Floor Statements

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent it adjourn under the previous order.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I may be the last speaker of the day, but I did not want to leave the Chamber or the building without taking a moment to come to the floor, as so many of our colleagues did today, to honor one of our own, one of our favorites. Not only is she a favorite to us but I am certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is one of the favorite Senators ever to represent the State of Maryland. She is respected, she is beloved, and she is admired by millions of her constituents from Maryland, but I can promise you that is true of constituents in Louisiana, potentially in your home State, Madam President, and throughout the world.

Last Saturday our friend and colleague Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland became the longest serving woman in the history of the Congress. I can only say that we have come a long way since the first woman was appointed, as I recall back in the 1920s. She was only allowed to serve 1 day and was not going to be given a paycheck but insisted that she be paid for her service. I think she might have been paid $1 for her service.

Of course, the record of that 1 day on the floor speaks for itself. We have come a long way since that day. But Barbara Mikulski was first elected to the House in 1976, and then to the Senate 10 years later. When she first entered this Chamber, there was only one other woman here, her friend and her good, strong, supportive colleague, Nancy Kassebaum, a Republican from Kansas. So a Democrat from Maryland and a Republican from Kansas, but the two of them were quite a team and Barbara Mikulski speaks fondly of her days with Senator Nancy Kassebaum. Today there are 17 of us and proudly we continue that tradition of respect and bipartisanship set in large measure by two of the women we greatly admire.

The late Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, who served from 1925 to 1960, had previously held the record for the longest serving woman in Congress. Breaking this record is only one of the many milestones Senator Mikulski has accomplished during her tenure in the Senate. But, as she would so quickly say, it is not how long you serve but how well you serve. It is not the length of your service, as she said to us so many times, but the quality of your service. We could not have a better role model--in terms of effectiveness, strength, tenacity, courage, boldness--than in our own Senator Barbara Mikulski.

She was the first female Democrat, the first in the history of our country, to serve in both Chambers of Congress, the first female Democrat to be elected to the Senate without succeeding a husband or a father, and the first female to chair an Appropriations Committee.

I serve on the Appropriations Committee. It is one of the most powerful committees in our Congress. When I think about the fact that it took over 225 years for a woman to get the gavel on just one of the 14 subcommittees--that number has changed over the decades--but if you think about it, from the beginning of our country's history, those early days through the expansion out West, through the Civil War, post- Civil War history, the early part of the 1900s, World War I, World War II--never did a woman hold a gavel to write one budget for one committee in the entire country, until Barbara Mikulski received one of those gavels.

I can tell you from personal experience serving with her on that committee, our country is a better place--in health, in welfare, our space program, our science and technology programs--because Barbara Mikulski has used that gavel not to promote herself but to promote the people she serves and the principles for which she fights.

She is well respected for her wisdom, for her tenacity and her strength. She is respected by female and male peers who serve with her. As most of my female colleagues in the Senate have also experienced, Senator Mikulski took me under her wing when I was first sworn in as a Senator. She extended her hand to help me in every way possible, to help me find my footing here as a Senator and to navigate through the intricacies of the Senate process. She was never too busy to hold out a helping hand or for a pat on the shoulder. She was always willing to give that extra advice and, I might say, was always willing to suggest that you might have made a mistake--try it a little different way the next time--not one to mince words, but as a good Big Sister would take us under her wing and help us out as any good Big Sister would do.

In addition to that wonderful, helpful, and thoughtful gesture that she shared with me and so many, she has been an inspiration to many women, particularly young women who have looked up to her, trying to follow in her footsteps.

I can only say that this Senate and this Congress--the people of Maryland, the people of our country and women throughout the world-- have been blessed by her leadership.

What has touched me the most about watching her is the fearlessness in which she serves. She does not back down. She knows herself, she is comfortable in her own skin, and she doesn't try to be someone she is not. She is very proud of her Polish-American background, always proud to talk about the bakery her parents owned, her immigrant background, and always so willing to share from her heart as well as her mind some of what she believes.

She has been nothing but an inspiration to me and to many. I am so glad I could come to the floor today, I am so glad. I think almost every one of our colleagues has made it to the floor to honor her. When God made Barbara Mikulski, he threw away the mold. I don't think there will ever be one like her. There most certainly isn't anyone in politics today who is like her. That is good, to be unique in that way. She will be long remembered. I hope she will serve here for many wonderful years to come.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, let me begin by thanking Senator Harkin for his excellent statement and, as usual, his very good judgment on an issue that the Senate is going to be voting on at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. today as opposed to 20 minutes from now, because this issue needs more debate, and the Senator from Iowa raised some very important questions that need to be answered. I want to start by thanking the Senator for raising the issues that are so important for us as we consider this House bill that was--in your words, and I will add--rushed over to the Senate.

I spoke to Barney Frank yesterday, a very respected Democratic Member, and he assured me we were actually doing the right thing by slowing this down.

Through the Chair, I thank the Senator from Iowa.

I also recognize the Senator from Oregon, who is on the floor, who has had such an impact on helping us to focus on the details of this bill that was rammed through the House and was on a fast track to get approved over here. As I have said many times, I am not opposed to the underlying concepts of this bill, which will broaden the opportunity for average people to have some excellent opportunities for investments to help them increase wealth. We on our side of the aisle are not opposed to increasing wealth. We want to make sure that basic investor protections are in the bill, and they are absent from the House bill.

We are not talking about mom-and-pop operations when you are talking about companies with revenues of $1 billion. The Senator from Iowa is well aware, as is the Senator from Oregon, of mom-and-pop operations. We have them in our States. We have mom-and-pop farmers, office supply companies, shoe repair companies, even substantial businesses. There are families who own three and four and five restaurants. We are very familiar with that. But under no circumstance would those companies meet the $1 billion in sales, so we are not talking about small business. That is why, as the Chair of Small Business, I am here to say there is nothing small about this bill. This is about big business getting out from underneath regulations that we spent decades trying to put into place for good reason.

Did we not just have a financial meltdown on Wall Street? Did I miss a chapter in this saga? Didn't we just pull ourselves up from the brink of international financial collapse started not by Korea, not by Japan, not by

China, but by the United States of America with our inability to properly regulate our financial system? Didn't we just almost bring the world economy to a halt? Did I miss this? So this little innocuous bill flies over here from the House with a fancy name talking about jobs, and because we are all desperate to create more jobs--we understand our people need more jobs. We understand that government has a role in creating jobs, of course, with the private sector. We know that the policies we drive here, whether it is tax policy or regulatory policy or whether we say this is legal and this isn't, have a real impact on job creation. We look at the title of the bill, it says jobs, and we cannot wait to vote for it. But if we are not careful and we pass the House bill on this subject without an amendment, it will not create jobs, it will kill jobs.

As the Chair of the Small Business Committee, I have to say I don't think any Member has stood on this floor longer or spoken more directly to the issue of getting capital into the hands of business than I have. So I hope I have developed, on both sides of the aisle, some credibility to say: Yes, we want to open capital opportunities to business, but we must have investor protections. If not, we will set ourselves backward several decades as opposed to forward, and that is not what we want to do.

I rise to urge Members to consider voting for the substitute that Senator Reed, the ranking member on banking, Senator Levin, the chairman of the investigative committee who has done extraordinary work rooting out fraud and corruption, a long-serving, well-respected member of this caucus--obviously the senior Senator from Michigan is more concerned about jobs than any of us. He has lost more jobs--well, probably per capita except potentially for the State of California. So why would he be joining us in opposing a jobs bill? Because he knows what I know, what Senator Reed knows, what Senator Merkley knows, what Senator Harkin knows--and those who have taken the time to review the bill--that on its surface it looks good, but even the Chair of the SEC has cautioned us not to vote for the bill as it stands, and also says it can be fixed. It can be amended, but we need to oppose cloture so we don't end the debate but we begin the debate and then get to a position which the leadership can most certainly get us to where appropriate amendments could be offered.

I am saying: Please don't let the word ``jobs'' in the House bill-- which sounds so enticing--fool you. In reality this is less about job creation than it is about rolling back key protections for investors. Unfortunately, I have to say that I think there is a little election year politics at play from both the White House's perspective and the Republican caucus that saw this as a good way to position themselves for the election.

Look, I have been guilty of doing that myself. Nobody is perfect around here, but there is a time when you do something like that that it is called to your attention and you say: I am sorry, I shouldn't have done it, and this is the right way to go. And that is what we need to do now.

As Sir Francis Bacon said over 400 years ago: Knowledge is power. The more knowledge we have about this bill will give us the power to advocate against it.

I am here again to tell my colleagues the more you will learn about this runaway freight train, the more red flags are being waved. Red flags are waving because of the unintended consequences of the House bill for investors, small businesses, and our economy in general. That is why Senator Jack Reed, Senator Carl Levin, Senator Merkley, and others have been down here now for days encouraging Senators to review the bill, go back and talk with your staff. Please allow us some time to make some serious changes.

Now, even if my colleagues can't believe me on these issues, I most certainly hope my colleagues can believe the Bloomberg report. The Bloomberg report comments that have been made--Bloomberg is a very widely read, very reputable wire service and newspaper now, and, of course, they have other interests as well that comment daily on the financial markets of the world. It is one of the most respected sources. They have basically editorialized against the House bill.

Why would they do that? Let me read my colleagues what the Bloomberg editorial said a few days ago. They said:

[T]he JOBS Act simply goes too far. It would gut many of

the investor protections established just a decade ago in

Sarbanes-Oxley. A wave of accounting scandals--think Enron

and WorldCom--have destroyed the nest eggs of millions of

Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall Street. The

relief would extend beyond small businesses and apply to more

than 90 percent of companies that go public.

