Floor Statements

Mr. President, it brings me great sadness that I come to the Senate floor today to reflect upon the passing of Robert Hicks, a lion in the Louisiana civil rights movement whose legal victories helped topple segregation in Bogalusa and change discriminatory employment practices throughout the South, passed away Tuesday, April 13, in his home at the age of 81.

Born in Mississippi, but moved to Bogalusa at a young age, Robert Hicks was the youngest of three children born to Quitman and Maybell Hicks in 1929. He graduated from Central Memorial High School, where he played on the school's State champion football team. He later played offensive guard on The Bushmen, an all-Black semipro team.

Mr. Hicks began his civil rights work as a member of the local NAACP before working with the Voter and Civic League. He helped organize daily marches to protest racial discrimination by merchants and city government in a crusade that thrust Bogalusa into the national spotlight. The Hicks family opened their home to White civil rights workers and national figures. Because of this, the family was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, which in turn motivated the formation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed band of African-American men who stood guard at the Hicks' home and protected civil rights workers in the city. The 2003 Showtime movie ``Deacons of Defense'' was loosely based on the group.

As fellow civil rights worker Peter Jan Honigsberg wrote in his memoir recalling his experience volunteering in Bogalusa in the summers of 1966 and 1967 about Hicks, ``Even today I still think of him . . . He was determined to do what he had to do to change the South.'' Mr. Hicks filed a landmark lawsuit against the city and police department of Bogalusa, obtaining a Federal court order requiring the police to protect protest marchers, and a lawsuit that overturned officials' refusal to allow protest marchers. In 1967, Mr. Hicks filed a suit against the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing, which resulted in the prohibition of the construction of public housing in segregated neighborhoods in Bogalusa.

Mr. Hicks began working at Crown Zellerbach, the local paper mill, at a time when few Black people were employed there and eventually he served as president of the Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers. After fighting Crown Zellerbach for years in Federal court, Mr. Hicks became the company's first African-American supervisor, a position he held until his retirement.

Mr. Hicks and his wife Valeria had six children during their 62-year union. With his wife, Mr. Hicks traveled the country, spreading the word about the conditions for Black people in the South and encouraging people to travel to Bogalusa and other Southern cities to campaign for civil rights. Besides his wife, thoughts and prayers go out to his survivors, including a daughter, Barbara Maria Hicks; three sons, Robert Lawrence, Gregory Vince, and Darryl Hicks; a sister, Grace Berry; 17 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. The work of Robert Hicks will be forever remembered by the Bogalusa community, which is renaming a street and holding a ceremony in his honor.

I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5283, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent the Gillibrand substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time, and that a budgetary pay-go statement be considered read and printed in the Record and that the bill be passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statement related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5872, and the Senate

proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statement be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5981, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statement related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand we are not in any particular order. I wish to speak for about 15 minutes, and then I understand there will be leadership time prior to the vote scheduled for 5:45.

I wish to take a minute to refocus the Senate on the issue we were debating when we left on Friday. We took some time over the weekend-- many of us worked through parts of the weekend--to see if we could try to bring a very important debate to a close. It looks as though, from conversations through the weekend and this morning with the leadership, we are making progress, so I am encouraged at this point. However, of course, until the motions are made and the votes are in, we are not 100 percent certain. But it feels as though the debate last week really moved many Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, to understand how important it is to focus our efforts--particularly in this last week before we leave for the August recess--on Main Street, on small business, on getting directed help and support, through a variety of different avenues, to Main Street. That is what we spoke at great length about last week.

Before I speak about a few pieces of the bill and parts of the bill, I would like to follow up on what my colleague from Florida, Senator Bill Nelson, just said regarding a provision we had hoped could have potentially been in this bill, but there is a possibility it could be included in an extenders package or some other tax bill that comes along either before we leave for August or when we come back in September.

I most certainly support his bill and what he outlined. He said it clearly, but just to restate, there are businesses along the gulf coast that are having an extremely difficult time not just with the major oilspill but now with the moratorium that has been put in place. Regardless of how one feels about the moratorium, it is having a very significant negative economic impact on businesses--not just big oil, which can usually find a way to take care of itself, but it is the smaller service companies and the machine operators. It is the helicopter pilots. It is the divers. It is the businesses that service the gulf that are having such a difficult time. I don't have the details here at my desk, but it is mounting every day--millions and millions of dollars in losses. The backdrop of this devastation in the gulf, of course, is the fifth anniversary of Katrina this August. This is August 2. The anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is August 29.

So the Senator from Florida is absolutely correct. There are businesses reeling along the gulf coast, having

just recovered from a terrible spat of storms, including Wilma, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike, and now the same area is being hit with the effects of the spill and the moratorium. So the Senator from Florida is absolutely correct. If we could provide some relief, which we have done--not routinely, but it is not unprecedented--as suggested by the Senator from Florida, I hope we can get that done.

I made mention--it is not in the small business bill, but it is an amendment I had filed earlier to this bill, and unfortunately I don't think we will be able to get it on this bill, but we will continue to work on it. It is sort of a companion bill to the bill of the Senator from Florida, and that is to provide interest relief to gulf coast businesses that have outstanding business disaster loans. Again, they are trying to get specific, targeted help to an area of the country that has been extremely hard hit. They have been affected not just by the national recession, but they have been book-ended by the national recession and the slams from Katrina and Rita and now the slamming from the oilspill and the moratorium, and the middle part is that we got hit by the recession. So we just need some special help and support.

I thank the Senator from Florida for coming down. I thank all of the gulf coast Senators who have been working so hard, unified, across party lines, to bring the kind of help and support we need for the gulf coast.

That will be debated on other bills to come. But I am looking forward to an opportunity to offer that amendment with my good friend, the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, to again waive interest charges of up to $15,000 for all the outstanding business disaster loans on the gulf coast. That will give them a little reprieve, a little break at a time when they most certainly could use the reprieve and use the break. It only costs about $100 million. We have a way to pay for it. The money has actually already been set aside in another provision. We are going to use $100 million of a portion of money that is remaining in an account so that it does not add to the deficit. The Senator from Florida--I am not sure what his offset is, but, again, $100 million in the scheme of things is not an exorbitant amount of money by Washington standards, and we can most certainly find a way to pay for this special help to gulf coast businesses.

