to borrow, who does not have the savings or has run through their savings or the equity in their home and they have to extend and take that risk--to be able to have a fixed, longer term rate.

So again, this proposal came from Senator Isakson, who truly is acknowledged as the expert in this entire Chamber on commercial real estate and on residential real estate. He is known and respected on both sides of the aisle. This is his proposal with Senator Shaheen. I thank him for his leadership.

Also, the Senator spoke about the export coordination. Again: zero cost; just smarter government, at no cost. We need more of that around here: smarter government, less spending. That is what Senator Shaheen's proposal does, which is a portion of this amendment, the Small Business Export Growth Act.

Let me reiterate that 95 percent of the world's customers are located outside of the borders of the United States. It might be shocking to people in America to realize this, but we represent only 4 to 5 percent of the population of the Earth. We think of ourselves as the biggest and the best, and we are the best. We are not necessarily the biggest when it comes to population, though.

So there are growing markets all over the world. Mr. President, 95 percent of our customers and a majority of the market are outside of the boundaries of the United States. What we are recognizing is, right now only 1 percent of the 28 million small businesses in America export. Why would that be? One, it can be intimidating for a small business, even though they have a great product, they have a great idea, they have great technology. And India needs that technology or some countries in Africa might absolutely want that product or that service. The small businesses are intimidated. They do not have the accountants, they do not normally have access to high-powered, expensive lawyers and trade executives and experts. So that is what our government--and, frankly, State governments are doing this. Smart governments at the State level--whether it is

California, Oregon, Louisiana--all States are now recognizing: Gee, we need to get behind our small businesses in our State and help them to export.

I was very proud to put a substantial investment in the jobs act of 2010, which gave competitive grants to States. And it is remarkable; just a little bit of investment at the Federal level is leveraging a tremendous amount of excitement at the State and local level as those governments accept those grants and then put them to work.

In Louisiana, our department of economic development has been very aggressive in using its step grants. So, again, this is not an additional grant program. This Shaheen-Ayotte proposal has no cost. It is perfecting, coordinating this export initiative by establishing an interagency task force between the SBA, the USDA, and the Ex-Im Bank. It is really encouraging cooperation that now does not exist at the Federal level and requires the SBA, in coordination with other agencies, to conduct one outreach event in each State per year, which I think would really help to motivate our State governments and our stakeholders at the State level to be helpful.

Let me go back to the beginning. We have the SUCCESS Act amendment. I talked earlier about 16 provisions in this amendment. We talked about the 100-percent exclusion of capital gains. We have talked about the increased deduction for startup expenditures, which is Senator Merkley's provisions.

Now I want to talk about the S corp holding period. This has come out of the Finance Committee. Senator Snowe and Senator Cardin have been very strong advocates of this provision. Under current law, when a corporation becomes an S corporation--and there are, of course, benefits to becoming that kind of corporation--right now it is required to hold its business assets for 10 years or pay punitive taxes. In our mind, this 10-year holding period is too long. It ties up assets that could be sold to raise capital. In 2010, in our small business bill, we reduced this holding period to 5 years so businesses would be better able to manage their planning cycles. So this proposal is to extend the 5-year holding period through 2012 and 2013. You know, potentially, if we could afford it, we would like to make this proposal permanent, but in the Landrieu SUCCESS Act amendment, it would extend it through 2012 and 2013 and has a minimal cost.

The next provision is a carryback provision--up to 5 years of general business credits. This is a proposal about which Senator Snowe feels very strongly. The proposal would extend the carryback period from 1 year to 5 years for general business credits earned in 2012 and 2013. It would provide tax refunds to businesses that were previously healthy but are currently running losses.

The proposal would improve the effectiveness of business credits that are intended to expand investment and employment. The provision would allow businesses greater immediate benefit from credits designed to encourage specific types of activity. By providing businesses with greater opportunity to claim business credits, the provision would also give an infusion of cash to businesses, which might promote investment. So that is another provision of our SUCCESS Act.

Section 179 is probably the most popular part of our amendment and, again, Senator Snowe has championed this in the Finance Committee. Many Finance Committee members are completely aware of section 179 in the Tax Code, which deals with expensing that many restaurants and retailers use. Basically, it provides a credit for them if a small business buys machinery and equipment or property contained in or attached to a building other than structural components, such as refrigerators, grocery store counters, office equipment, gasoline storage tanks, pumps at retail service stations, even livestock, including horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, other fur-bearing animals-- all of the equipment or products or purchases small businesses make to run their businesses. This would allow an immediate writeoff of up to $500,000 for this kind of property. So, again, it is $2.3 billion over 10 years. It is the most expensive part of this whole amendment, but we think it is $2 billion well invested to encourage those small businesses to make these investments now, to get jobs and expansion opportunities underway.

Twenty-six national business groups, such as the NFIB, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Association for the Self-Employed, have endorsed this and have sent a letter to us with very enthusiastic support.

The next section is expanding access to capital for entrepreneurs. This was actually mentioned in President Obama's State of the Union Message to us when he talked about his small business proposals. He outlined maybe half a dozen things, a few of which we have implemented and a few of which we have not yet implemented. This was on his bucket list, if you will. And I am a strong proponent of this provision.

We created a small business investment company in a bipartisan way decades ago. It has been one of the most successful programs created to spur business development in the country. It basically operates on a sustainable level and does not cost the Federal Government anything. It is like venture capital--not really like venture capital--it is like an investment; not a bank but a nonbank investment company that was created many years before I became chair of this committee. It is something that was done through Democratic and Republicans administrations because it worked.

All this does is raise the statutory cap from $3 billion to $4 billion, and it increases the amount of leverage of licensees from $225 million to $350 million. They are bumping up against that $3 billion cap. It has been very successful. We would like to take it to the next level. And, of course, some of the most successful funds within SBIC are bumping up against their $225 million cap per fund. So this is one of the great ideas that came out of our roundtable. Again, not only does President Obama support it, it has my strong support and Senator Snowe's, the ranking member of the Small Business Committee.