At a time when we are trying to build investor confidence, to build our economy, and to create jobs, we are about ready to exempt 90 percent of the companies that are going public from full disclosure? I am the sponsor of the amendment that tried to exempt small companies from these regulations--companies of $50 million or $100 million in sales. That would cover every mom and pop known to man. But the House bill exempts companies up to $1 billion in revenues from full public disclosure. Is this what we want to do at a time when we are just regaining investor confidence? I don't think so.

Bloomberg says to put on the brakes:

At the center of the package is a new class of emerging

growth companies, defined as those with as much as $1 billion

in annual revenue, which would be exempt from a host of

disclosure, reporting and governance rules. These companies

would be able to operate up to 5 years without an independent

test of their internal controls--the checks and balances that

help companies prevent outright fraud and costly accounting

mistakes.

It goes on to say:

Emerging companies would also be able to promote public

offerings with less-than-complete information by ``testing

the waters'' with fancy PowerPoint slides and other pre-IPO

materials. Executives wouldn't be held accountable for any

misrepresentations.

I say to my colleagues, what are we thinking? We are not. We have to put on our thinking caps. Let's amend this House bill.

The bill from the House did not even go through our Banking Committee. Had the bill gone through the Banking Committee, had it been under the watchful eye of some of our Democrats and Republicans on the Banking Committee, and had the bill come out of the Banking Committee with a Democratic and Republican vote--or even with the majority of Republicans and one or two or three Democrats--this Senator would not be standing here because this is not my jurisdiction. I am not on the Banking Committee. I am the chair of the Small Business Committee. I would honor the work of the Banking Committee, and I would have simply said I don't necessarily agree with the bill; I will just vote no. But the bill didn't even go through the Banking Committee. It just flew right here to the Senate floor because somebody wants a bumper sticker for their next campaign.

AARP doesn't think the bumper sticker is a good one because they have come out against it because many of the people who got their bank accounts down to zero were the elderly, the people who can least afford this kind of scam and fraud on Wall Street, let alone on Main Street. They are the ones who saw their 401(k)s go down from $300,000, which took them their whole lives to save, to $50,000. How do we think they feel? That is why AARP has come out against the House bill.

I am sure there are some people saying this is just Democrats wanting to regulate everything and not allow capitalism to thrive. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have spent my whole time trying to create jobs and opportunity for small businesses in America that represent 27 million businesses, and 20 million of them are independent operators and 7 million are classified as small businesses below 500 employees. I know them pretty well. I have worked with them very closely. Many of them are Main Street alliances against this bill, small business alliances, and the chamber of commerce has even expressed some concern about the House bill.

We are creating jobs. This is what the President inherited: a freefall of job loss in this Nation. This is what he inherited when he became President in the early part of 2009. He was elected in 2008, but he didn't take office until January 2009. He walked to the captain's chair and sat down after the ship had hit the iceberg, not before. He has

battled with us mightily to move these numbers to where we can see jobs being created. The last thing we need to do is to stop this, and the House bill, without investor protections, absolutely has the possibility of doing just that.

Time and time again, I have stood right here on the Senate floor fighting with my colleagues to increase access to capital for America's job creators. I support adding capital and directing it or helping it to be directed to better places, to make the process more democratic.

I understand the system has been basically set up for those who go to the high and mighty Ivy League schools, who join the same clubs, whose families socialize together for years and years. I understand the rules have been written for that group. I would like to write them for everyone, and I am attempting to do that. But we have to write and expand those rules with the right protections, and they are not present in the House bill.

I am a Democrat who used to love what President Clinton would say: Our job is to create more millionaires in America, not less. I am proud of the book ``The Millionaire Next Door,'' which says most millionaires in America aren't people who inherited their money but people who worked hard for it because of our system. I am proud of that. I have spent my life helping to build it. I am for people getting rich, for people making money. But we have to write these rules fairly or it is the poor people, it is the middle class, it is the people who didn't go to the Ivy League schools who don't have the right insider information who are going to be led down the Primrose path.

So let's be careful. Let's not support the House bill as it has come over here. We scrambled--and I mean the word ``scrambled''--last week to try to put a substitute together, and that substitute has my name on it. It has Senator Jack Reed first, my name second, Senator Levin third, and a group of others who have joined us.

Our substitute is not perfect either. I hope our substitute can get 60 votes and that we can amend a few things the SEC has brought to our attention since we were kind of on a tight timeframe to get something to the leadership. I would rather be more careful with the work I submit to the Senate, but we were under a tight timeframe, and even our bill has to be amended.

I am asking my colleagues, if they can't vote for our bill, which is the substitute bill, then please do not provide cloture to the House bill either. Let's take a few days. We are not asking for weeks. I am not even trying to kill the House bill. I am simply trying to amend it so it works for people who can't go to Harvard and can't go to Stanford and can't go to some of these Ivy League schools; that it works for people who are going to some community colleges and to schools in their States, middle-class families who want to participate in the great American dream and would like to invest in these new rules and regulations on the Internet, to invest in companies that have potential. But, please, let's give them, the investor, protections they deserve.

One more thing and I will turn it over to the Senator from Oregon. I wish to say this to the community bankers: You may have some others who support you on this floor, but I don't think you have anybody who does as strongly as I support community bankers. There is a provision in this bill that expands your shareholders from the cap of 500 shareholders that was put there in 1960. In our bill, the substitute, we move it up to 750 shareholders. I am willing to go back up to the House number of 2,000 because banks are regulated. They are overregulated community banks, in my view. So I am willing to extend that to 2,000 shareholders.

Barney Frank agrees with that. I have talked to Senate Democrats, and they agree with that. Please don't put your political might in supporting the House bill just because you have your number in there that you want because you will, in my view, undermine investor confidence in this new way we are trying to help people, called crowdfunding on the Internet. We will take care of your issue. I have it in my sights. I know it is important to you, and if you give us time we can try to fix that.

I thank the Senator from Oregon for joining me. He is truly an expert on this particular subject, and he can add some more detail to what I have tried to explain, and we will be happy to answer any questions our colleagues have about this underlying issue which is so important.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to wrap up my comments in about 5 minutes. I see the Senator from Delaware on the Senate floor. He may choose to speak.

I thank the Senator from Oregon for his comments. I think it is telling--very telling, actually--that this is a Tuesday afternoon at 12:10, and normally when there is a bill that is popular on the Senate floor, there are lots of people who come down to speak for it. I understand not one person yet has shown up this morning to speak for the House bill we are going to be voting on today.

I caution the Democrats to raise your awareness. That is highly unusual. Usually, if a bill is well thought through and is popular and can stand on its merit, there are any number of people on the floor speaking for it. The only people who have come to the floor are those of us warning you to read the bill, to reconsider your position, to not be lured by the title--JOBS bill, JOBS bill--but to read the bill and realize there are some far-reaching regulation elimination portions of this bill that are not going to be good for the small businesses described by the Senator from Oregon or the small businesses we advocate for, both Republicans and Democrats, on the Small Business Committee.

Just at a time when investor confidence is increasing, where jobs are being created in the country, why would we go to such a far-reaching bill?

Let me start with statements that have been made just in the last 24 hours. I have quoted from Bloomberg, AARP, the chamber of commerce from last week and over the weekend. Today is Tuesday. These are things that have come in just in the last 24 hours.

Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post from March 18:

What we also know from painful experience--from the

mortgage and credit bubble, from Enron, WorldCom and the tech

and telecom bubble, from the savings-and-loan

crisis and the junk bond scandal and generations of penny-

stock scandals--is that financial markets are incapable of

self-regulation. In fact, they are prone to just about every

type of market failure listed in the economics textbooks.

Regulation is necessary.

I am here to say we need to reduce regulations on community banks that are now heavily regulated by the new Sarbanes-Oxley, by their own State regulators. I am approving and supporting reducing regulations to bankers in this important legislation. That is not the issue.

The issue is what the Senator from Oregon spoke about: the new developing opportunities for the Internet to be used as a powerful tool to raise money for ideas, for businesses.

We can see this tremendous revolution occurring before our eyes. It does not mean that needs the same regulations as the old-fashioned financial models. But we do need some regulations. What we are saying is that the House bill goes too far.

Listen to what Floyd Norris of the New York Times said:

It gives some flavor of just how far the House bill goes

that one of the changes the three senators are pushing would

force a company trying to raise money from the public to show

investors an audited balance sheet.

One of our amendments is for investors to provide an audited balance sheet. In the House bill we are considering, they can provide their own documentation--not audited by anyone, made up. Then there are no consequences. There are no safeguards--or very few safeguards--in the House bill.

I have quoted Bloomberg now many times. Again, the terrific Bloomberg News editorial:

[T]he JOBS Act goes too far. It would gut many of the

investor protections established just a decade ago in the

2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law. A wave of accounting scandals--think

Enron and WorldCom--had destroyed the nest eggs of millions

of Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall Street.

The relief would extend beyond small businesses and apply to

more than 90 percent of companies that go public.

John P. Mello, Jr., wrote in PC World on March 18:

During the go-go days of the dot-com era, it was common for

analysts to promote IPOs being offered by their investment

bank masters, regardless of the worth of the offering.

The existing rules, which would be scrapped by the JOBS Act

now before the U.S. Senate, were designed to protect

investors from the conflicts of interest that damaged the IPO

market after the pop of the dot-com bubble, damage from which

it has only recently recovered.

Let's not jump back into the briar patch. We are just getting ourselves untangled from it. What is the rush? This bill from the House has not even gone through the Banking Committee. We have spent a decade arguing about Sarbanes-Oxley. We had multiple hearings. We had multiple debates on the floor. We had people come and testify, pro or con. Whether you are for it, it passed with lots of public debate. I know there are some people who still think those regulations are too onerous.