There are many Main Streets in the gulf coast. Whether it is the strip, as we call it--not just Las Vegas has a strip, but we have a strip running down through the panhandle of Florida; whether it is other Main Streets in resort towns; whether it is in Alabama or in Mississippi; whether it is Biloxi or Gulfport or Pensacola Beach--and I could go on and on; whether it is the Main Street down Grand Isle or through Morgan City, these businesses on Main Street are hurting.

So I have spent a good bit of time in the last week as chair of the Small Business Committee talking about the fact that we have seen significant job losses in this country from small business. This, again, is the monthly national employment report from Automatic Data Processing, so this is the government's official data: U.S. jobs lost by firm size for the last 2 years, from 2008 to 2010. We can see that 81 percent of the jobs being lost are being lost by small businesses, and these are defined as businesses with fewer than 500 people. If one would do the data based on businesses with fewer than 100 people or fewer than 50 people, I don't know what it would show, but I would venture to guess that the lion's share of business loss has come from the smaller businesses. So it goes without saying that when we want to replace the jobs, the fastest way to get them replaced is to give those same businesses the help they need to rehire.

If we could give those small businesses an opportunity to rehire, which is what this small business bill does, we might be able to have a job-filled recovery instead of a jobless recovery. People have called it that because it is showing signs of being just that. Many companies have been making profits. Wall Street has had a little bit of a good run lately. Big banks have been doing pretty well. So while the economy seems to stabilize, Americans, at least in my hometown of New Orleans and around Baton Rouge and Lafayette and Shreveport and New Iberia and other places, say: But Senator--and, of course, our situation is compounded even more than this--they say: We are losing jobs. Jobs are disappearing. Small businesses are laying off.

So whether we are talking about Louisiana or Michigan or Florida or Maine or South Dakota or Missouri or other places, if we want to see jobs created, we should be focusing some time and effort on helping small businesses to create those jobs. There are some things small businesses need.

I wish to spend a minute talking about the base of the bill again, of which we are very proud. This bill was built through the Small Business Committee and the Finance Committee.

This is a description of the small business access to credit. The top item is one of the important provisions of this bill. I wish to stress--because several Members have come to talk to me about credit unions--that credit unions and banks are included in this top provision. Credit unions and banks can use the programs of the SBA, and these programs will be expanded from $200 million to $500 million--the 7(a) Loan Program, which is basically the loans that small businesses make for capital and for investments. The 504 loans are traditionally real estate loans. Right now, they are capped at $1.5 million. We know lots of businesses out there that--I mean, $1.5 million sounds like a lot of money, but, of course, when you are in the real estate business, it doesn't go that far these days. So raising that to $5.5 million will go a long way.

In fact, I received a letter from a businessperson in the real estate business, and I wish to read a paragraph about what he said over the weekend about real estate loans, and then I will read the other part of his letter later. This is Mr. Gipson, Bryan Gipson, Sr., from Mississippi. He said:

Senator Landrieu: I am a commercial real estate broker. My

company sells hotels throughout the southeastern United

States. We have not completed a transaction in almost 2

years. There is no third party commercial financing for

commercial real estate in the United States today. Our

industry has been battered because of this. Hotels are

closing throughout this country. Workers are being laid off.

These workers make beds, they clean rooms, they work as wait

staff, accountants, reservationists, and front desk

personnel. Thousands of these hard-working Americans have

been laid off. It is time for Congress to do something to put

Americans back to work, back into jobs.

He is actually exactly correct. That is one of the main focuses of this. This is a Landrieu-Snowe provision on which we got almost unanimous consent out of the Small Business Committee to do. We did this in the stimulus act that was done earlier in the year, but it expired. So why are we doing it again? Because it worked the last time we did it. The documents are in, the review is in, and it was a roaring success. So we know it was successful. It expired, and we are now making it available for the next year. We know this program will get loans and capital out to businesses, much like Mr. Gipson from Mississippi. He could potentially borrow some of this money to keep one or more of his hotels open.

The small business trade and export promotion--this, again, was a bill from Senator Snowe and myself. Of course, we had a tremendous amount of input from other Senators, but we learned something very-- well, I learned something quite troubling. I didn't realize this until this year.

I am going to get the chart to show it. Big businesses in America do a lot of exporting. Of course, that makes sense. They have big law firms. They have special tax counsel. They even have probably people who can do advance work in other countries to introduce them to all the right people. So big business has access to that. But small businesses don't get a lot of help from the Federal Government. They need help to try to open markets across the world for them.

It is interesting to think about what the greatest potential growth for small business in America is. It is not just the market in the United States, it is the market around the world. According to population, not buying power, 94 percent of the market isn't even in the United States; 94 percent of the market is somewhere else in the world. So if we can help our small businesses export, which is what this chart shows--small business is only at 1 percent. Think

about that. Only 1 percent of small businesses export and 42 percent of large businesses export. They know what these companies should know: The markets are elsewhere, as well as here.

But if you have a good product, if you have the ways and the means to sell that product or service, there are people with a lot of money or with some money around the country who can buy that product. One way, as chair of the Small Business Committee, that I looked at strengthening small business just in sort of a conceptual way in America is if we could focus on helping them export. Look at the potential for growth. That is what we are looking for, potential for growth, because every small business that grows and one or two or three jobs are created and American products are sold around the world, we can kick this recession once and for all. Senator Snowe and I worked together on this export provision. Then we were joined by Senators Klobuchar and LeMieux, who I think both serve on the Commerce Committee. Commerce, besides the SBA, has a significant role to play. We basically enhanced our underlying provision with a Klobuchar-LeMieux amendment, and now we have, we think, a very strong provision to help businesses export. Just in a portion of it, we believe it could create 40,000 to 50,000 jobs in the next year. This is a very important component.