The next provision would be the SBA 504 refinance. This extends for a year and a half the ability of the SBA 504 Loan Program. We talked about this. Senator Shaheen spoke about this, and I have already explained it. So this is really the Isakson-Shaheen-Snowe proposal.

The next is the small business lending activity index. This is something I have put forward. We have talked with the banks and the SBA. They are all on board and accepting of this concept. It is a way to measure the small business lending activity that is being done at the city-State level through the 7(a) and 504 Lending Program.

It was very curious to me, when I became chair of this committee, that we did not have the measurements in place to actually judge whether some of our programs were really working. Were they working really well or working moderately or were they very weak? So I have instructed my staff and we have been working together to see in every way if we measure and really record the activities of the Small Business Administration. It is only a $1 billion agency, one of the smaller agencies of the government, but that billion dollars comes from taxpayers and we want to make sure that money is spent well and wisely.

So this legislation, again, is at no cost. It can be done within the current budget. It will be called the lender activity index. It will be posted on the SBA Web site. It will have the name of the bank, the number of SBA loans made by each bank, the total dollar amount of SBA loans, the ZIP Code of bank activity, the industries lent to, so we can sort of see how our banks are lending and to what areas, the stage of the business cycle, and then whether it was a woman-owned, minority- owned, or veteran-owned business, if that information can be obtained. It is very simple. We made sure the language is easy for the banks. They already have to report this data; it is just not in a useable format. This will require them to put it in a useable format.

The next is access to global markets. This is what Senator Shaheen spoke about. So the major part of this bill is tax cuts to businesses and then some oversight of the SBA, tightening up, coordinating our export strategy. And then the next and final part of this--or next to last part of our amendment is basically access to mentoring, education, strategic partnership.

In our roundtable--I am not going to go into all of the details of these items, but the bottom line is that in our roundtable, experts-- business owners and the Kauffman Foundation and others--came to us and said: Senator, you are right, businesses need capital. You are right, we need access to global markets. You are right that we need a fair tax code. But what businesses also need is technical advice and support and training, and we need more education, entrepreneurship education.

The Small Business Administration is not the education agency, so we have been very careful not to mission creep. We have designed a couple of proposals that can encourage better activity within the SBA to form partnerships with nonprofits and even for-profits, not-for-profits, and schools to promote entrepreneurship appropriately. The Federal Government can be a model. It is only one model. But we believe technical training is important. We have partners already established-- the women's small business centers and minority business centers. Getting them to be more effective and providing additional counseling is very important.

Finally on this amendment, access to government contracting is another method for small businesses to be able to grow. Governments-- whether it is Federal, State, or local--are huge purchasers of goods and services, and if our contracting laws are right and if they are enforced, then small businesses in America will have an opportunity to get started by competing for government contracts or to grow by receiving government contracts. And they are more likely to grow. If a big business gets a contract from the government, they can sometimes absorb that contact and make their company more efficient, giving more work to the people who are already there. And there is nothing wrong with that; that is business. But when a small business gets a government contract, most of the time it results in additional hiring because small businesses have to be lean and agile. So they might have five people but they have a lot of expertise. They land a contract from the government that they are most certainly qualified to do, and then they have to hire. So they have to hire 10 people to carry out that contract, which is why I have been very supportive--Senator Cardin has been a champion on this issue and Senator Levin as well--of giving small businesses an opportunity for contracting. That will really help.

In conclusion on this amendment--I see other Members coming to the floor. I wish to speak for another 5 or so minutes. I came to the floor today to support the underlying bill, which is the Schumer tax cut provision that is targeted tax relief to small businesses in America. I hope our Members will support that.

If for any reason they don't support that, or even if we do, we will still have an opportunity, I hope, to vote on the Landrieu amendment. I say that humbly because this amendment has been put together by Senator Snowe and her staff with me and members of the Small Business Committee on both sides of the aisle. We picked up some great ideas from individual legislation that had been filed, and it got unanimous consent and review, talking to many people.

So we don't believe it is controversial. We know it doesn't cost that much--$4 billion--and we believe it will have a tremendous and immediate impact on small businesses in America.

I wanted to give that explanation. We have received a tremendous amount of support today from a variety of organizations.

I see my colleague on the floor. I will yield the floor at this time and perhaps will take a few more minutes before 6 o'clock.

Mr. President, there are a few other things I would like to say.

I wanted to take a minute to respond to something that Senator Rubio said earlier, and Senator Sessions, while I was on the floor. I have great respect for those two Members, but he came to the floor with a fairly critical diatribe, if you will, against some of President Obama's policies. I have not been a great supporter of the President's energy policies, and I actually appreciate some of the views Senator Rubio holds about the fact that we need to drill more in this country.

I want to show something I think Florida should be mindful of and suggest that the Senator from Florida could start making that speech at home in Florida because Florida is one of the States that virtually produces no energy, from any source. It has been a bone of contention with me for many years that we have had Senators come to the floor and talk about what so-and-so doesn't do and what so-and-so doesn't do.

I want to remind the Senator from Florida that the gas that keeps the lights on in Florida actually comes from the Mobile Bay. These are the pipelines that Mississippi and Alabama and Texas--9,000 miles of pipelines and drilling--have off of our shore and onshore to provide gas and lights to Florida.

This is a chart that is very interesting. Before America can be energy independent or energy secure, each State should be energy secure, or each region. The country is not made up of smoke and mirrors; it is made up of 50 States. If every State and every region would do its part, either producing or conserving or a little of both, we could actually get there. But I get a little tired of the lectures criticizing us--particularly from States that neither conserve nor produce.

California gets a little bit of a break, even though they consume more energy than any State. They are a net consumer of energy. We are down here, a net producer. The States that produce more energy than they consume are Wyoming, West Virginia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alaska, Kentucky--and North Dakota should be on here now because this was some years ago. Probably Montana also would be on here now.