Yes, we are trying to relax them where we can. But a blanket exception for companies up to $1 billion in revenue, I think that is going a little too far, a little too fast. We have senior citizens to give some guidance and protection to. We have the middle class that is struggling from this recession. They depend on us to set the rules of the road.

This is not about Big Brother, Big Sister government. People have to make their own choices. But when people make choices on the Internet based on what looks like an official documentation, they assume someone either in their State capital or their National Capital has framed these rules and regulations in a way that gives them a fighting chance.

We do not want to legalize fraud, and that is about what the House bill does. It legalizes pathways to fraud. That is not what we want to do. How we get out of the mess we are in, I am not 100 percent sure. Because we have a substitute on the floor, which is the Reed-Landrieu substitute--I plan to vote for it. If we can get 60 votes, then we can get on debating that bill which is a substitute to the House bill. Perhaps the leadership will allow us to amend our own substitute, which we would be happy to do. I think we could come to some agreement within less than 2 days about what should be done in the Senate and then send the bill back over to the House for their consideration and then on to the President's desk, a bill we can all be proud of and confident we are trying to do the right thing with this new sort of frontier on Internet investing.

We want to support our entrepreneurs. We want to make this process more democratic. We want to get out of the secret boardrooms and the private conversations on Wall Street. So many more people could take advantage, appropriately, of exciting investments in the entrepreneurial spirit of America. Absolutely we want to do that, but that is not what the House bill does.

So let's take our time. I am urging my colleagues, if they can vote for the substitute and give us cloture on it, we promise we will be open to amendments from both sides. If we do not get cloture--I see the Senator from Delaware--if we do not get cloture, please vote for the Ex-Im Bank amendment, which is a proper amendment to the bill, and then vote no on cloture. We do not want to end this debate today.

Senators will be doing their constituents a great disservice to vote on cloture on that House bill today. We need to fix it. We need to amend it and we can. Then we will have a bill we can all be proud of and at least be confident we have established the right safeguards and that we can be helpful to getting capital to Main Street and increasing opportunities for entrepreneurship in America today.

I thank the Senator from Delaware. He has been so outspoken and comes with such knowledge on these issues. I appreciate his thoughtfulness. I hope he will agree to join me in voting against the House bill and for his support of a new crowdfunding proposal.

I yield the floor

Following up on the leadership of the good Senator from Rhode Island, let me say there are many reasons--many reasons--to vote against cloture on the House bill, and I will get to that in a minute. But I am urging my colleagues to vote yes on cloture for the Reed- Landrieu-Levin substitute.

We have tried to address the many concerns raised by the House bill in our substitute. If we vote yes on cloture for our substitute, we can then go into some more meaningful debate on the Senate floor, and this bill needs some additional debate.

Mary Schapiro from the SEC said, clearly, the House bill goes too far. The Chamber of Commerce even says there are concerns in the House bill. AARP is opposed to the House bill. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Mary Schapiro wrote last week:

H.R. 3606 would remove certain important measures put in

place to enforce separation between the research analysts and

investment bankers who work for the same firms. These careful

principles were put in after the scandals that ensued on Wall

Street.

This bill has flown out of the House. Even Barney Frank said what we are doing in the Senate, by slowing it down and amending it, is the right thing. So I urge my colleagues to give our substitute a chance. They can vote yes on Senator Cantwell's amendment, and vote no on cloture to the House bill so we can continue this important debate in the Senate.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I support the chairman of the Banking Committee and his call for us to come together this week to support the expansion of the Export-Import Bank. It is an extremely successful tool to use to help small, medium, and large businesses to be able to compete overseas and to give small businesses--particularly Main Street businesses--the help they need to succeed in overseas markets, which can be very daunting. I thank the chairman for his strong support and the way he worked in a bipartisan manner. I plan to vote for that amendment tomorrow.

The biggest vote we are going to take tomorrow is not on the Ex-Im Bank. That is something that I think there is generally broad support for, a general understanding, and a general level of comfort with, although there will be some who do not vote for the expansion of the bank because they philosophically are opposed to a muscular role of government. Those of us who believe that the private sector, the government, and nonprofits all need to have muscle working together on behalf of the people we seek to serve will most certainly not allow ideology to get in the way of voting for a good idea such as the Ex-Im Bank.

That is not our problem. Our problem is the IPO legislation. I call this the ``ill-advised political opportunity'' bill, the Jumpstart America bill, the JOBS bill. It has several names, but what it does is deregulate financial markets under the guise of job creation.

Over the weekend, there were literally dozens and dozens of editorials against the House bill that we are going to vote on tomorrow. I know we are not coming fully into session in the morning, as not all the Senators are back in Washington at this hour on Monday. But I know their staffs are watching the goings-on on the floor. I want to call everyone's attention to this IPO bill flying over here from the House of Representatives. It is not what you think it is. It is not what you have been told it is. It is flying under the guise of job creation. It is flying under the guise of democratizing the credit market. It is flying under the guise of we have to do something to get money into the hands of mom-and-pop operators.

I said this last week. I don't think anyone has spent as much time on the floor of the Senate arguing to get more credit into the hands of small business. I hope my credibility on that issue raises some questions, at least, if I am on the floor saying vote against the House bill; do not vote for cloture on the House bill. I hope Senators can support the substitute, which I have offered in good faith with Senators Levin and Reed, the second ranking member on the Banking Committee, and Senator Levin, who chairs the investigatory committee for the entire Senate, the committee that has looked into financial scandal after financial scandal. And I am chair of the Small Business Committee. We have come together, the three of us, to say: Wait a minute, slow down; this bill coming from the House, which had broad support, no doubt, is not what it looks like. It needs more work. It needs more investor protections. It is a major change in the way people can raise money, which is illegal now, for private companies on the Internet. If you want to start a company in America, you can ask your friends, your parents, your children, or your neighbors--you can do a small circle of investors. But once you sort of make that known publicly, in a public way, such as in a radio announcement, or on a billboard, or in a public way, such as on the Internet, there are rules and regulations you have to follow to make sure you are telling the truth. Those regulations, in large measure, have been taken out of the House bill, generally.

Let me share with you, besides this name ``ill-advised political opportunity''--and look, some good people voted for the House bill, people of good will, but I kind of think this bill got cobbled together because the majority on the House side can sort of put something in a Rules Committee and that is the way it will be and, thank you, if you have any opposition, the minority voice is quelled over there. That is the nature of the House. But the minority should not be silent over here, and our rules allow for a more full debate.

This is the time for the Senate to act as the Senate and slow this down, cool

it off, get the right safeguards, and maybe it can be an excellent opportunity for changes to our financial markets. But it has to go through the process. This bill didn't even go through the Banking Committee. It was going to go through the Banking Committee, and then the decision was made to step on the gas, let's go for it, before it went through a markup in the Banking Committee. A part of it came through our committee. We didn't even have a markup, but the two pieces from the SBA are not controversial, and we would be happy to mark up the bill if given a chance. We could do it later this week.

Let me share with you some of the headlines. The New York Times, which, if there was any newspaper in America that understands Wall Street, both its great strengths, its weaknesses--if there was any newspaper that understands the financial markets, the New York Times would be one of them. They said--and they are talking about the House bill--they said the JOBS Act is ``Paving a Path to Fraud on Wall Street.''

We don't need to go back. We are just leaving the path to fraud. We are moving away from fraud. Now what are we going to do? Turn and go back to it?

The Washington Post said: ``Wall Street Credo: Ripping Out Their Eyeballs.''

The PC World: `` `JOBS Act Would Revive Dot-com Abuses,' official claims.''

Investment News: ``Job Act Merits Greater Scrutiny.''

Most shocking to me was the Bloomberg News: ``Small Biz JOBS Act Is a Bipartisan Bridge Too Far: View.''

They wrote an excellent piece on this, which I will read some of into the Record. Senator Jack Reed spoke about this. I am saying, Members, whatever you have been told about this bill, please read the details and please read some of the very credible articles that are being written about the House bill.

There are good parts to it. I am a general supporter of crowdfunding, which is what I described--to make it legal for the first time in history for people to go on the Internet and raise money for private entities. I think the idea is a very good one. With the right safeguards in place, it could be a boon to small businesses and growing businesses that sometimes are shut out of those very fancy boardrooms where decisions are made behind closed doors and in very secretive meetings. I have been an advocate my whole life for opening this, so that ordinary people, middle-class people, can get involved in creating wealth through investing, instead of it being a small club of those who may go to the same school or go to the same social events and have the same social network. We want to move beyond that. America is a great experiment on how to create a middle class and give ordinary people the opportunity to create great wealth. We do that very well.

America has also been a place where we almost took down the whole world financial community with us. That is how big we are, how strong we are, and how careful we must be. We are not being careful; we are being too political with the House bill. We are not being careful.

What does Bloomberg say? They say this:

A spirit of bipartisanship is sweeping Capitol Hill, with

lawmakers poised to approve a package of bills aimed at

reducing regulatory burdens on small businesses. We wish we

could raise a glass. This moment has been too long in coming.

But the legislation it has spawned would be dangerous for

investors and could harm already fragile financial markets.

This is Bloomberg. Please listen. Bloomberg is not right on everything--no one is, no publication is, no Senator is; but this is Bloomberg, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and this is the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission saying the bill is good but it lacks investor protections that are essential for its proper implementation.