Small business contracting. Again, this was done by Landrieu-Crapo- Risch, Landrieu-Snowe, and Snowe-Merkley. It was a combination of what we could to have the Federal Government do a better job of contracting with small business. The Federal Government is so big and spends so much money and it has such large contracts that sometimes it is hard for small businesses--whether it is a printer in Delaware or a small manufacturer in Delaware or in Louisiana--to get any Federal business. The Federal Government has been getting better at helping small business, but it has been a focus of this Committee now for several years. We have improved this contracting provision. We believe, just this provision, without spending any more Federal dollars, using those Federal dollars that we are spending contracting with small business when they get those contracts--the best thing about them is they can take a Federal Government contract, particularly, and go to a bank and say to their banker: I just got a contract to provide 50,000 apples to the Federal Government, and I now have a contract for 5 years to do that; can I borrow some money from your bank? Because Federal accounts are looked at as a pretty good thing to have in your hand, they will then lend that small apple picker that amount of money, and they can go ahead and hire the workers to pick the apples and deliver them to the Federal Government. That is the idea. This works thousands and tens of thousands of ways for different products and services.

The Federal Government itself should be doing everything it can to help small business, and that is in our bill. Again, it is a bipartisan effort.

We then went to small business management and counseling. This might be considered soft to some people, but I think it is extremely significant in this time. It is not just the women business centers and the minority business centers, but it is also things such as the SCORE chapter, which used to stand for Service Corps of Retired Executives. Now it is expanded beyond senior executives. It is a large nonprofit organization, broad-based, that reaches out to a small business that has seen their market evaporate or their product not being in demand anymore. They are good in business, but they need new and fresh ideas and a fresh approach.

That is what we do behind the scenes to support them in thousands of places throughout this country--in universities, women business owner centers, nonprofit organizations that can step up and, at no charge to the taxpayers, say: Why don't you try this or that? We have tremendous stories of success. This was something Senator Snowe and I felt strongly about. That is in the bill.

These were estimates that were done not by our office but by those responsible for making such estimates, which said that maybe 10,000 jobs could be created. Who knows. If the counselors work hard and the economy starts picking up, thousands of jobs could be created because somebody was counseled through a difficult period, got a new idea, retooled their product or their shop, and they managed to survive the recession.

The small business disaster loan improvements was an important issue to Louisiana. I am happy I was able to include this. It is important to Florida also and potentially Alaska, which has a lot of aquaculture. In the past, for some reason, these particular businesses were not given any ability to apply for Federal disaster assistance, so many crawfish farmers and fishing and other aquatic businesses were left out in the cold after a disaster. We noticed that after Katrina, and we fixed it. We are extending it and extending help to aquaculture businesses.

Let me show this chart. This is to describe the importance of the small business bill, how many things it does focusing on small business, which is where I think the focus should be, and how bipartisan the underlying provisions are.

This is something that was worked on with Senators Kerry and Snowe. It is the 100-percent exclusion of capital gains tax. It is interesting, and it came out of the Finance Committee. They said: Why don't we jump-start things by saying to anybody who has a little money or a lot: If you invest in a small business and hold that investment-- invest in any small business, I think below $50 million in capital, any small business--you make that investment and you hold it for 5 years-- let's say you quadruple your money--you don't pay a penny of tax on that capital gain. That is what I call an incentive--zero capital gains if you invest in a small business in America in the next period of time. We have a difference of opinion about what that time should be with the House. It will either be 6 months or a year. I am hoping for a year. It is a little more expensive to do it that way, but I think that would be a tremendous incentive to people sitting on some cash and looking around for what to do with it. You can invest in a good small business in your community. If you hold that for 5 years and make a quadruple--or 400 percent--return on your money, you can keep it all. You don't have to pay tax back to the Federal Government. We are serious about jump-starting small business.

The other is to increase deductions for startup expenditures. That is Merkley and Alexander. It is bipartisan.

Another one is tax equity for the self-employed. Senator Bingaman worked on this provision for years. He literally has led this fight, with Senator Durbin and others, myself included, to try to get tax equity for the self-employed. There are 20 million self-employed people in America. The vast majority of small businesses in America are self- employed individuals. So we want to give them an opportunity to write off their health care costs, just like big corporations do. This is their No. 1 request. They have worked on it for 10 years. We couldn't find the money in the health care bill or any other bill, but we found the money in this bill to do it for them. I thank the Finance Committee and Senator Bingaman for leading that effort and Senator Grassley as well. That provision is in the bill. It is a $2 billion tax cut for the self-employed.

Again, we have an extension of bonus depreciation. That was very successful in the Stimulus Act. Some people get on the floor and don't read the details of anything, and they want to talk about how bad the stimulus package was. The fact is, that is not true. There were pieces of it that were extremely positive and we know it because we have the data and it was so good we want to repeat it here. So, yes, there were some things in the stimulus provision that were very good. One of them was the bonus depreciation to small business. You can immediately write off 50 percent of the cost of capital expenditures for 1 additional year for new property purchased and placed into service by 2010. This is an expensive provision; it is $5.5 billion. But we know it works, and we believe this incentive will go a long way.

It is a little bit of a stretch, but this came to mind and I am going to say it. Incentives work. Recently, in Washington, DC, the DC City Council passed an incentive, if you will, that when you

go to the grocery store--which I do with my family--if you bring your own bags, you don't have to pay the bag charge. They just decided they don't want to have plastic bags floating in the Potomac. I thought it was odd when I first went to the store and came across that provision. I thought, nobody is going to pay much attention to having to pay 5 cents for a bag. But I can tell you, it is working. How do I know? Because I observe 80 percent of the people who come into the grocery store walk in with their own bags. For 5 cents a bag--I thought you would have to make the charge more than that to get people to do it. But it works out that a little incentive, placed in the right way, actually changes behavior. I am now bringing my own bags to the grocery store. When they ask: ``Do you want to pay 5 cents for a bag,'' I say, ``No, I have my own.'' So this can work. We know it works. I gave a small example. This is a more complicated and bigger example, but that is what we believe a good bill, drafted correctly, thought through carefully, can do to incentivize people to take actions they would not necessarily have taken. You are not going to pay people for doing it anyway. But if you can incentivize a business in the right way, they might say: I was going to hold off buying X, but because the Federal Government is giving me a 50-percent writeoff, I am going to buy it now. That is what we want. We want them to buy ``it'' now, because when they buy it now, the people making the ``it'' have to make more of them and it goes on and on and on.