The Senator from Florida is coming and lecturing everybody about producing, and his own State produces virtually nothing and consumes everything. I wanted to say that I find that offensive. California gets a little bit of a pass from me because if we look at another chart, they do more to sort of consume energy through government regulations, which I know the other side doesn't like. They think we don't need any regulations, and that is their view. California has a lot of regulations--maybe too much for me as well--but they are doing a lot to conserve. Florida doesn't. Maybe if Florida started doing a little drilling, it would help the United States to be more energy independent.

My second point: I want to answer something Senator Sessions said. I will try to find my document on that in a minute. Senator Sessions came to the floor a few minutes ago and talked about the cost of the health care bill. The health care bill has some expensive components to it. The purpose of the health care bill, remember, Mr. President--because the occupant of the chair was in the middle of that battle--was designed to reduce the overall cost of health care for the Nation because the percentage of the gross national product going to health care was moving up dramatically and frighteningly--from 12 percent a few years ago to 14 percent, to 16 percent, and it was on its way to 19 percent. It was on its way to 19 percent before Barack Obama got sworn into office.

I am getting tired--and the American people are getting tired--of the same diatribe coming from the other side of the aisle about how the cost of the Affordable Care Act is causing the country to go off the edge. This country was going off the edge before President Obama even became President. They know that. But they are just bound and determined to keep talking about the same old thing day in and day out, about how the Affordable Care Act is wrecking America. The only thing wrecking America is their stubbornness.

I want to put this into the Record. When President Clinton was President, as you know, it was the last time we had a surplus. It was the Republican President and the Republican leadership that turned that surplus into a

deficit. The ship had already hit the iceberg before President Obama took his oath of office. Now they want to blame the entire deficit on the Affordable Care Act.

When the Affordable Care Act is implemented--now that the Supreme Court has said it is most certainly constitutional--instead of fighting it every step of the way, it would, in the long run, save money.

They want to talk about this tax, tax, tax, tax. I want to call what they do the ``no care tax,'' because that is the Republican position. Before there was the Affordable Care Act, people in America were losing care rapidly. Small businesses were dropping their insurance. They could not afford it anymore. These premiums have been going up for a long time. The Affordable Care Act didn't drive the premiums up; they were going through the ceiling. We had to do something to try to stop it.

When President Obama came into office, and we saw that the trends were going up, in our efforts to try to get the budget back into balance it was obvious that we had to do something with health care. But they keep talking about tax, tax, tax. I remind them that before we passed the Affordable Care Act, there was a tax on every insurance policy that people in America had because it was a tax for the uninsured. It was about $1,200. That tax was on the backs of the American people before President Obama ever became President, before we even began debating the Affordable Care Act.

The other cost that was going on in this country was the people who didn't have Medicare, who didn't have Medicaid, and didn't have insurance--and it was a rising number of people without insurance. And as States cut back on their Medicaid, a rising number of people who didn't have Medicaid went to our hospitals, our private hospitals, our public hospitals, and our not-for-profit hospitals. Do you know what the Republicans want to tell them. Just treat those people for free. There is no one to reimburse you for this cost. Medicaid will not reimburse them because they are not 65. They don't have private insurance. And the Governors cut back on Medicaid because they can't bear to go look for some tax loopholes that people might not need in order to provide working Americans with health care.

They are too busy campaigning for their next election, so they told all the hospitals: You all go ahead and take care of these people for free. So when a non-paying customer went to a hospital, whom do you think picked up the tab for that? The paying customer.

So before President Obama became the President, before we started trying to figure out a way out of this terrible mess, there was a huge tax on the backs of the American people and a huge debt having to be paid every year by every hospital in America. Why don't they talk about that? They don't.

I hope the American people will listen because I am so tired of that same old speech. I have heard it for 3 years--before the debate, during the debate, and I guess we are going to hear it up to the election. I hope the American people will listen. Don't let them talk about the tax that is supposedly in this bill. The Affordable Care Act is alleviating a tax burden. It alleviates a terrible tax burden, an invisible tax that has been on the American people, and a heavy burden on the backs of the taxpayers--and immoral in some ways, as well--with working Americans working 50, 60 hours a week, and when they get sick, they have nowhere to turn.

Instead of putting their proposals on the table, they decided they wanted to block and tackle and stop and not contribute anything. I think the country will make a good decision. I think the country likes the fact that their kids can stay on their health care plan until they are 26, and they like the fact that when they get sick with cancer or diabetes they cannot be kicked off their health insurance. Particularly businesses would like it if the States would step up and cover some of these lower wage workers, and the burden would not fall on us.

For every Governor--and mine may be one--who rejects the expansion of Medicare, who do they think has to pick this up? It is the small businesses.

The burden should be shared for our lower income workers broadly, not on the backs of businesses that are struggling. That is the way we designed this program. The Federal Government said: We know it is tough. We know it is an expansion. Do you know what. We will pick up the 3 years 100 percent to give you some time, to help you so you can look at your Tax Code, and you might be able to find out and let me get this one more thing off my chest. Who made up the rule that the Federal Government is in charge of the health of every American citizen? Do Governors have any responsibility for health? Are we supposed to just do everything up here? Do mayors and Governors have any responsibility for the health and welfare of the people they serve? I suggest the Governors--some of them--get off the campaign trail, get back to their offices, and start putting health care legislation together-- particularly some of the Republican Governors.

I am glad I said that. I am happy to turn over the microphone. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing and celebrating the 101st birthday of Mr. John Petterway, Jr., of Shreveport, La. Mr. Petterway turned 101 on June 4, 2012.

Along with celebrating his 101st birthday, Mr. Petterway has also recently celebrated the 99th birthday of his wife, Alzetta Petterway, and their 70th wedding anniversary.