They go on to say:

We agree that redtape can needlessly tie up small

companies. We also agree that security laws that bar start-

ups from harnessing the power of the Internet to raise funds

could use updating. And it makes sense to allow, as the bill

does, an initial public offering onramp, which could give

start-ups a chance to grow. But the JOBS Act goes too far. It

would gut many of the investor protections established just a

decade ago in Sarbanes-Oxley. A wave of accounting scandals

had upended Enron and WorldCom and destroyed nest eggs of

millions of Americans and upended investor confidence in Wall

Street.

We have to be careful. That is why the AARP sent out a strongly worded letter. This is one of the most powerful organizations in the country. Some of their members--the ones who were so grossly hurt by the greed of Wall Street and the insatiable appetite of some of these large investment banks to make more money, because people need to make more than $5 million a month. I don't know how you spend $5 million in a month, but some people think they are entitled to make $60 million or $240 million a year. It is beyond comprehension. It wasn't enough for them. They had to make more and more and more.

Millions of people whom I represent, and some in New York and in Florida, lost their life savings. Are we going to go back to those days, just because we want a bumper sticker that says we are about creating jobs here? We are creating jobs now in America. Maybe it is not fast enough for everyone, but every month the reports come out. Let's not rush and do something that will set us back.

This is what AARP said:

We are writing to reiterate our opposition to the lack of

investment protections in H.R. 3606.

If you vote for cloture on H.R. 3606 tomorrow, I hope when you go back home, the members of AARP--the largest and one of the most politically powerful groups in the country--will ask you why did you vote on that bill? Please don't tell me it is about creating jobs. It is really about pulling the rug out from under investor protections, of which many older Americans who have a lifetime of savings in investments are disproportionately represented among victims of investment fraud.

They go on to say:

We share the concerns raised by SEC Chair Mary Schapiro,

the North American Securities administrator, law professors,

investor advocates, and others that absent safeguards

ensuring proper oversight, the various provisions in H.R.

3606 may well open the floodgates to repeat the kind of penny

stock and other frauds that ensnared financially

unsophisticated and other vulnerable investors in the past.

AARP urges the Senate to take a more balanced approach.

Mr. President, that is what we are trying to do, to take a balanced approach. I am not trying to kill the crowdfunding idea. I am not trying to kill the IPO onramp idea, which is to help fast-growing gazelles, they call them, to grow a little before they have to bear the burden of some of those regulations, which, while important, can be burdensome. I understand that. My committee has been working for months coming up with some very interesting ideas about how to get capital into the hands of small businesses. It is not something that I am unaware of, but the House bill is not the way to go.

Even President Obama sent a statement. The White House sent a statement that I will get in just a minute because I think it is important to see the nuances. Yes, it is true the President supported the House bill. It is true some very good Democrats who are very good watchdogs on this issue voted for the bill. But let me read the last sentence of the President's latest Statement of Administration Policy because the nuance is important.

The administration did say it supports the House passage of the bill--meaning H.R. 3606--but the last sentence says:

The administration looks forward to continuing to work with

the House and the Senate to craft legislation that

facilitates capital formation and job growth for small

business and provides appropriate investor protections.

The nuance is very important. The White House is signaling that while they do support H.R. 3606, they would also welcome additional work to put investor protections into the law. I think that is good. I know this President, this administration has worked hard to clean up Wall Street. They have kept the automobile industry from the brink of financial collapse and have brought it back. That has restored confidence in Wall Street, under great controversy and great criticism. I know it is one of the proudest achievements of this administration. So under no circumstance would we want to go backward, not at this crucial point. That is why I am afraid, if

we don't fix this bill, that is exactly what will happen.

I wish I could have this in a larger format because I don't know if the camera can see this, but this reflects the loss of jobs under the former administration and the loss of jobs when President Obama took office. Now we can see this almost reversing itself, with jobs being created in almost every month and every quarter. More than 3.9 million private sector jobs have been created in the past 24 months. And, yes, we need to do more, but the House bill goes too far.

But don't just take my word for it; listen to the Bloomberg editorial, the Boston Globe op-ed against the House bill, the Investment News editorials--``JOBS Act Merits Greater Scrutiny'' from the Business Journal. Now, this is blog 3, but these are pretty reputable blogs. We just don't bring any blogs to the floor of the Senate. These are reputable bloggers that have received some kind of following--``Why the JOBS Act Should Be In Trouble.'' New York Times column: ``Paving Path to Fraud on Wall Street. JOBS Act to Rewrite the Rules of Silicon Valley Investing.''

This is very interesting because my staff tells me the ``bio community'' and the ``high-tech community'' are for this bill. I get that. But this is what I don't understand, and I am quoting from one of the blogs by Rafi Needleman, and he is writing as if he is in Silicon Valley, and he is:

There is a lot of smart money looking for new places to

land, and these funding sources cannot only write sizable

checks, they can offer start-ups or other material benefits--

connections, tactical and strategic advice, and partnerships

with other start-ups in their portfolio.

So the question he is asking is, Why, basically, is it necessary to move outside of these traditional sources when there is plenty of money? They are just looking for some good ideas. Throwing more money through an unregulated financial scheme is not going to create any new ideas. It is just going to create a lot of money that could be taken advantage of by very sophisticated people who understand how to take good ideas and twist them into greed and fraud, if we don't have the right protections.

So there is a lot of capital out there. It is just not necessarily in the right place. There is some opportunity for us to do some things. But the last thing the Senate would want to do is debate this bill on the floor of the Senate. This needs committee work. This bill needs to go to a markup where it can be, in a few days, debated, negotiated, and there can be amendments back and forth and we can fix some of the problems. The last thing we need to be doing is flying a bill of this nature right through the Senate.

As I said, there has not been a jobs bill where I haven't kind of rushed to the floor. It may not have been perfect, but I have said: Look, we have to create jobs. Let's try it. Let's do it. And we have tried some new things. But when I saw this bill from the House was coming directly to the floor without going through the Banking Committee, that made me nervous. It made my political instincts stand up and say: Wait, wait, why are we rushing? The more I learned and the more I read, it became apparent to me this bill from the House is not ready for prime time. It is not ready to go to the President's desk for signature.

So here we have Senator Reed, the ranking member on the Banking Committee, and Senator Levin of Michigan, who has been a voice of reason and wisdom on financial deregulation and fraud and the scams that have occurred not just on Wall Street but offshore in secret island accounts where people have ripped off our citizens and then run for the hills and we can't find them or run to the islands. Who knows about these things? And he said: Wait a minute. What is going on here? So that is why we are here.

I know the Senator from Michigan is here to speak, so let me wrap up by saying we have offered, in the spirit of trying to improve the House bill, a substitute. I am going to vote for the substitute. It is the Reed-Landrieu-Levin substitute. I hope our Members and some Republicans--I hope many Republicans; but if we could get a few, that would be good--will vote for our substitute. If we get cloture on that then we will go to a 30-hour debate on our substitute.

I want that bill to be open to amendment. I am not trying to ram anything through. We should be open to amendments--maybe 10 on the Republican side, 10 on our side or whatever the leadership can agree to so that we can address some of the problems even in our own bill. We had to rush so quickly to get in a substitute, there are one or two things we would like to correct in our bill that have been brought to our attention.

In conclusion, if you can't vote for our substitute, please vote no on cloture on the House bill--on the ill-advised political opportunity bill, or whatever they call it, the IPO bill, the JOBS Act bill, the onramp bill. They have a dozen names for it, but what it does is just what the New York Times said: It is a pathway to fraud.

We don't want to go back there. It is just what Bloomberg said. It is bipartisanship that we cannot raise a glass to. They said: We wish we could toast it, but we cannot raise a glass. It goes too far.

So we have an opportunity to do something good for our markets, and our Presiding Officer, Senator Blumenthal, who is from the State of Connecticut, which has a tremendous amount of financial sophistication--he is well aware, as a former prosecutor, how important some of these issues are. So it is important to get this right.

The bill, again, has come over from the House, rushed over here, and has not gone through our Banking Committee. I will be happy to negotiate with anyone on this floor. I am not wedded to any specific or particular position on the small business pieces. They can be in there--I think they are good--or we can take them out, and it can just be a banking bill, although we have a lot of support for the increase in the SBICs and the 504 lending, which is very important to the small business community.

But I feel so strongly about getting the deregulation part of this correct, I would take that out if it would help my Republican colleagues to negotiate on the other part of the bill.

So I see Senator Levin on the Senate floor. I will turn it over to him now. But, please, I am pleading with my colleagues to take a look at this House bill. Just read some of the details. Read some of the comments of some great financial columnists, both on the left and right, who have written us against the House bill and urged further consideration.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank Senator Reed and Senator Levin who have helped to lead this effort to make a bill that is coming over from the House much better and much safer for investors, as well as to generate opportunities for more capital to flow to some of the good and solid ideas that are out there in our marketplace to create jobs.

I am pleased to join these two Senators and about a dozen to date and potentially dozens more of our colleagues as people learn the differences--and they are substantial--between the House version of what they call an IPO bill and the Senate version we have worked on very diligently and carefully over the last 48 hours.

The three of us are prepared to vote against the House bill as it stands now. The only hope of getting our support, and many others here, is to try to amend the House bill. That is what our efforts are.

We are not trying to say no to everything that is in the House bill because there are some excellent ideas. Even the President himself and the White House and some of the Democrats voted for that bill because there are some good ideas in the bill, and some ideas that have come from some of the brightest entrepreneurs in our country. We are not trying to say no to those ideas. We are trying to say yes to those ideas, but do it in a way that protects investors--older investors, younger investors, sophisticated investors, and your average sort of nonsophisticated investors because the Internet has opened a whole new opportunity.