The small business penalty relief is a bipartisan provision, again. This all came out of Finance. These get down into a little bit of minutia, but the point is there are small incentives that can provide credits to businesses, and they were done in a bipartisan fashion. Here is Kerry and Ensign. Here is Snowe and here is Grassley. This is Baucus-Grassley-Brownback. Here is Inhofe-Johanns-Menendez. It has been a real bipartisan effort. I am proud of that.

There are some differences of opinion about some portions of the bill. We have had a debate. The lending program is something that not everybody supports but 60 of us do. We got a strong vote on that lending fund. That is now added to the bill. So we have the LeMieux- Landrieu lending fund added by 60 votes. We have Senator Nelson, and Senator Murray was the lead designer of this--Senators Murray and Cantwell.

I am grateful for this $30 billion lending fund that will go to small banks, not big banks. You have to be below $10 billion. So if you are greater than $10 billion, go look for another program; this is not for you. But if you are a small bank--and most of your community banks are below $10 billion, so most of my banks in my State qualify, except for two or three. I don't know about Delaware or New York or other States, but I assume that would hold true. Probably 90 percent of all banks in every State, at least, would be eligible, but not every bank would because it is not for the big banks, just the smaller banks. We want them to get to this loan program. It is completely voluntary-- completely voluntary. If they lend to small business and increase their lending to small business in their neighborhood--to people they know, to people they trust, businesses they believe in--then they have to pay less money back to the Federal Government. But even doing that, we think the score is so significant that the Federal Government will actually make $1 billion. That is what the official CBO score says, that we will make $1 billion over 10 years.

Then we have an anti-Medicare and Medicaid fraud provision which Senator LeMieux came up with. I think he has some good ideas, and we have structured it in such a way that we do believe we can save the Federal Government a significant amount of money by including this. That money just comes back to the Treasury for deficit prevention. We haven't used a score against this, so this will go to deficit prevention.

Then the final part of the LeMieux-Landrieu amendment was expanding the export promotion. Again, this is done in a bipartisan fashion.

I know we are getting to the 5:30 mark. I don't see anyone else on the Senate floor, so I will speak for just a minute or so more because we are going to a vote on a different subject. But I would like to just put up the Main Street sign again to reiterate how important this is for Main Street and for small business.

I am not sure what is going to happen on the 5:45 vote which was supposed to be taken regarding funding for health care and education. But at some point right after that action at 5:45, I think the leaders will come to the floor of the Senate, and I hope I will hear them say we have reached an agreement on one, two, or three amendments on the small business Main Street bill so we can vote on those amendments either later tonight or tomorrow and then vote for final passage.

Again, I want to thank the list of sponsors and cosponsors. I think we have over 70 organizations, and maybe now it is over 100--the National Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, the Independent Bankers of America.

So for those who say banks are not supportive, that they think it is like another program that is not popular, I don't believe the bankers would be supportive of this if they weren't for it. We have received very strong letters from America's Community Bankers and then the individual chapters, such as the chapter from Alabama, which has written us; the chapter from Georgia; the chapters from Illinois, Kansas, Ohio, and Iowa, as well as the Financial Services Roundtable, which is made up of some of the larger businesses. But their letter was very telling.

In it they say to me: Senator, even though a lot of our specific members may not benefit directly from this bill, we will all benefit indirectly because when small business is stronger in America, big business is stronger in America.

I am very happy to have received that letter. The Maine Association of Community Banks, Marine Retailers Association of America, Maryland Bankers Association--and I might say that Senator Cardin particularly, as a member of the Small Business Committee, has been very helpful to us in crafting this bill--the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Automobile Dealers, the National Council of Textile Organizations, and the National Restaurant Association, just to name a few.

So from Tennessee to New York, from California to South Dakota, all the way down to New Mexico and Arizona, the support is very widespread, and let me just read a few things in closing that some of the national organizations have sent.

This is from the National Small Business Association:

Unlike last year's TARP program, the SBLF would only

advantage banks actually making small business loans. The

National Small Business Association has advocated for the

creation of such a fund to improve small business owners'

access to capital since 2009. [We] urge quick action on the

proposal, as America's small business owners can afford [no]

further delay.

Again, from the Independent Community Bankers:

The Nation's 8,000-strong community banks are well

positioned to leverage the fund and have established

relationships with small businesses in their communities to

get credit flowing. The $30 billion in capital provided by

the fund could be leveraged by community banks to support as

much as $300 billion in additional small business lending. We

applaud the new program focused on getting funds to Main

Street small businesses using Main Street community banks.

So whether it is from the Small Business Majority, the National Small Business Association, or the bankers that know our small businesses best, the word is, pass the bill and get Main Street moving again.

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

Madam President, I wish to begin by thanking Leader Reid for his very kind comments regarding the work that is going into this bill. It has been my pleasure and honor to help lead a team, actually, which the Presiding Officer has been a part of, as well as Ms. Cantwell, the Senator from Washington; Senator Murray;

Senator LeMieux from Florida; and many others. Senator Cardin, who I know is on the floor, is an outstanding member of the Small Business Committee and a long-time advocate of small business, serving many years in the House of Representatives, and now brings his expertise to the floor of the Senate. I like having bulldogs on my committee and he is one of them and I greatly appreciate his support.

Let me be very clear that in 1 hour, we will come to the end of a very long, important public and open debate on the best way we can help Main Street.

This bill is not about Wall Street. We have had enough of those. This bill is not about big corporations; they take up 80 percent of the agenda in this place on any given day. This bill is about the 27 million small businesses that need the Members of the Senate to stand up for them today. If we can stand up for small businesses today, they will stand up for us and lift this country out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. I want to repeat that. It will not be the big banks that do this. It will not be the big international firms that do this. As it always has been since the beginning of America, since the first small business, the first enterprise, it will be small businesses that create jobs.