Mr. Petterway served in the U.S. Army during World War II, from June 1943 to September 1945. He was in the European Command where he served in Africa, Italy, and France. Mr. Petterway was recently honored by the Caddo Parish Commission, in Shreveport, LA, as the parish's oldest living World War II veteran.

After Mr. Petterway completed his service in the U.S. Army, he returned to Shreveport where he and his wife still reside. Long after his military duty and career, Mr. Petterway and his wife have stayed extremely active within their church and community.

It is with a heartfelt sincerity that I ask my colleagues to join me along with Mr. Petterway's family in honoring and celebrating the life of this extraordinary person.

Mr. President, before the Senator from California leaves the floor, for a much needed rest and relaxation and celebration with her extraordinary staff, let me be one of the first to thank her, to join my colleagues who have thanked her for her leadership.

This Transportation bill would not be a reality for the Nation--not for California, Texas, New York, or Louisiana,--if it weren't for the leadership of the chairperson of this committee. Senator Rockefeller was there to push, Senator Baucus was there to push, Senator Johnson was there to push, but the leader of this victory was Senator Barbara Boxer.

Her colleague, Senator Inhofe, stood bravely against winds of opposition, ideology, without common sense--ideology without regard to the needs of the Nation. Senator Inhofe, a Republican, stood against those winds and with the Senator from California to produce a jobs bill for the Nation.

I hope people appreciate the extraordinary accomplishment this is in the context of the political quagmire we find ourselves in just a few months before a very significant national election, with both sides hugging the opposite wall. For these two to come forward today and meet in the middle of the Chamber and produce a bill with this kind of vote, people did not think it was possible up until just a few weeks ago. There was still the majority saying it will never happen.

But I know something about Barbara Boxer, as well. She came here as a fighter. Her name ``Boxer'' says it all. It is the way she fought her way to the Senate, and she continues to fight not just for the people of California but the people of the Nation.

I knew 2 years ago--now a little over 2 years ago--when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew up in the gulf, one of the first people I could go to, to ask for help, for support, for ideas and advice about what to do would be Senator Boxer. She is a strong environmentalist. She has a heart for our oceans, and she understood the challenge of Louisiana's eroding coastline--more so than many Members in this body.

I will be forever grateful for the fact that she and her staff sat with me and other colleagues and crafted the RESTORE Act, which is a historic piece of legislation. It has no precedent in Congress. It will, for the first time, set aside such a significant amount of money from a penalty that has yet to be determined by a polluter that has been determined--BP--that under the law, after the Valdez spill, now has to pay to the Federal Government $1,000 for every barrel of oil that was spilled or gushed out of the explosion for months on end. They have to pay $1,000 for every barrel of oil that was spilled. The estimates are that, unfortunately for our coast, our people, our fishermen, shrimpers, charter boat captains, and the pelicans, fish, shrimp, and oystermen, for us it was 5 million barrels of oil spilled between August and July, until the well was capped. It is the largest pollution event in the history of the Nation. It will be the largest fine.

I have every confidence that the people of the gulf coast and the Nation will find justice in the courts. I hope this fine is as high as it can be, based on the damage that has been done from Texas to Florida and off the coast of Louisiana. When I brought this to Senator Boxer, she understood that we had to find a way for justice in the gulf. I crafted the RESTORE Act with my colleague Dick Shelby. For months we negotiated about how to craft it, what to say, how to specifically direct the funding, and had the benefit of having the support of the White House, the support of every commission and every individual appointed by the President supportive of this idea.

So I first thank the VP's Presidential commission that was one of the first to step up and support this concept of an 80-percent set-aside and redirect to the gulf.

I particularly thank Secretary Ray Mabus, whom we will remember led the President's first commission, former Governor of Mississippi, who knows the gulf coast well and understands Louisiana's coast as a neighbor for so long. He stepped up and said: Yes, this is the right thing to do. We had hundreds--and, really, thousands--of individuals and hundreds of organizations that started to come forward.

Let me name a few: the Environmental Defense Fund was absolutely instrumental, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Nature Conservancy, Ocean Conservancy, Oxfam America, and GNO, Inc.-- Greater New Orleans, Inc. They were some of the first organizations to step up.

The Greater Houston Partnership was invaluable in the early days to build support among the business community, as were the Mobile Chamber of Commerce, Ducks Unlimited, America's WETLAND Foundation, Restore or Retreat--a vibrant local and dynamic organization in south Louisiana-- Chamber of Southwest Louisiana, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and Women of the Storm--representing thousands of women, not just throughout the gulf coast, but as well from your State and every State. Women stepped up who said this kind of accident has to stop. This kind of explosion should never happen again.

Most important, they said the people who were hurt the most, the area damaged the worst should be compensated by this fine. This money should not come to the general fund of the United States to be spent everywhere else in the Nation for a variety of unrelated purposes. The RESTORE Act says: No, the right way for this money to be allocated is to the area where the accident occurred, where the injury occurred, and that is exactly what RESTORE does--no more and no less.

There is one other person who deserves particular thanks and a shoutout, and that is the Senator from Rhode Island Sheldon Whitehouse. When Senator Shelby and I finished crafting this bill, which was introduced by a few colleagues--a similar bill--on the House side, Representative Steve Scalise, Cedric Richmond, and Representative Bonner from Alabama--we were having a great deal of difficulty moving a bill through a committee that only had two gulf coast Members and Senator Boxer.