When these security laws were written 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago and amended, the Internet wasn't what it is today. So that is why this crowdfunding bill--which is, in essence, a way for the Internet to be used to raise capital that is illegal generally today, and there are very specific rules about how people can raise capital for their businesses. Some of those regulations are too onerous; some of them are right on. But this whole idea of, oh, my goodness, now the Internet is here--look what opportunities could be. We can get our ideas to the marketplace without having to go through middlemen. We have a great idea, a wonderful patent. We want to be able to raise money. We are very excited about this. But there is a right way to do this and there is a wrong way to do this.

With the House bill, we know that we are on a little bit of rocky ground when they don't really have a name for it. They have called it everything from an IPO bill to a jobs bill to a capital expansion bill. What I am calling it today--and I will have a poster made over the weekend--is an ill-advised political opportunity bill. That is what IPO stands for, in my mind.

It is ill-advised because the safeguards that are required to make sure these new ideas happen the way they should are absent from their legislation. That is why, when I found out, surprisingly, that the Senate of the United States was getting ready to take that bill and just adopt it whole hog, I said: Absolutely not. We have to slow this down, try to amend it--not kill it but amend it. The reason is because there are very respected groups out there that started sending letter after letter after letter to the Senate urging us to do just that.

This isn't about a conservative-liberal fight. This is about the right regulations that are necessary before we take a good idea and mess it up. Crowdfunding is a good idea. It is an exciting idea. There are great entrepreneurs out there. The Internet could be a very powerful tool. But everyone knows if you enter into new territory without caution and care, you can fall off a cliff that you didn't even know was there. That is exactly what the House bill is going to do.

If you don't want to take my word for it, let's talk about what AARP says about it. This is the first letter. I am going to put a dozen letters into the Record in the next 10 minutes to try to get the attention of the people on the other side of the aisle. This is all an attempt to get their attention over the weekend, and I hope the press will write about these letters so when they come back on Monday they can say: Oh, my gosh. We have a good bill that came from the House, but there are some real flaws and we should fix it before we create another Wall Street debacle or before we see people ripped off again like we just went through in the last 6 years.

How short is our memory about investors getting stripped, going bankrupt because of exactly the same thing: just not being careful, not having the right rules in place, not having the right enforcements in place. This was like yesterday. That is why when the leadership said we were just going to take up the House bill, I said: Wait a minute. No, no, no.

This is what the AARP said, Joyce Rogers:

I am writing to reiterate our opposition to the lack of

investor protections in H.R. 3606--

Again, the House-passed, ill-advised political opportunity bill. That is what I am calling it. That is what it is--

that soon will be considered on the floor of the Senate

floor. AARP's primary concern is that this legislation

undermines vital investor protections and threatens market

integrity.

So AARP doesn't urge the Senate to kill the bill.

AARP urges the Senate to take a more balanced approach,

recognizing both an interest in facilitating access to

capital for new and small businesses and in preserving

essential regulations. . . . We believe the amendment to be

offered by Senators Reed, Landrieu and Levin, moves closer to

achieving this balance and deserves your support.

It goes on to say that sometimes the people who are taken advantage of are the elderly. So wake up, Senators from Florida. Wake up, Senators from Michigan. Wake up, Senators who have big senior populations. The AARP is against the House bill, the ill-advised political opportunity bill.

North American Securities Administrators Association--they sent a letter yesterday, from Jack Herstein. It is seven pages long. They go into great detail:

On behalf of the North American Securities Administrators

Association--

I don't think this is a liberal think tank. I think this is a very well respected, not a leftwing, regulate-everything-that-moves kind of group. I think that is correct. He says:

I am writing to express concerns regarding several

provisions, most notably our strong concern with the

extraordinary step of pre-empting state law for

``crowdfunding'', contained in [the ill-advised political

opportunity bill which was passed by the House.]

State securities regulators support efforts by Congress to

ensure that laws facilitating the raising of capital are

modern and efficient, and that Americans are encouraged to

raise money to invest in the economy. However, it is critical

that in doing so, Congress not discard basic investor

protections.

I am going to submit this letter, without objection, I hope, to the Record.

This is from the Council of Institutional Investors, ``a nonprofit, nonpartisan association of public, corporate and union pension plans.'' Let me repeat, not just union pension plans but public and corporate pension plans. They are writing with questions about the House ill- advised political opportunity bill, and it goes into great detail. I am putting this into the record hoping people will actually read the Congressional Record.

Another letter to Speaker Boehner and Nancy Pelosi. This was delivered to the House. It may be a little different from the one to the Senate, so I would like to put that into the Record. These are very important letters received just recently. That is why I am asking people to wake up, pay attention.

Securities and Exchange Commission, March 13. This is to Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member Shelby basically saying:

Last week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3606. .

. . As the Senate prepares to debate many of the capital

formation initiatives addressed by H.R. 3606, I want to share

with you some of my concerns on some important aspects of

this significant legislation.

That is by Mary Schapiro, Chairman, outlining a dozen of her concerns because, of course, she thinks there is going to be a debate. She would expect a debate on a bill of this nature and magnitude and diversion from the ordinary. But we were not going to have a debate. We were just going to be told to take the House bill or leave it until a few of us said: No, slow this train down. This is no way to run a railroad.

We are not trying to kill the bill. We are not trying to delay. We are trying to have at least a 2- or 3-day debate on an important piece of legislation that, if it is not done right, is going to absolutely ruin the best chance we have had in decades to actually get capital into the hands of businesses.

Everyone here should now know me well enough as chair of the Small Business Committee to know I have spent literally nights, days, and weekends on the floor of this Senate trying to figure out ways to get capital into the hands of small businesses. Why would I stand here and try to stop that? I have spent my whole time as the Senate chairman of the Small Business Committee trying to do that. But, again, there is a right way to do that and a wrong way.

If we take the wrong path and fall off of a cliff, we are going to ruin the chance we have with this new Internet tool, this very exciting opportunity, and we are going to ruin our chance to get this done.

Who is going to suffer? The same people who suffer all the time, the small businesses and the exciting opportunities and entrepreneurs who need our help.

Any bill that is a major bill can stand the scrutiny of time before the public, and amendment. If it cannot stand that scrutiny, then I suggest there is something terribly flawed with it. That is what we are trying to provide, scrutiny.

This letter comes from the AFL CIO, from Jeff Hauser, an e-mail:

America needs jobs. Yet Congress cannot enact such basic

legislation as the reauthorization of the surface

transportation bill--

Which we passed, but it has not been completed. He goes on to say:

Workers' retirement savings will be in greater risk of

fraud and speculation if securities market deregulation once

again is railroaded through Congress. Once again our economy

will be at risk from the folly of policy makers promoting

financial bubbles and ignoring the needs of the real economy.

The AFL CIO calls on Congress to set aside the politics of

the 1 percent, the old game of special favors for Wall

Street.

They are very strong in their language, probably a lot stronger than these other organizations. But I think they have reason to be. Many of their members were taken to the cleaners by scams on Wall Street. They have yet to recover. Their 401s have yet to recover. Even yesterday, or last week, in the paper I saw one of the big companies that failed. I think it was MF Global. Did you all see that in the newspaper? They failed. Of course, it was a terrible debacle. Lots of people lost money. But the CEO is walking away with a $7 million bonus.

People who work hard all day have a very hard time understanding how we in the Congress can allow the CEO to walk away with a bonus of $7 million when he bankrupted thousands of people. That is a good question. Are we going to do that again with this House bill? I hope not.

Let's put the AFL CIO on record saying slow down.

This is the next message I want to put in from the secretaries of state--and I want to read off who they are: the secretary from Missouri, Robin Carnahan; the secretary from Massachusetts, William Falvin; the secretary from New Hampshire, William Gardner; the secretary from Mississippi--I believe is a Republican--Delbert Hosemann; the secretary from North Carolina, secretary of state Elaine Marshall; the secretary from Nevada, Ross Miller; the secretary of state from Indiana, Charles White; and the secretary of state from Illinois, Jesse White.

Jesse White says the same thing: Beware of the House bill. It is flawed. It has some good ideas in it, but those flaws need to be corrected.

That is what the Reed-Landrieu-Levin et al amendment does. We are not trying to kill these wonderful, exciting ideas. We are trying to fix it so it is better. I hope our Members on the other side will join us in doing that, and I would like to submit this to the Record.

There are two more. Actually, I am sorry, four more--we have so many. The next one is from my office of financial institutions from Baton Rouge, my commissioner, banking commissioner, who wrote me. He is generally in favor of some of the things in the House bill. But he said:

I am writing to urge you to oppose the preemption of

Louisiana law to protect investors.

I would like to put that into the Record.

The American Sustainable Business Council. It is signed by David Levine. Again, I don't believe this is a left-leaning group. I think it is a pretty centrist organization. They urge us to take a hard look at the House bill.

Finally, Madam President, I want to have printed in the Record--this is when I got nervous: when I started receiving letters in my office from crowdfunders themselves against the House bill. The people who gave the idea to start up crowdfunding have now said the House bill is flawed. Here is what they say:

I write in favor of the bipartisan compromise CROWDFUNDING

Act proposed recently by Senators Merkley, S. Brown, Bennet

and Landrieu.

That is the crowdfunding act that is in this substitute.

Yesterday evening's introduction--

This was last week--

of the first bi-partisan Senate crowdfunding bill is a big

step forward in our fight to get equity crowdfunding passed

through Congress. I have been to Washington, DC 7 times since

mid-November, discussing [this legislation]. The offices of

the Senators on the Banking Committee have been very

receptive to input from the entrepreneurial community and

have adopted many of our suggestions.

But they go on to say:

This latest bill . . . is important because, unlike

previous bills, for the first time we have a Senate bill with

bipartisan sponsorship, a balance of state oversight and

federal uniformity, industry standard investor protections,

and workable funding caps. This bill has a legitimate chance

at quieting those who were previously trumping up fears of

fraud [and] bad actors. . . . To date the main issues the

opposition raised were regarding fraud and state oversight.