For 1\1/2\ years, this debate has been going on--not 1\1/2\ weeks, not last month, but for 1\1/2\ years we have been debating, as we should as Senators, about the best way to do that. There have been differences of opinion. There have been two primary committees focused on building this package, including the Finance Committee, which has put forward in a completely bipartisan fashion a $12 billion tax cut package for small business. The leader just spoke about some of those provisions this morning. The chairman of that committee, Max Baucus, has been to the floor on several occasions to explain the extraordinarily significant tax cuts I will mention. I will mention only one.

For a decade, Members on both sides of the aisle have been trying to get the self-employed in America to have parity with other businesses when it comes to health care. Madam President, the Chair knows that her State of New York is full of self-employed people. Do they get the same tax break as General Electric? No. Do they get the same tax break as General Motors? No. These individuals who are self-employed pay more for their health care than big corporations. Is that right? No. We tried to help them in the health care bill, and we could not. We didn't give up the fight. They are in this bill--a $2 billion tax cut for the self-employed. That is just one of the good tax provisions.

Senator Reid read off the list, and I will share it with you because I know there are going to be critics coming to the floor, and unfortunately some people will vote against cloture. I hope most people are smart enough not to. If some of them do, I want them to know we have widely distributed this red line document to every news outlet in the country. We have distributed it to many, many organizations. There are over 70 organizations supporting this. This is what we call our red line document. So there is no confusion, the most wonderful thing about this document is that it is just four pages. It is very easy to read. There are not 40 pages. It is not 4,000 pages. There are no special deals. It is all here, and it is all bipartisan.

I am going to read some of the names associated with the bill: Kerry- Snowe-Menendez; Snowe; Merkley-Alexander; Snowe; Bingaman-Hatch- Landrieu; Grassley; Baucus-Grassley-Brownback-Inhofe-Johanns-Menendez; Baucus-Grassley-Crapo; Kerry-Ensign and 72 bipartisan cosponsors equally divided between Democrats and Republicans; Snowe; Grassley; Grassley.

If somebody comes to the floor and says this bill doesn't have bipartisan support, they might want to answer why their names are here: Landrieu-Snowe; Snowe; Snowe-Landrieu; Snowe-Merkley; Landrieu-Snowe; Landrieu-Crapo-Risch; Snowe; Landrieu-Nelson; Snowe-Pryor; Snowe.

I don't know how many more items a Senator can have in a bill. Senator Snowe wrote lots of pieces of this bill. LeMieux-Landrieu; LeMieux; LeMieux-Landrieu; Klobuchar-LeMieux; LeMieux-Landrieu; Cantwell-Boxer-Murray. That lists just a few.

So we bring a bipartisan bill to the floor, and then we have a 12- hour debate on one amendment, the first amendment, which is a Republican amendment by Senator LeMieux and myself--it is LeMieux- Landrieu-Nelson. Both Senators from Florida have been extraordinary in their advocacy for this. We had a public, open vote, and we got 60 votes. So now the small business lending provision is in this bill, which makes it even better, even greater, and equally bipartisan. If some people aren't happy with that--I don't write the rules of the Senate. I showed up, and that is what the rules were. If you got 60 votes, you got your amendment on the bill.

There are other Members who are coming to speak. I want to just say this has been a very vital debate. This is the time for us to say yes to Main Street. There are literally millions of business owners who not only want this package to pass, they need it to pass. If it passes now, they might be able to hold on. They might be able to create the jobs that are necessary. It is now our chance to deliver a bipartisan bill that will help 27 million small businesses on Main Street.

In conclusion, we have spent a lot of time helping big auto manufacturers from Detroit. Today, we can help that repair shop in our neighborhood. This is about corner stores. This is about small banks. Are we going to vote for them or are we going to leave them high and dry?

I see the chairman from the Finance Committee, who I think is scheduled to speak. I also see the Senator from Maryland. I will soon yield to the Senator from Maryland, a member of the Small Business Committee, to say a word, and then we have the time under our control. I am sorry, the Senator from Washington is here. I didn't see the Senator. I was blocked. I apologize. I see the Senator from Washington and the Senator from Montana and the Senator from Maryland.

I thought we had the first half hour and the Senator's side had the second, but I understand now that it is back and forth.

Madam President, how much time is remaining on our side?

The Senator from Maryland has been on the floor for almost an hour. May he have the next 3 minutes? I see the Senator from Maine who could then speak after him.

I understand the leadership has 5 minutes each, equally divided.

That is fine. Thank you. I would like the minority leader to go ahead. It is his 5 minutes, and I will reserve the last 5.

Madam President, I would like to respond directly to the minority leader because I wish to make clear that there are no extraneous provisions in this bill other than disaster relief for farmers. The last time I checked, they were small business owners, many of them. They are running a

different kind of business. It is not a hardware store, it is not a restaurant--they go out and actually get their food out of the ground. The last time I checked or thought about it, they were small businesses.

If the minority leader is suggesting there is not bipartisan support for agricultural disaster relief, I urge him, at his next available opportunity, to file an amendment to repeal it because I think his side would have strong objection to that. That was put in at the request of Senator Lincoln and Senator Chambliss from Georgia, and he very well knows that--through the Chair to the minority leader.

There were only two arguments made this morning against this bill because it was just a political advertisement that the minority leader outlined, so I will not even respond to him, to the Senator from Kentucky, but I will respond, in closing, to Senator Snowe and Senator Hatch.

Mr. Hatch came to the floor, the Senator from Utah, and said we couldn't possibly pass a $12 billion tax cut for small business today unless we could, as a Senate, in the next few hours, make final decisions on whether to extend the entire tax package passed by George Bush when he was President 8 years ago. I think that is a big lift for the Small Business Committee. We want to give $12 billion of tax cuts today. I hope people will vote for them.

Second and finally, Senator Snowe does deserve the last reference on this because she is an outstanding Senator, one of the finest I have ever worked with, but this issue is a public debate between those of us who support the Small Business Lending Fund and those who do not. She does not support it. She has made excellent arguments. Her arguments are given merit. We voted on it, but we got 60 votes.

Senator Reid, I know, has the last minute and he has been outstanding in this, but, please, there are only two legitimate arguments. We cannot solve extension of all the tax cuts in the next 2 hours. Our small businesses have picked up enough weight. They cannot handle that weight. If we don't give them some help now, today, many of them are not going to be here, I want the Senator from Kentucky to know, when we show up in September.