The other Members were sympathetic but not that enthusiastic, and I can most certainly understand why. As you know, this is going to be a tremendous amount of money. It is going to direct these funds to only five States. They were sympathetic, but what was in it for everyone else? Sheldon Whitehouse and I put our heads together and came up--it was his idea--with the bill itself and thought maybe we could, as a part of RESTORE--an integral part of RESTORE--say perhaps the oceans deserved justice as well because water knows no boundaries. What happened

in the gulf could have impacts in the Atlantic, up the Atlantic, and out to the Pacific. Who knows. And that is the problem. We don't have enough scientific research going on in this Nation about our oceans, which is 70 percent of our planet. In Louisiana, we derive great pleasure, joy, and income from our oceans, and from our oil and gas exploration, which is usually safe, on any normal day. This was not a normal day in the gulf, not a normal operation when the Horizon rig blew up. We get our fish, our oysters, our seafood industry, our restaurant industry, our hotels, and our ecotourism--and I could go on and on--from the ocean. We make our living from the ocean. Senator Whitehouse and I thought--and I think most reasonable people agreed-- the oceans deserve something out of this. So at no cost to the five States, we put in a provision that a small portion--a half percent of the interest earnings that would be generated--not the fund itself, not taking money away from the gulf coast, as some have claimed, but appropriately saying interest earnings--would create a trust fund for the oceans so that every State could use it for research along their coast.

But that was a bridge too far for the Republican leaders in the House who think we can learn nothing, who want no partnerships, no research whatsoever, I guess, to go on in the oceans. So as that amendment became a part of the committee process over here, we had that amendment connected to RESTORE at the committee level. It was part of RESTORE. It was moved to the floor and it enabled us to build a broader coalition, which is the way legislation is built. It is not one person's idea. It is not one person's work. The best of the bills and legislation we pass are about teams, about generosity and sharing and understanding, a little give here, a little take there.

It is a shame there are some people on the other side of this Capitol who don't seem to know that is the basic operation of a democracy. I am not sure what books they read in school, but they weren't the ones we read at Ursuline Academy, taught by the Ursuline nuns. But Sheldon Whitehouse read those same books, and we put this bill together. I couldn't have been happier. Not only could I go home and say we did this great thing for the Gulf of Mexico and that everyone came together to help us in our time of need, but I could also look at our great friends from other parts of the country and say there is a portion in here for the oceans.

That is how the bill came to the floor. One of my proudest days, in my 16 years here in the Senate, was when this Senate voted, under the leadership of Senator Boxer and myself and Senator Shelby, for this bill--the RESTORE Act--with 76 votes. I don't think the transportation bill itself got 76 votes, to indicate how difficult it is to get 76 votes. Other than just for immaterial items, it is hard to get 76 votes for apple pie and Mother's Day greetings. But we got 76 votes, and I was so proud. Not only was it the right thing to do--a great help to the region I help to represent--but also very fair, with the inclusion also of the land and water, which was not part of RESTORE but an amendment that was put on to help this effort with other parts of the country. So the good news is we passed that bill and paid for it in full over here with a pay-for that was also agreed to by 76 Senators.

But when the bill went over to the House, one of the first and most serious detrimental things that happened was the oceans endowment trust fund was stripped out. I want those who stripped it out to know this: We will be back. We are going to lead a coalition of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate who are going to send a strong message to House Republicans that the oceans do deserve our time, our attention, our love and support and our money. We can't do this on a wish and a prayer. We have wildlife and fish and migratory birds that depend on healthy oceans. The people of our country and the world depend on that.

This will not be the last time they see the national oceans endowment. I will be proud to have my name right next to Sheldon Whitehouse's and we will go into battle again.

But around here, you don't win everything every day, and so they cut it out. But we will put it back and it will be bigger and stronger than it was when they took it out.

The other thing the House Republicans did, which I have no understanding of why, to pay for this RESTORE Act, the student loans, the transportation bill, and the flood insurance bill, is they took $700 million away from Louisiana's Medicaid budget. I will have more to say about the details of that later, because I want to stay focused on RESTORE, but I want to put in the record what our Commissioner of Administration said, who, of course, works for Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, and Republican Secretary of Health and Hospitals Bruce Greenstein:

. . . the loss of more than $400 million--

And that was in fiscal year 2013, and it was another $250 million, so it was $650 in 2014.

--in so-called FMAP money, already built into the state's

Fiscal 2013 budget passed by the Legislature and signed into

law by Gov. Bobby Jindal, would altogether lead to a loss in

Medicaid dollars that would require $1.1 billion in cuts.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of this quote from Paul Rainwater and Bruce Greenstein.

The House Republicans who came up with this idea insisted on this offset when there were others that could have been offered that were much more fair, much less impactful, and much less hurtful. There were some Republican Members who absolutely insisted this offset be included, and so the Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, with a Republican legislature and a Republican delegation in the House, will have to find a way forward. I am not sure what that way is going to be, but when the bill left the Senate that was not even discussed under any circumstance whatsoever.

But even this terrible action taken on the House side cannot diminish the extraordinary victory of the RESTORE Act. Bills such as this, that basically distribute anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion for coastal restoration efforts, take years, even decades to pass. We did this in 2 years, working together, staying focused, and building a support structure nationwide from the business community to the environmental community. The Chamber of Commerce stepped up, the American Petroleum Institute did their part, and many of the oil and gas companies stepped up as well. With the coalition of environmentalists, business organizations, wildlife enthusiasts, we were able to get this significant bill passed. It is going to be a tremendous downpayment for the challenge in the gulf coast.

Let me, for the record, say again that there were 86,985 square miles of water closed to fishing, approximately 36 percent of Federal waters in the gulf that were closed to fishing for months, causing a loss to the industry of $2.5 billion. There were 600 miles of the gulf coastline that were oiled. Over half of those miles were in Louisiana, and some oil is still lingering. In fact, scientists who have been studying the baseline said the erosion of the marsh that was oiled was eroding at twice the speed as normal, and that normal erosion is pretty breathtaking in terms of its rate.

We have lost basically the size of the State of Rhode Island in the last 50 years. If our delegation is not successful in continuing to have victories such as this, it is conceivable, with the climate change that is happening, the rising of the tides and the frequency of these great storms, that one day, if we are not successful in preserving these wetlands--and these are wetlands of all of America, that drain 40 percent of our Nation, that supply 40 percent of the fisheries to everybody, and 80 percent of the oil and gas to everyone--that New Orleans will be existing as a city with a 30-foot concrete levee around it and everything else washed away--our culture, our hope, our way of life.