What they are saying is we are the ones who helped invent this concept. We don't think the House bill is where it should be. We are supporting the Merkley-Bennet approach, which is in this bill.

Launcht, we hear you, and we are trying to respond.

Finally, Motaavi--again, a crowdfunder advocate. People, very entrepreneurial, coming up with these ideas saying the same thing.

I ask unanimous consent to have those letters printed in the Record.

Again to recap so people can see on this chart, AARP has written us against the House bill. Consumer Federation of America-- against the House bill. The AFL CIO--against the House bill. Yes, those are some of the left leaning organizations.

But we also have centrist and right leaning organizations. I am talking about the former Securities and Exchange Commissioners' Chief Accountant, this is what they say

There are always paths to improvement for any complex

system, the American Stock Exchange included. But how quickly

these Congressmen seem to have forgotten why many such

regulations were enacted in the first place. Last month

marked the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Enron.

It has not been 10 years and we are going back to where we were when Enron took money out of the pockets of thousands of people in America. Why are we doing that

Regulations that prevent capital multiplying companies that

want to go public from doing so are bad. Ones that prevent

capital destroying ones from becoming public nuisances are

good. No job creation will be generated through the process

of socializing capital destruction to the general public.

But he is saying that the House bill goes too far.

Again, Eric Schureunberg, editor of Inc.com--they are a very well respected voice in the small business community in America today. They are saying the House bill is flawed.

I know we are going to be criticized on the other side by saying it is just the same old left wing groups that want more regulation and more regulation. But that is not true. That is why I am putting all of this in the record today so people can carefully consider it tomorrow, and over the weekend on Monday, before we come back here; to look and read what is being said about the House bill and to be open and honest in our efforts to try to reform it. Again, for the record, Mary Shapiro, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said: While I recognize that H.R. 3606--the ill-advised political opportunity bill, those are my words--is the product of a bipartisan effort designed to facilitate capital formation and include certain promising approaches, I believe there are provisions that should be added or modified to improve investor protections that are worthy of the Senate's consideration.

So that is what we have done. We took the bill from the House and looked at it very carefully and on Monday I am going to hand this out to everyone and we are sending it to everyone's offices now. It has kind of become a famous small business blue line that is very easy for everyone to understand. It shows the differences between the Senate bill and the House bill. As we can see, both bills raise the cap on regulation A offerings from $5 million to $50 million. We are happy to do that. We improve the transparency of regulation A by requiring an audited financial statement.

You don't need to have graduated from a master's program at Stanford or Harvard to understand that if you are getting ready to invest-- whether it is $1,000, $10,000 or $100,000--having an audited financial statement about the company you are getting ready to invest in would be a basic thing to do. I think we learned about this when we were in seventh or eighth grade. You don't have to go to Harvard to know this.

The audited financial statement requirement is absent from the House bill. There is no requirement in the House bill for an audited financial statement, so we put an audited financial statement in our bill. I don't think that is a radical amendment. It is a simple one; it is an important one. In the House version of this IPO on-ramp, they exempt companies up to $1 billion in annual revenue. Madam President, $1 billion is a lot of money, so everybody wake up. The House bill says if you are less than $1 billion, you basically don't have to adhere to most of the rules and regulations; you can just go on your merry way.

That sign is great--``ill-advised political opportunity.'' That is what I am calling the House bill. Let me check to see how many companies went public that were over $1 billion last year. Only 22 percent of companies that went public last year were over $1 billion. So if my math is correct, the House bill is going to eliminate 78 percent of the companies from regulation that raise money in the public. That is going too far. It is unnecessary. We bring that number down to $350 million in our bill, and the author of this provision in the Senate has signed on as a supporter, Chuck Schumer. The reason he did that is because he realizes--even as the sponsor of this on-ramp provision--that the House bill went too far. I am not going to go into all the rules and regulations, but it is not that complicated because-- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8--there are only about eight big differences, but they are important differences.

I am going to wrap up by saying: Please study the record. Please look at it. In our Senate bill, which the Chair has been very supportive of, as has Senator Cantwell, and I wish to thank both of them publicly, as well as Senator Klobuchar--we have the Export-Import Bank in our bill, which is not in the House bill. The Chamber of Commerce has written us asking us to please support the Export-Import Bank. We also expand the SBIC, which is the small business investment program, which the President included in his State of the Union Address to authorize that program to move from $3 billion to $4 billion. Why? Because we are having such success, through the SBIC programs that exist in all our States, getting money out to Main Street, to small businesses. So that is included in our bill--and one the Chair has particularly been a lead on, and that is at no cost to the taxpayer. These things do not cost any additional money. There is the SBA 504 refinancing that is going to allow to extend for 1 year the ability of the small business loan program that has thousands of outstanding loans to extend for another year the opportunity to refinance their commercial loans.

So we have added three provisions to the House bill that make it more balanced and better for small business, and we have put a couple oversight measures into their provisions that I think--in the words of many of even the advocates of this bill--``make the bill better.''

I don't know if we will be successful, but this is worth a try because the damage that could be done in venturing out so far into a new way of financing without the proper safeguards could set us back decades. We don't want to go backward; we want to go forward. We don't want to go back to the days of Enron and Bernie Madoff. Why would Republicans, in the face of these scandals, come up with--and some Democrats voted for it. I am not quite sure how that happened, but we are going to find out. Why would they want to go back to those days? We want to go forward with the right protections.

I see my friend Senator Levin on the floor. He most certainly understands this issue in many ways better than I do on the technical side of it. He has helped write this bill. I am hoping he will give an even better explanation than I have been able to give, but I think I have covered it pretty broadly, and he can go into a lot more detail about the possibility of fraud in here if it is not locked down.

I am going to end with a word to my community banks because I have tried to become a champion for them. I think they can appreciate it. I am not

100 percent sure. I believe in community banks. The Independent Community Bankers of America sent a letter supporting the House bill. I am going to call them over the weekend and talk with them specifically about my concerns and ask them to reconsider their position. I think our compromise is very good for our community bankers. I don't know whether they will. I know they want to get rid of some of the onerous requirements that were placed on them in the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and I appreciate it. I helped sponsor some of the amendments on their behalf.

But I think this House bill is going too far. I am going to reach out to them. We will see what their view is. I do respect the views of my community bankers. We are going to have a lot more to talk about next week.

Again, I thank Senator Levin and Senator Reed for joining with me and Senator Jack Reed for leading this effort to help put a bill before the Senate that is quite balanced and provides the investor protections and also opens some exciting opportunities for capital to create new businesses in America that are the backbone of our extraordinary--and not to be matched--entrepreneurship spirit in the world. We honor that, but we want to do it in the right way.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to take a minute to thank Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe and the staffs of both of those excellent Senators who have worked so hard on this bill that is so important to our country. From New York to California, from Alaska to Florida, this bill represents over $110 billion of investments in America. Whether we are talking about two-lane roads, farm-to-market roads, one-lane or two-lane roads, interstate, or rail that is running in our urban areas that are congested, time consuming, and frustrating for our drivers; whether it is for the trucking industry that depends on good, solid, strong highways; the petrochemical industry, the oil and gas industry, or our small businesses, it is important for America's infrastructure to be strengthened, and that is what we did today.

I know the Senate has been criticized over and over again about not being able to function. But today we saw, as our leader said, one of our most conservative Members and one of our most progressive Members bring a bill to this floor and get 74 votes. That is hard work, and that is the way the Senate should work.

I am so proud to have been a small part of this overall bill with Senator Whitehouse, Senator Shelby from Alabama, and many other Senators who joined us in an effort to put on a very important amendment to the gulf coast and to the country in this Transportation bill. That bill, which was adopted as an amendment to the Transportation bill, as you know, Mr. President, is known as the RESTORE Act.

The reason we call it the RESTORE Act is because that is exactly what it will do. It will restore America's energy coast--the gulf coast. We are proud of our energy infrastructure. We are also proud of our fishing industry and our ecotourism industry. We are also proud of our commercial fishing and recreational charter captains who take people from all over the world off the beautiful coast of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas with some of the best fishing in the world.

We have fisheries that are alive and vibrant, not overfished, with people in business and restaurants serving this food all over the country. We are so proud to have passed the RESTORE Act, which is going to take not taxpayer money, not money adding to the deficit, but monies from a fine that is going to be levied by the courts very soon--very soon. This fine will be levied against BP because of the single largest environmental disaster in the Nation's history.

BP, an operator of oil and gas wells not just in the gulf but all around the world, drills safely in many places. But, boy, they sure messed up this one. There were 11 men killed, others were injured, and hundreds of millions of gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. It was a horrible accident. It should not have happened.

No industry is perfect. No operation like this, whether it is going to space or going below sea, whether it is producing sophisticated equipment or is involved in the mining or extraction business has a complete guarantee of safety and perfection. But this was a terrible accident. We wish it never would have happened.

The courts are sorting out whether this company was simply negligent or grossly negligent. We can have our opinions, but it is not something we need to decide. What we did decide, though, is when the court set that penalty, that what is right for the States that were so injured-- with marshes inundated with oil, and pelicans, dolphins, and other wildlife and birds that live and breed and count on this environment to be there--is for that money to be redirected back to the gulf coast.

Because of the good work of our Presiding Officer and Senator Baucus--and I want to thank, particularly, Senator Bingaman--we were also able to add--not in the RESTORE Act, not taking money away from the gulf but in a side-by-side--some money to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Now, it is only for 2 years, but there is going to be more money in that fund than has been there for a while, which will also accommodate the environment nationally, and that provides a balance and a synergy.