I yield the last minute to the leader.

Madam President, could I ask the minority leader a question, please. Will he yield?

Would the minority leader be willing to say how many amendments might be enough? The Senator from Maine, the ranking member, said a few. The Senator from Florida--if I could finish--the Senator from Florida, Mr. LeMieux, said he thought it would be fair if there were four or five. We have offered three. Is there any sort of possibility--because that would help us get even further.

Yes.

Madam President, let me press for a minute on this question, because with all due respect to the minority leader, until we can finally agree on that number, it is going to be hard to figure out a path forward. So my question to the minority leader is, so we can do this in a more public way----

Madam President, we have had a very enlightening debate this morning on the floor that started at 9:30. It has been continuing until now. The good news about this debate is that although we did not win on this vote--cloture was not invoked--Main Street is still winning and we are alive. We are still standing. Earlier this morning, the two leaders came to the floor and said--basically agreed--that if we can have a few more amendments, what I heard the minority leader say, the Senator from Kentucky--the minority leader said a few more amendments, we could then bring some help to Main Street.

Main Street has been waiting for a year and a half. We have had bill after bill, amendment after amendment. What I heard this morning from the minority leader was very positive. He said: All we need is just a few more amendments. I asked what ``a few'' was. Was that two or three or four or five? That answer never came. I am assuming that ``a few'' is a few, and if we work hard over the next few hours and come up with a few, Main Street could win because this bill is about Main Street and businesses on Main Street. It is not about Wall Street. It is not about big banks. It is about small community banks and the small businesses in our country that are desperate for help.

This bill has $12 billion in tax cuts for small business, not big business. This bill has a $30 billion lending program that is voluntary, with no restrictions for small banks, not big banks. This bill is supported by over 70 organizations. I would like my colleagues on the other side to know that the chamber of commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business are supporting this bill. Chambers and community bankers all over America are supporting this bill. And we are two votes from passage.

I very much would like to yield to the Senator from California for a question.

I would like to answer the Senator from California by saying the record will speak for itself because that vote we just took, there were 59 Senators, all on this side of the aisle, who pushed a green light, and there were 41 on the other side who pushed a red light. So it is very clear who is trying to move forward and who is trying to stop this bill. It is very clear.

I don't think there is anyone, even in the press, confused about that because this debate, amazingly, has been so open. So much of it has gone on on the Senate floor that they can actually follow it. These deals are not being done in back rooms; they are being done right here on the Senate floor, and they are following it. They know there are 70 organizations, and they know this bill is bipartisan.

I am just going to read the names, not the provisions, that the Senator was asking about: Landrieu-Snowe, Snowe-Landrieu, Snowe- Merkley-Landrieu-Crapo-Risch, Snowe-Landrieu, Landrieu-Nelson, Snowe- Pryor.

And let's continue: Kerry-Snowe-Menendez, Merkley-Alexander, Snowe, Bingaman-Hatch-Landrieu-Grassley, Baucus-Grassley-Brownback-Inhofe- Johanns-Menendez, Baucus-Grassley-Crapo, Kerry-Ensign--there are 72 cosponsors that Senators Kerry and Ensign put on this bill--Snowe, Grassley.

For the ranking member to come and suggest that there are not enough bipartisan amendments, let me continue. There are more: There is LeMieux-Landrieu, Nelson is on this one, LeMieux-Landrieu-Nelson- Klobuchar.

This bill came out of the Finance Committee and the Small Business Committee with bipartisan support. One of the things we couldn't agree on was the Small Business Lending Fund. I understand the rules; I have been around here 14 years. So we had a vote on it. You know what. It got 60 votes. The Small Business Lending Program got 60 votes on the floor of the Senate after it passed the House of Representatives.

When I was in school, I learned that once a bill was passed, it comes to the Senate, they pass it, and it goes to the President for signature. Maybe there are some people who don't want that provision to go to the President for signature. I understand that. But we got 60 votes on the bill, as the Senator from California knows.

So here we are. The other side is very good about hiding behind pages. They bring out these big pages of bills and they say: We don't know what is in it, and we can't tell. So I sent the four pages in my hand to all the press organizations today. It is just four pages. Anyone can read this. They are on my Web site and lots of other Web sites. There are just four pages. That is all that is in the bill--all small business items.

There was an agricultural provision that was in the bill that I actually support. Senator Lincoln put it in the bill, along with Senator Chambliss. But you heard the minority leader say this morning that he didn't think farmers were small businesspeople. I will let him explain that to the farmers in Kentucky. But he said he did not think the provision for the farmers had anything to do with small business. Maybe he hasn't been in a seed store lately, or maybe he hasn't been where people purchase hay and supplies. Maybe he hasn't been to a John Deere dealership, but they sure are all over Louisiana and Arkansas.

I yield for a question.

Absolutely, the Senator is correct. I am glad I have this chart to answer her question because she has been representing the State of California beautifully for so many years. She knows this without me showing it, but 81 percent of the jobs lost in America are from small business.

So when the other side complains and complains and just flaps and flaps and flaps all day long about it is a jobless recovery, we have a bill on the floor to create jobs from small business and they say no. That vote today was a ``no'' vote to give help to small business. They can color it, paint it any way they want. That is what it was.

We know this recovery is having a hard time with jobs. I am going to yield in a minute because there are eight other Senators on the floor who want to speak on different subjects, so I will conclude with this. This isn't Mary Landrieu information. This comes from the monthly national employment reports from 2008 to 2010--the job losses with small business.

That crew over there on the other side of that aisle can't run fast enough to help big business, to help Wall Street. But when it comes to voting to help small businesses that are bleeding jobs, they want to run and hide off the floor.

The minority leader said a few amendments. I would like to know how many is a few? Is it three, is it four, is it five, is it six? Let's get a deal done today. I would just as soon do it here, out in the open, but I guess that is not the way things are done here.

So I will yield the floor and let other Senators speak about judges and other things that have to be done because there are other problems in the world. This isn't the only one. This is a big one, but it is not the only one.

I will end with this sign because this is what this debate is about. It is about Main Street. You are either for it or you are against it. It is about as simple as that.