I have said this a thousand times: We are not sunbathing here in south Louisiana. We are not vacationing in south Louisiana. We have fun, we have weekends where we fish and we hunt, but we are not vacationing for weeks and weeks in south Louisiana, lying on the beach and getting a tan. There are no beaches to lie on. We only have two. Grand Isle is 7 miles long, and Holly Beach, which got washed away in Rita and still has not been rebuilt.

The Corps of Engineers continues to tell me there is nothing they can do for the last inhabited island off the coast of Louisiana. Well, there is a lot they can do, and we will see to that in another bill. But we want these wetlands preserved for our children, for our grandchildren, and for the economic vitality of the Nation. This is the mouth of the greatest river system in North America and we intend to save what we can. We will never get everything back. We have lost 1,900 square miles since 1930. We lose 25 square miles of wetlands each year, and we lose a football field every 30 minutes.

Two million people live in coastal Louisiana, about \1/2\ million in Mississippi, about 1 million in Alabama, and probably about 4 million in Texas. We cannot get up and move. There is no place to go. We don't want to live in Arkansas and Missouri. We want to live on the gulf coast, and we have been there since before this Nation was a nation, and we are not leaving. We are tired of retreating. We know this can be done. We have been to The Netherlands and places around the world where wetlands have been saved--levees built that don't break. It is cost effective in the long run. In the short run it costs investment. In the long run, it creates wealth for everyone.

Three trillion dollars is contributed to the national economy by the gulf coast every year, 17 percent of the national GDP comes from the gulf coast every year, 50 percent of all the oil and gas that fuels this Nation comes from the gulf coast, and 80 percent comes from offshore. Every year, despite how much we do, we get zero back from offshore oil and gas drilling off our shore. The interior States have received 50 percent since 1923, but not Texas, not Louisiana, not Mississippi, and not Alabama. We drill, drill, drill, and send oil everywhere, keeping lights on everywhere. The pipelines just run through our State. We are happy to have the industry, but we would like to share the revenues with the Federal Government. We send to the Federal Government about $6 billion a year, and have for decades. So when people say, don't you ever get embarrassed by asking for so much money? No. I could not possibly ask for as much money from Washington as we have already sent here. So I am going to continue to ask for funding for our State because we send off of our coast, and we are happy to do it, but we believe in fair partnerships and mutual respect. And until we get that, I am not going to stop advocating for our State. So RESTORE is a first step. It is the right step.

It is the fair step and justice for the goals for right now. This isn't taxpayer money. No taxpayers are paying this. BP is going to pay this. But we are going to come back next year and talk about the sharing of the tax revenues that the oil companies--not individuals but the oil companies--pay to the Federal Government every year for every barrel of oil, every cubic foot of gas they take out of the gulf. That sharing should be done not just here in America, it should be done off the coast of Africa, off the coast of South Africa, off the coast of Brazil, off the coast of Ghana, so the people who live along the coast can be respected, since that is where the drilling and the exploration is taking place.

Just as people in North Dakota and Utah and Wyoming share their revenues with the Federal Government, we intend to have a more robust revenue-sharing effort in the future. But until the day that happens-- and I am confident, as sure as I am standing here, it will--this RESTORE money will go as a significant downpayment to help jump-start coastal efforts. We are not doing it like every man or woman for himself. It is not a grab bag for Governors. Senator Shelby and I carefully crafted this so the money will be spent wisely, well, and efficiently in coordination with the Federal and State governments.

Is it going to be perfect? No. I am sure we are going to have some stumbling blocks. But this is unprecedented in its nature. This kind of public works effort has never been undertaken in this great way. So the scientists hopefully will lead us, the engineers and designers will design what we need, and we can continue giving our best effort in hopes of saving a great place on this Earth; that is, the great marshes of the gulf coast and the great delta that this mighty Mississippi River built thousands and thousands of years ago and leave it better to our grandchildren than most certainly we found it.

It has been a wonderful part of my life's work. It has been a worthy project to work on. There are others who have most certainly joined me in this leadership. But I am very proud of the work this Senate did and very disappointed in some things the House did on it. But as Senator Boxer said, it is legislation and we just can't have a perfect bill. It was better to get this than to leave it on the cutting-room floor, even though they did leave important pieces of it there.

I wish to thank Senator Boxer's staff, in particular, Senator Inhofe's staff for being so courteous, and Senator Boxer's staff for being very tenacious--to Tina and Jason particularly--to help us negotiate one of the great environmental pieces of legislation in decades.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I forgot to thank my own staff, which would be very important to do. Elizabeth Weiner, Elizabeth Craddock, Jane Campbell, my chief of staff, and my entire staff for their tremendous work--we are all going to get a good rest in the week to come--and other staff, Tanner Johnson in particular, no longer with my staff but who put the original bill together.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 51, the adjournment resolution which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Rev. Fred Luter, Jr., of New Orleans, LA on being elected to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention and acknowledging Reverend Luter's unique role as the first African- American leader of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Rev. Fred Luter, Jr. preached his first church sermon in 1983 at the Law Street Baptist Church in New Orleans, LA. He then became pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in 1986. Under the leadership of Reverend Luter, the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church community grew from 65 members in 1986 to over 7,000 members in 2005. Thanks to Reverend Luter, the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church grew to be the largest Southern Baptist Church in the State of Louisiana.

In 2005, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church was extensively damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Along with the church, Reverend Luter also lost his home to flooding. Displaced members of the church totaled approximately 2,000 people. Reverend Luter, in cooperation with Rev. David Crosby, found a temporary home for Franklin Avenue Baptist Church during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As well as setting up a temporary church, Reverend Luter continued to minister to his congregation, even holding services in Baton Rouge, LA, and Houston, TX. After tremendous hard work and determination, Reverend Luter reopened the door to Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in April of 2008.