The gulf coast wants to be fair. Our people have suffered. But we also know the country has been very generous to us through a series of very unfortunate events in the last 6 years: Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike, horrible hurricanes. But every part of the Nation has experienced disaster, whether it was the fires in California or the flooding in the Northeast or the hurricane last season that raked the Northeast. Last season, in fact, we will remember, was the season that had the largest number of disasters. There were 12 that cost over $1 billion. That has not happened before.

So lots of parts of the country have suffered. But the gulf coast has suffered in a special way, unfortunately, with a series of events, hurricanes, and oilspills. So we are grateful.

We tried to make this bill appropriate, leaving 20 percent of the general fund, which will secure doubling the amount of money in that liability trust fund. That is a benefit to the Nation. We put in some money for land and water. That will benefit the Nation, and there is some money to establish an oceans trust.

I ask for another 1 minute.

That will benefit the Nation. But the bulk of that penalty money will go to the gulf coast, and it will not be wasted, I promise. The bill has tight safeguards and guidelines about the way that money will be spent restoring our marshes, rebuilding our coastline; we have lost the size of the State of Rhode Island.

I wish to thank so much the groups. There were over 200 organizations, from Ducks Unlimited to the National Environmental Defense Fund, to Nature Conservancy, to many of the Chambers of Commerce, locally and nationally, that supported the RESTORE Act. Without their help, this never would have happened because we don't get a vote as we did on the Senate floor without a lot of help. We got I believe it was maybe 76 votes on the floor of the Senate. It is hard to get a resolution on mom and apple pie to get 76 votes today. So I am very humbled to say it was the work of many people. I was proud to lead this effort with Senator Shelby, my partner from Alabama.

But my final comment is, work needs to be done. That is my final point. The

amendment is in the Transportation bill. The Transportation bill has now left the building, left the Senate. It is now on its way over to the House. I hope the House will take this bill--and I know they have their own opinions about how things should be. But it is important to get this $110 billion of investments out for America. We need to keep this recovery going. People are looking for jobs, well-paying jobs. Small businesses get these contracts as well as large businesses for our rail, our water, our transportation.

I hope the RESTORE Act, because it is safely tucked in this bill, will generate some additional votes on the House side. I hope my colleagues from the gulf coast in the House, Republicans and Democrats, will say: Overall, it may not be the House's Transportation bill, but you know what. It is a good bill.

Twenty-two Republicans over here voted for this bill. As Senator Inhofe said, there is streamlining, there are new approaches, there are better approaches, less waste, less fraud, less abuse in this bill. So there are some good things they can vote on.

I thank, again, in conclusion, Senator Inhofe and Senator Boxer and particularly Senator Baucus for his help in helping us, at the very end, to put what we needed to get together to pass this RESTORE Act. I will continue to report to all how the courts are going to rule, how much this fine is going to be, and how that money is spent in the next couple years to help save a very important part of our Nation and a part of the Nation that contributes substantially to the GDP of our Nation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order to proceed to executive session at 2 p.m. be vitiated.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended until 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each and that the time be equally divided.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the president of France's senate be permitted to join us on the floor for a few minutes.

Madam President, let me begin by thanking the almost 15 Members of this body who have been working on this very important legislation for almost 2 years, since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. I particularly want to thank Senator Shelby, who has been the lead on the Republican side, for cosponsoring this important and significant environmental and economic recovery of the gulf coast. We could not have done it without Senator Vitter and Senator Sessions, who were on the authorizing committee where this bill came out with almost unanimous support. I think we didn't get two votes in the committee. Everyone else, Republican and Democrat, was supportive.

I particularly thank Senator Whitehouse, who led the effort on the Democratic side, as we have shaped, with his help, for the gulf coast, which is represented in this bill, a way to invest in our oceans by smartly using some of the interest earnings. Of course, we would not be here on the floor without the extraordinary leadership of Senator Boxer from California, whose coast gets virtually no benefit from the RESTORE Act as it was originally introduced, but she was willing to step up because she knows how important the gulf coast is to the United States.

Let me first remind people what this accident looked like. It has been 2 years, but we remember the horror that we saw on our televisions for months about the largest environmental accident in the history of our country--5 million barrels of oil spilled along the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and seeped onto the coast of Florida and caused economic damage in Texas. Let me tell you, 600 miles of the gulf coastline were oiled, and 86,000 square miles of waters were closed to fishing, causing a $2.5 billion loss to the fishing industry. We still have concerns about what that industry will look like.

The U.S. Travel Association estimated a $23 billion impact to tourism across the gulf coast. So although Texas did not technically get any oil, they had an impact along their coast with the tourism decline.

Every commission, independent commission--Secretary of the Navy Commission, the President's commission, the independent commissions have all advocated that the proper response of the Federal Government is not to take this penalty money and stuff it in the General Treasury but, rather, to take a significant portion--our bill says 80 percent-- and send it back to the gulf coast where our people have great needs, both economically and environmentally.

This is the time to act. Louisiana has lost 1,900 square miles since 1930. If we were the size of Rhode Island--we are not, we are bigger, but if we were, we would not have 50 States anymore; we would only have 49 because, as the Senator from California knows, we have already lost the size of Rhode Island. This is a national tragedy, not just for the 4.5 million people who live in our State.

But I would like to put into the record for the few minutes that I have that we contribute $3 trillion to the national economy every year. The Gulf Coast States represent 17 percent of the GDP. Nearly 50 percent of the oil and gas that we consume every day in States all over this country comes from the gulf coast.

We contribute $8 to $10 billion directly every year. All we are asking in the RESTORE Act--let's put that up here--is to fund, direct 80 percent of the penalty money that BP is going to pay--taxpayers are not paying this. This does not come out of any program. It does not come out of any education program, any other program. It is going to be paid for by BP. Let's do justice to the gulf coast, America's energy coast and, might I say, the coast that produces the most vibrant fisheries, the coast that supports, proudly, ecotourism, the coast that revels in clean beaches.

Please give us the resources we need to restore this great coast. Again, I thank Senator Baucus and Senator Bingaman, who have joined now with supporters of this because we have added a portion to the fund, just for 2 years, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, for the entire country. We will be sending money to the gulf coast, creating an oceans trust fund, and fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund for 2 years.

I think it is a balanced bill; it is a fair bill. Again, to the chairman of the committee, Senator Boxer, I cannot tell the Senator how much we appreciate her extraordinary leadership.

Madam President, this money will be shared with all the States. It is appropriate new money paid by BP--not taxpayer money--to the Gulf.

Let me thank Senators Boxer, Whitehouse, and Baucus for their extraordinary help on our side and thank Senator Shelby.

I don't know if Senator Vitter wants to say a word.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 1817

Mr. President, it is with great sadness that I mourn the loss of one of our brave Coast Guard airmen who gave his life in the line of duty when a Coast Guard MH 65C helicopter crashed during a training flight in the vicinity of Mobile Bay, AL, on Tuesday evening with four crewmembers aboard. Three other crewmembers remain missing, and the Coast Guard is continuing to search for them in cooperation with State and local authorities from Alabama and Florida.

The cause of the incident is still under investigation, but it serves as a tragic reminder of the heroic sacrifices that the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard make on a regular basis to protect the people of this country from terrorist threats, natural disasters, environmental hazards, and criminal activity. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the airmen onboard the Coast Guard helo that went down Tuesday night, and I would like to take this opportunity to honor their service, and the exploits of many Coastguardsmen before them, who demonstrated extreme valor in the face of danger and epitomized the virtues of bravery and sacrifice in service of their country.

Scores of grateful Americans will gather this evening at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans to honor 14 extraordinary Coast Guard heroes, and their family members will be in attendance to commemorate their legacy. Tomorrow morning, Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, LA, will dedicate its fleet of fast response cutters and deliver the very first in class to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Bernard C. Webber. This will be the first class of ships in the history of the U.S. military that bears the names of enlisted personnel, as opposed to U.S. Presidents and flag officers. I would like to take a few minutes to share some of their stories.

PO Bernie Webber led a crew of four volunteers from Chatham Station in Massachusetts in February 1952 to respond to the tanker Pendleton, which was in distress. They braved 60-foot seas, hurricane-force winds, and blizzard conditions on a cold and rainy night off the coast of New England. Wind and waves smashed their windshield and compass along the way, but they managed to save the lives of 33 men in what many historians consider the most difficult small boat rescue in Coast Guard history. To this day, cadets at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT, have never been able to fit so many men into a boat the size that Webber commanded.

William Ray Flores was 19 years old and less than 1 year out of boot camp when he gave his life to save his fellow shipmates. On January 28, 1980, the 180-foot Coast Guard buoy tender Blackthorn collided with a 605-foot oil tanker near the entrance to Tampa Bay. The Coast Guard vessel quickly began to capsize after impact, and crewmembers leapt from the deck to escape the sinking ship. Flores, however, decided to strap himself to the lifejacket locker door so he could float lifejackets up to the surface as the ship went down. Twenty-two of Flores's shipmates tragically perished that day, but 27 others survived thanks to his heroic sacrifice. SA Billy Flores was posthumously awarded the Coast Guard Medal for his actions that day, the service's highest award for heroism during peacetime.

Margaret Norvell served for 41 years in the U.S. Lighthouse Service, beginning her career watching over the southern entrance to the Mississippi River at the Head of Passes and later taking over as keeper of the Port Pontchartrain Light and West End Light on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. In 1903, a storm destroyed every building in her small Louisiana community of Buras except Norvell's lighthouse. She immediately responded by taking in the entire community and providing shelter and comfort to more than 200 of her fellow citizens who had been rendered homeless. Later in her career in the year 1926, Norvell received a report that a naval airplane had crashed into Lake Pontchartrain. She immediately set out in her small rowboat and battled a merciless squall for 2 hours before she finally arrived at the scene of the crash, rescued the downed aviator, and brought him safely back to shore.