When I became chair of this committee, I said: We are going to fight hard for small business, and I asked the chamber the other day: How many of your members are small businesses? They said: Senator, you would be surprised. It is 96 percent of the members of the chamber.

I asked: Are you all standing up for this bill? They said: Yes, we are. So I thank the chamber and I thank the NFIB. I feel like I am Alice in Wonderland. Most of the time they are on that

side, but this time they are on our side, and we can't get the Republicans to vote.

Finally, the Senator from Utah came to give a feeble argument this morning. He said he could not vote for it because we haven't debated the entire extent of the Bush tax cuts. That is a big debate that we need to have, but we don't have to have it on this bill. These people can't take any more waiting. They have had enough. We can handle that debate on another day, on another bill, but not on this one. So I would suggest to the Senator from Utah that he has quite a few amendments on this bill, and of the few amendments we might have, he may have two.

I will yield.

Yes.

That is exactly what it looks like. The Senator from Illinois has described it accurately. If anybody believes he has not described it accurately, let them come to the floor because he has described the truth. He has said the truth.

So I am going to yield right now because others wish to talk, but I thank the Senator from Illinois. This battle is going on, and we intend to win it for Main Street. I hope the other side will get their short list of a few amendments together pretty quickly.

I thank the Chair.

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

Madam President, I am going to speak for some time and try and reengage this debate. We had an excellent debate this morning between 9:30 and 12:30 trying to find a way forward on a very important bill, the small business bill. This is the Main Street bill we have been working on. As you know, Madam President--you are a member of the Small Business Committee--we have been working in good faith up until the last few hours. It has been a good effort on both sides. I am hoping in potentially the next few hours we can work through this because we are extremely close on a very important bill for small businesses in America and for Main Street.

I wanted to come to the floor to clarify a few things. Many people are following this debate. They heard the minority leader say that he was upset and some of the Republican Members were upset that they had not quite gotten amendments on this bill. That is a charge that needs an answer.

I want to go over, again, this bill and point out how many amendments are already included in the underlying bill that were offered by the other side, by Republican Senators.

I had in the last few hours several of my Members on the Democratic side say to me: Gee, Mary, I didn't realize there was so much in the bill and how good the bill was, but I didn't understand how many Republican provisions are in this bill.

I want to take a minute, because the minority leader has made a charge that Democrats have been heavyhanded--it does not sit well with many of us who have a fairly light glove here. I don't think anybody watching this debate over the last couple of weeks, or even as it has gone through the iterations of the past year, can say we are trying to have a heavy hand. We are trying to get a bill that is important to the 27 million small businesses closed, finished, and delivered to them.

The fact is, the longer we stay here without coming to some terms, the harder and harder that gets. As the 70 organizations that support this bill most certainly understand, there is a risk because not every bill that every Member can think of is going to pass in this Congress, but they are going to think this is a bill that has a lot of support, which it does, and they are going to think: This bill is going to get passed, so I am going to add my amendment, I am going to add my amendment, I am going to add my amendment.

If we do not hurry up and get this done--you can kill a bill in a lot of ways. One way you can kill it is put too many amendments on it and it is too heavy to carry itself. The small businesses do not deserve that. I said 100 times on this floor, they are already carrying a heavy load. They are carrying more regulations. They are carrying a weakened economy. They are having to lay off employees, and in a small business, it is like laying off family because these businesses are having to say goodbye and hand pink slips to people they literally know well and love. It is hard to fire anyone but particularly upfront, close, and personal, like this is happening.

I want to put up one chart--the lost business chart--to make this point. I know that Members are clear, but this is according to the National Employment Reports. This is jobs lost by firm size. Small businesses, which are defined by businesses 500 or less--that is the official definition: 81 percent of the job loss has been absorbed by small businesses. They have laid off people.

When people ask the question, How do we get this recovery engaged, how do we make this recovery successful, how do we get jobs attached to the recovery as opposed to just money--we know the big businesses have money. They are sitting on it. It has been widely reported. We know Wall Street has money because they just paid $1.8 billion in bonuses to top executives, the money we gave them. We know they have it. The people who do not have the money are the small businesses.

That is what this bill is for, to help them in many different ways, voluntarily lay out some things they can choose. This is not government telling them what to do. They can choose. They can choose to take part of the $12 billion tax cuts we are providing them. They can file for those tax cuts. If they want to, they can get the tax cuts. They can apply for the lending program.

Eighty-one percent of the jobs are lost by small businesses. If we want jobs, I suggest we focus on small business. That is what this bill is. For a year and a half, we have been pulling this bill together.

I want to go over how many Republican provisions are in this bill. I do not want my Democratic colleagues to get upset. I am taking some risk because they could come to me and say there are more Republican proposals in this bill than Democratic proposals. But we tried to be very fair.

Again, the 7(a) loans, an increase to $5 million, was a Landrieu- Snowe provision; small business trade export was

a Snowe-Landrieu provision; small business contracting was Snowe and Merkley, Crapo and Risch; small business management counseling, Senator Snowe took the lead on that amendment; Senators Snowe and Pryor took the lead on small business regulation relief; Senators Kerry, Snowe, and Menendez, the 100-percent exclusion. You pay no capital gains. People on that side are talking about reducing capital gains from 20 percent or 15 percent. They are arguing it should not go up to 20 percent. This is 100 percent, zero capital gains. If you invest in a small business in America, you will pay zero capital gains. Zero. This is a bipartisan amendment.

Merkley and Lamar Alexander, a leader on the Republican side, the increased deduction for small business expenditures; another Republican amendment, the Snowe amendment, extension of section 179; another bipartisan amendment, Senator Hatch, Senator Grassley, Senator Inhofe, Senator Johanns, Senator Brownback. These are Republican Senators.

For the minority leader to say this bill has not had Republican input, this is the red line. I put down all of the sponsors of the amendment so that the press and the groups that are following this debate can see.

This is probably the most bipartisan bill we have taken up on this floor in the last Congress and maybe in a long time, maybe a decade.

The leader would come to the floor and say: That is in the underlying bill, Senator. What we are talking about is amendments on the floor. I will go through a few Republican amendments that were put in on the floor.