In 2011, Reverend Luter became the first African-American to be elected as first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention is a cooperative of over 45,000 churches they diligently seek to bring about greater racial and ethnic representation at every level of Southern Baptist institutional life.

Reverend Luter was then nominated by Rev. David Crosby to become president of the Southern Baptist Convention. On June 19, 2012, Reverend Luter was elected to be the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

It is with a special measure of commendation and heartfelt congratulations on becoming the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention and for his commitment to ministering to his congregation that I ask my colleagues to join me along with Reverend Luter's family in honoring and celebrating the life of this most extraordinary person.

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

Mr. President, there are so many important issues in Washington today, it is hard to know what to speak on first. But I am going to take this opportunity to talk about flood insurance. One of the reasons is because there are three States in the Union that carry the most policies relative to our population, and it may be the most policies regardless of our population. That would be Florida, No. 1; Texas, No. 2; Louisiana, No. 3; and, of course, California, No. 4.

So while this bill affects everyone in the country, the four States that it affects the most and by far are the four States that I mentioned, and Louisiana happens to be one. So the people of my State pay a lot of attention to flood insurance. We always have, and we always will have to.

I am sorry to say that just within the last few hours, with so much changing around here at the last minute, I was just given the information that the flood insurance bill--which we have not even debated on the floor of the Senate--is now going to be put into an omnibus package which includes many other important bills: the Transportation bill, the RESTORE Act--which is also important for the gulf coast, parts of it that were accepted by the House, and there were a few important parts that were, unfortunately, left on the cutting room floor over in the House--and now the flood insurance bill.

I want to make it clear that if I were called on to vote on the flood insurance bill that is now going to be a part of this package, I would vote no because there are some very important provisions that I was going to offer as amendments to the bill that I think are crucial to not just my State but to the State of Florida, potentially to the State of California, and potentially to Texas as well. I am not sure their Senators are in complete agreement or understand some of the challenges, but I want to point out a few of them. Unfortunately, I am not going to get a chance to vote no because I am going to have to vote for the whole package, which I intend to do, although this flood insurance bill is not in the position I would support. Let me give three reasons.

No. 1, there is a provision of the bill that talks about V-Zones; that is, velocity zones. Right now, with FEMA, FEMA basically says if you are in a velocity zone, you cannot rebuild.

I have St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, Lafourche Parish, Terrebonne Parish, Cameron Parish, and large sections of St. Tammany and St. John the Baptist and Orleans Parish that you can see are designated V-Zones. This means likely to be flooded, not just based on their elevation but the way that the historical patterns of storms coming out of the gulf affect them.

I understand that we have to be very careful in these areas so I had an amendment to say: No, you can rebuild but you have to rebuild up to the right elevation or you have to rebuild according to the highest standards. If we do not fix this, and this bill passes--which it looks as though it will--there will be great concerns or questions, if not a downright prohibition, on building in these areas regardless of whether you pay for insurance. This is not right.

The other amendment I was prepared to offer is an affordability amendment. People may not realize this--I hope Members will be listening. Again, this bill affects all the States, but in the underlying bill there is a provision that allows these rates for everyone in the country to be increased by 15 percent a year.

People are struggling to pay flood insurance now. I think that is very steep. People who are arguing for the 15-percent a year increase say it is important to get this program actuarially sound, it is currently running a $20 billion deficit. I am well aware of the need to get this program in line. But I was going to offer an amendment that simply created and expanded a short, small, but important affordability provision of $10 million that the Department would have to help people on fixed incomes or lower or middle-income families who of course are working along the gulf coast and in some of these coastal areas. They are not sunbathing, not vacationing. This is not about second homes. This is about primary homes. They have a right to live and have been living for generations near the coast. These are fisherman, et cetera. That was an affordability amendment that I cannot offer or file for the Record.

This is a very important issue. Flood insurance is not just about business and commerce; it is about culture; it is about a way of life; it is about preserving coastal communities; it is about being resilient in storms. Yes, Louisiana wants to pay its fair share. Florida must pay its fair share. Texas must pay its fair share. We have no problem with that. We have been for years.

Some Members are now waking up and saying: Oh, my goodness, now you are telling us, people in other parts of the country, we have to buy flood insurance? But we have a levee. You are telling us we have to buy flood insurance?

Yes. We had levees in Louisiana for 200 years. Unfortunately, they break. Sometimes when the Federal Government doesn't build them correctly, they disintegrate and our people get flooded. Yes, we have levees, we pay to build the levees, and we pay for insurance, and we are still not as protected as we could be. Again, we are not sunbathing down here on this coast. We are producing oil and gas for the Nation. We are running the largest port system in North America, and we drain 40 percent of the continent.

Florida has a little different situation. They do a great deal of tourism and they do a great deal of sunbathing and other things. I am happy for Florida and their economy. But the people I represent are not running huge vacation operations. This is not an optional place for us to live. It is not optional for us, it is not optional for the Nation, and it is not optional for the world. We have to find an affordable and safe way to live here.

I had an amendment to try to make this more affordable. That amendment is not going to be offered. The only positive thing I can say about the bill--

and there are some positive things, and this is important, I know, to the realtors. I support them almost 100 percent--and the homebuilders. I have a very good record with the realtors and homebuilders. I believe in what they do and they are right when they say: We have to have a permanent extension because we cannot close deals. People cannot sell their homes. We have to have this insurance program. And they are correct.

Like a lot of things up here, it is a balance. With the amendments I was going to put on the bill and actually had worked out to do so, on balance the bill would have been better. I was prepared to vote for it on the floor. Now that it is being stuck into this package without the debate on the floor and without the amendments, I must go on record to say that I would vote against the bill in its current form, even though I know we need long-term flood insurance. Because of the increased rates, the lack of the affordability, and the lack of a fix to the V- Zones, I think it tips the balance against the bill generally.