Stewards-Mate First Class Charles Walter David was a cook aboard the Coast Guard cutter Comanche when the Army transport ship Dorchester was attacked by a German U-Boat off the coast of Greenland on the night of February 3, 1942. David dove into the frigid seas of the North Atlantic and helped to save the lives of 93 soldiers and many of his own crew including the ship's executive officer, who had accidentally fallen overboard. David did not return to his ship until every last soul had been rescued from the water. He contracted pneumonia several days later and died as a result of his efforts that night, for which he was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for bravery.

Others, such as Isaac Mayo and Joseph Napier, returned to shore multiple times to reembark on new boats after previous attempts caused them to capsize and several of their fellow crewmen to perish in the punishing waves. Both men eventually completed their rescue missions successfully.

These are just a handful of the 58 Coast Guardians who will serve as namesakes for the service's newest class of patrol boats, and their extraordinary acts of valor will continue to inspire future generations of heroes for centuries to come. We salute these brave Americans who risked and gave their lives to save others. We commend the Coast Guard for honoring their memory through the dedication of the fast response cutter fleet, and we thank the dedicated Cajun shipbuilders of Bollinger Shipyards in south Louisiana for providing the Coast Guard with the fastest, most durable patrol boats available to carry out its military, law enforcement, and maritime safety missions.

Our Nation will continue to pray for the airmen onboard the Coast Guard helicopter that went down in Mobile Bay earlier this week, as well as their loved ones. We owe them all a debt of extreme gratitude for their service to this country.

Mr. President, that was a beautiful tribute by my colleague.

I come to the floor to just speak for a few minutes while we are trying to figure a way forward on a very important piece of legislation having to do with the transportation infrastructure for our Nation. I know it is a bill that Senator Boxer, as the chair of the EPW Committee, has worked on tirelessly for years along with Senator Inhofe. It is a very important piece of legislation authorizing billions of dollars of programs and projects. I really want to say that I appreciate her leadership so much.

I was so hoping the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership could come together so sometime in the next few days we could have some votes relative to this important legislation and move forward because I know for the people I represent in Louisiana, this is one of our most important infrastructure bills.

I am sure, Mr. President, you have many people in Pennsylvania talking with you about the importance of getting these road projects authorized. At a time when people are looking for jobs and looking for work, this would be one of the bills we would like to pass. Let's all be patient but not too patient, to get this through because it is very important.

While we are waiting for that, I thought I would come to the floor on this very special day, Valentines Day, to talk about a very special kind of love that happens between children and parents. Mr. President, you know because you have been a wonderful leader, along with many others here on the Senate floor, for the idea that every child deserves a protective family and that children do not do a very good job of raising themselves. Governments do not do a good job of raising children. Children need to be raised in a family. Children should be with their siblings whenever possible, raised in the protective arms and under the watchful eye of parents--at least one responsible adult.

Mr. President, you know how heartbreaking it is on every day, but particularly a day like today when we are sending cards to our loved ones. I know the first call I made this morning was

to my husband and to my children to wish them a Happy Valentines-- people are doing that all over the world today. In fact, I was given some very interesting information.

I had no idea that 180 million Valentine cards were purchased today-- that is pretty amazing--200 million roses were sold today, and 36 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate will be eaten today. I have not gotten my box of chocolate; I don't know if you have. I am still looking for mine.

But the sad thing is, there are millions of children who are not going to receive a phone call today. They are not going to receive a card. They will not receive a box of chocolates, and they may not even receive a pat on the head or a hug or a word of encouragement because they are orphans.

These are children who live all over the world and in our own country, sad to say. We have about 100,000 children in our foster care system whose parents have had their biological rights terminated because of either gross neglect or abuse, children who are waiting for another family to step up. The Presiding Officer has been very active and successful in passing the adoption tax credit provision that provides some financial assistance to families who are stepping forward to adopt children in need in our own country and around the world.

There are 100,000 children waiting for that Valentines card or that box of chocolate or a hug or just to belong to a family. Around the world, we don't even know what those numbers are. They are overwhelming. We know that in countries that have a high incidence of AIDS, for instance, that causes the death of a parent, particularly a mom--a dad as well--really that leaves sometimes families of eight children, nine children, six children abandoned. Even if a grandmother steps in to try to do that work and she dies within a few years, what happens to these children?

Well, the Presiding Officer, along with many of my colleagues here, I am proud to say, has introduced a resolution today. I wish to thank my cosponsors, particularly Senator Lugar, who has been a terrific advocate as the former chair and now ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee; Senator Klobuchar; Senator Grassley, who is my cochair on the foster care caucus; Senator Gillibrand; Senator Inhofe, who has probably traveled to more countries--more times to Africa than any Senator in the history of our country, and he should be commended for the work he is doing on that continent; and Senator Blumenthal and Senator Boozman, who have been outstanding advocates in their own right for different aspects of family policy. We are proud to submit a sense- of-the-Senate resolution. Of course, this does not have the force of law, but it most certainly expresses our views as a body and does have impact on policymakers around the world, nonprofits, the faith-based community, the private sector, and, most importantly, governments around the world.

People would say: What does the Senate think about this, Senator? You say this, but what do the other Senators think about the fact of adoption or international adoption? Do they agree with you that children belong in a family? Because it is sad to say that there are some places in this world that think children can grow up fine in an institution or they can grow up fine without parents. Now, we don't think that in the United States. Not only do our hearts and our minds and our faith tell us otherwise, but the science also says that children who grow up in a family of loving nurturing, particularly in the early years--we know this is true raising our own children; I know this as a mother--every year but particularly those early years get the confidence and the affirmation of kindness and gentleness from a parent.

I have been learning more about this lately, not only how important it is, but what I have been learning about is what the science says when children don't get that. The term that the American Academy of Pediatrics just released calls it toxic stress--toxic stress on the brain of an infant. They underline how even one caring and supportive relationship with an adult in those early years is so important that it can offset the damaging neurological and physiological affects of stress on children. I know adults have stress because I have it myself. What I didn't realize was that infants--the tiniest little infants--can have toxic stress that affects the development of their brain and their ability to function.

I hope our country will realize how important it is for us to do a better job of connecting orphans and abandoned infants and neglected children of all ages--not to put them in an institution, not to turn them out on the street, not to allow them to be trafficked by drug cartels or sex traders or people who will exploit them for other purposes, but to put them in the arms of a loving family, connecting them to a loving and responsible adult.

Of course, we try to keep children in their own biological families when possible, but if war or disease or death separates them, why don't we think that it is the most important thing in the world--because it is--to connect those children to a loving family?

That is what this resolution says. It is just as simple as we can say it on Valentines Day: For kids who will never get a kiss or a box of chocolates or who haven't yet, there is still hope that we can give them a protective family, that we can protect these sibling groups. If government would work just a little bit smarter, not even necessarily throwing that much more money at it, although I find we can always use a little extra, but just working smarter and better and working with the churches, working with faith-based communities around the world, we can connect children to families. That is all this resolution says. It expresses the sense of the Senate. I hope we can pass this by unanimous consent.

So when I travel around the world, as I do often, when I am in Guatemala or when I am in Uganda or when I have been in places such as Russia and in China, and the Senators there or the members or the people, the leaders, ask me, ``What do the other Senators say? Do they believe this as well?'' I can say, ``Absolutely.'' I am going to carry this resolution with me, and I will show it to them because all this resolution says is that every child in the world deserves a protective and loving family.

So I don't know if Valentines Day will be perfect for many children. I hope my children have had a wonderful day today. But we can work a little harder to try to do our best to make sure they have at least one caring, nurturing, loving adult in their life. It would make a world of difference in our school systems, in our health care systems, in our criminal justice system. It will make our communities stronger. It will make our States and our Nation stronger and ultimately the world. I know the Presiding Officer believes that.

I thank the leadership for allowing me to come to the floor and speak on this today, and hopefully all of my colleagues will vote favorably for this Senate resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will be as brief as I can, but I ask the Members to reject the House resolution that is before us. I ask Republicans and Democrats to reject the amendment that is before us. It is unnecessary and it violates the Budget Control Act.

We just had a very strong vote--72 Members voted to fund relief for victims of disaster as we struggle to rebuild communities from Vermont to Missouri to the west coast that have been devastated by unprecedented disasters. The weather service just indicated that we had over 12 disasters this year of over $1 billion each.

Defeat the resolution. It violates the Budget Act, and it sets a disruptive and dangerous precedent for forcing us to fund disasters in the years they occur. It will cut education, transportation, and discretionary programs unnecessarily and in violation of the Budget Control Act.

I thank the Members. Please vote no.

Waive and vote. Vote?

Mr. President, I would like to add my voice to the strong work that has been done by Senator Merkley and Senator Snowe. As the chair of the committee that has some jurisdiction over the HUBZone Program, I want to urge the Banking Committee and the staff and offer the staff of the Small Business Committee from the majority side to work very hard today to see if we can get this cleared. It is very important to the ranking member of our committee, who has worked so hard, and to the Senator from Oregon, who has made very strong arguments about expediting and streamlining some of these approvals, so I wish them the best.

We are going to work today to see if we can get it cleared. It would be the second really substantial victory in the Small Business space, having gotten our SBIR bill through just recently after 6 years of very acrimonious debate. If we can get this fix to the HUBZone Program, it would be terrific.

I thank the Senators for their hard work.

I yield the floor.