There is nothing I can do about it. That is the way it is going to happen. But I wanted to submit my comments for the Record. I can promise the Members of this Senate after this bill goes into effect you are going to hear a lot of complaints from your constituents. I am certain we will be back here within the year, after the elections-- regardless of who wins and who loses--fixing some provisions that should have been fixed, but because there is not going to be a debate on the Senate floor will not be.

I know this bill came out of the Banking Committee in the Senate with bipartisan support. I am well aware of that. But I think there were some corrections or some perfections that could have been done on the Senate floor. We are not going to have that opportunity.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that John Bolanos be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of today's session.

Mr. President, I rise for a procedural request and a statement on the farm bill. On Rollcall Vote No. 153, yesterday, I voted ``yes.'' It was my intention to vote ``no.'' I therefore ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome of the amendment or the bill.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I had the Rollcall Vote number wrong. It is not Rollcall Vote No. 153. It is Rollcall Vote No. 143. I voted ``yes.'' I would like to change my vote to ``no.'' I ask unanimous consent that be the order.

Thank you Mr. President.

Agriculture Reform

Mr. President, I will be brief. I know other Members are on the floor who want to speak on other subjects.

First, I want to thank the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Kansas for an extraordinary job on a very difficult bill, a very complicated bill--and difficult because it is not just a Republican- Democratic debate or a Democratic-Republican debate, it is a regional debate that has to take place, and there is a lot of give-and-take.

I have been proud to vote for every farm bill that has been before the Senate to my knowledge, but I voted ``no'' today, and I want to say why.

Despite the great work of Senator Stabenow and Senator Roberts, there was a weak part of this bill, in my view, related to rice farming, and it is such a significant and important part of our farming structure in Louisiana that I cast a vote against the bill to send a signal that more work needs to be done.

This bill passed the Senate with an overwhelming vote. I voted for many of the amendments that I think helped to shape it to be even better than when it came out of committee.

We beat back several attacks to uproot, destroy, or significantly modify the U.S. Sugar Program, which has been very important to the State of Louisiana--one of the Nation's great sugar growers. As I have tried to explain to people who continue to attack this program, why would you want to end a program in this bill that does not cost the taxpayers a single dime?

There are no direct subsidies for sugar, as there are for all the other crops. The U.S. Sugar Program provides American consumers with low, stable sugar prices and ensures that our sugarcane and sugar beet growers receive a fair price for their crop.

I am happy to say that American growers of sugar can provide almost 85 percent of domestic demand. So why not use domestic sugar if we can supply our domestic demand? We only import what we need to import. We do not want to flood the market with cheap imports coming into America and undermining our jobs. I was proud to stand with our sugar industry and beat back those amendments.

Louisiana farmers and ranchers make a significant contribution to our State, generating over $10.8 billion in economic activity alone. Agriculture--including fisheries and, of course, forestry--and energy are the backbone of Louisiana's economy.

This farm bill is an important bill. As I said, I was happy to vote for literally dozens of amendments that strengthened it. But I held out my final support, hoping that, as it travels to the House and goes through the conference process, the farm provisions related to our rice growers could be perfected.

People like to say the United States grows the cheapest, safest, and most abundant food, fiber, and energy supply in the world. They are right. The people in my State who do that day in and day out are proud. They have every reason to be proud because farming is more than a business, it is more than a job; it is a way of life. It is a way of life that is important and precious and should be honored. There are many families--cousins and aunts and uncles and fathers and mothers and children who are involved in farming. In Louisiana, in our forest lands, and along our coastal lands, these families follow a preferred way of life, even though it means hard work, long hours, high risks, and sometimes heart-breakingly limited returns.

So from sugar and rice in the south to cotton and poultry in the north, and all the areas in between, Louisiana needs a farm bill that supports all of

our farmers. This one failed in one important area, which is why I cast a ``no'' vote.

This bill did not support adequately, in my view, the 2,000 rice farmers we have in Louisiana. Our rice industry generates $638 million in our State alone. Along with Arkansas, we are one of the major rice producing states. Nationally, U.S. rice supports about 128,000 jobs. It is $34 billion of economic input each year.

This bill did reduce the deficit by $23 billion, and that is something I support. However, it took a larger chunk out of rice than was asked for any other commodity. Rice took a 65% reduction when the other crops, on average, took a 30% reduction. And I know some of the peanut growers in Georgia have some of the same concerns we do.

So let me end by saying that I hope the position of our rice farmers and the important industry that rice represents can be strengthened in the House. If so, I will proudly put my name on this bill, because there is some very good that was done to protect our nutrition programs, to help our middle-class families who find themselves in the unusual situation of having to get some food relief in these difficult times. I want to thank Senator Stabenow particularly for her help in that way.

But for my rice growers, my rice producers, the important mills we have from Crowley, LA, to other places, for companies such as Kellogg in Battle Creek, MI, that depend on strong rice production from Louisiana, I cast a ``no'' vote.

Finally, I will say, I hope we can find a way to open some more markets for our rice growers. We are interested--very interested--in trade with Cuba. And the politics sometimes prevents us from opening more trade relations with a nation that I know has not met our standard of democracy but most certainly would be an open market for many of my farmers.

So for my farmers who are looking for markets where we can sell and compete on the world market, if you give us an opportunity to compete and open these markets, then we may be able to adjust our program. But until then, our farmers need the support of other farmers and did not receive it in this bill.

I so appreciate my colleague from Rhode Island giving me this opportunity to speak. I thank the chair.

Mr. President, if I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes to introduce a bill, not anything related to the farm bill, is that appropriate?

Mr. President, first let me say thank you to the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Kansas for conducting another very long session today on agriculture. They did an extraordinary job helping us move through this important bill. I thank them very much, and I know we are going to take that up tomorrow.

(The remarks of Ms. Landrieu pertaining to the introduction of S. 3321 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')