The first bill the majority leader laid down was a bill that included the lending fund. Senator Snowe and others objected. A Republican objection was laid against that bill, so the lending fund was taken out. That was a Republican amendment. They were against the lending fund. It was taken out. We had to fight to put it back in.

Then Senators Snowe, Grassley, Enzi, Isakson, and Collins filed amendment No. 4483 which adds the SBA Recovery Act extenders to the bill. That was not in the bill. I think these are Republican Senators-- Republicans Snowe, Grassley, Enzi, and Isakson. The last time I checked, they were Republicans. This is another amendment they got in the bill.

Then Senators Thune, Johanns, Coburn, Inhofe, and filed amendment No. 4453 to strip out the Small Business Lending Fund. That was agreed to. We have been fighting over this Small Business Lending Fund. They want to strip it out. We are putting it back in with support from two Republicans, maybe more as this debate goes on. We have two now. We won that.

Then comes the substitute, the second one, with the SBA extenders in it and the lending fund is out. That is at least two or three amendments, in addition to the underlying amendments, that Republicans put in this bill, both in the Finance Committee and the Small Business Committee.

I hope no one tries to tell a reporter, either in Washington or back home--because reporters are smart. They need to be listening, and I think they are. I hope no reporter takes the line: Oh, well, the Democrats were heavyhanded. They offered us no amendments, so we could not possibly vote for the small business bill.

We are clear that there are many Republican amendments in the underlying bill. We have made clear in the Record that to get us to this point, there have been any number of Republican amendments either accepted or voted in or voted out. I have not mentioned one Democratic amendment yet.

I am thinking we are doing fine. We are not being heavyhanded. We are going right along. We have an open vote, 12-hour debate on the Small Business Lending Fund, and we win with 60 votes. It is back in the bill because it is the right thing to do.

I know some people are opposed to it, but we have 70 organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, Small Business Majority, manufacturers, heating and air conditioning--all sorts of organizations. I submitted for the Record several times this long and impressive list.

In addition, we have the Community Bankers Association of Alabama, the community bankers of Georgia, the community bankers of Illinois, the community bankers of Kansas, the community bankers of Ohio, the community bankers of Iowa--I could go on and on; the Independent Bankers of America, the International Automobile Dealers. I don't know how many other groups we can have to step up and say: This is the right thing to do. The Travel Goods Association, the Tennessee Bankers Association, the Virginia Association of Community Banks, National RV Retailers Association, Nebraska Independent Community Bankers. They are for this lending program. They have been sitting on the sidelines watching us give money to big banks, bailing out Wall Street, bailing out big car manufacturers in Michigan. These small banks are sitting out there saying to us: Don't you know we are out here, 8,000 of us? We are ready to do our job, roll up our sleeves, be a partner with you, and go to work getting capital to small businesses so we can have a job-filled recovery instead of a jobless recovery. We want a job-filled recovery.

This is not about this recovery making a few fat cats richer. This is about making the middle class stronger. It is about creating jobs and hope and opportunity for the broad middle class. I do not want to be part of a recovery that does not include that. It is not worth it.

So we created a fund that works with our community bankers and we still can't get the Republican side to step to the plate and say it is time to close this debate.

We have had a year and a half to talk and to think, and that is what the vote was this morning. Every Democrat, I am extremely proud to say, voted to say yes to Main Street. They gave a green light to go forward. Every single Republican in this Chamber voted no against Main Street this morning, which is why I am here, to try to pull up the shades here a little bit and shed some light, under the guise that they weren't given enough amendments.

If I give them any more amendments, I am going to get in trouble with the Democrats because I am the Democratic chair of the committee. I have given more amendments to the Republicans than I have given to my own side. After a while, it is hard to convince our side, and my Democratic colleagues have been so good. I have 10 Democrats who are dying to offer amendments on this bill--and some of them are relevant to the underlying bill--but they know the more time that passes the less likely it is we will get this bill passed, and they know how important it is.

I wish to say another thing about this, and hopefully the last about this amendment situation, unless the minority leader says something else--and he might this afternoon about amendments. I have in front of me, and every reporter also has this, the unanimous consent agreement from last night. Senator Reid offered four amendments--Baucus, Murray, another Baucus, and then another Reid amendment. Four. Senator McConnell reserved his right to object and he did object and then he offered eight. So that is where we are. We offered four, they offered eight.

You would think, in the next few hours, that somebody could figure out around here how to split this baby and do six and get it done. I am hoping that is what we can do. We are running out of options. If six is too many, maybe we could agree to have no amendments, because we already have so many, and pass this good bill that is already right here on the floor. I mean, we do have a good bill already that has Republican and Democratic amendments in it.

So the Democrats have offered four, the Republicans have offered eight. Some of them are directly germane and some are indirect. It gets a little confusing sometimes about what is direct and indirect. I am not confused about farmers, but the Senator from Kentucky said today he doesn't think farmers are small businesses. I think there are a lot of Senators who disagree with that. They do think farmers work hard, and many of them are small business owners and operate small operations. I think most people understand that those disaster payments that go to farmers don't stay in their pockets that long. They go to pay out all sorts of vendors--seed companies, to pay down their tractor or their equipment bill. I think people understand,

even though it has the title ``disaster aid,'' it actually is a small business issue.

I heard the majority leader say that if the Republican leader objected so much to that, even though Senator Lincoln worked so hard to put it in, we would take that out of this bill and find another way to do that. But that didn't seem to be enough either. So I am going to say again that I am so proud of the Senators who have worked hard on this bill--Senator Merkley, Senator Cantwell, Senator Murray, Senator Boxer, Senator Schumer--and Senator Durbin has been down to the floor--both Senators from Florida. I am hoping Senator LeMieux will do his very best and I know he is continuing to work through the afternoon to talk with his leadership, to say: Look, there are dozens of amendments already in the bill. The only amendments that have been offered on the bill to date have been Republican amendments, either Republican amendments by Senator Snowe to take things out or put things in or an amendment by Senator LeMieux to put the lending fund in, the only amendments.

The amendment Senator Lincoln put in the bill, without a vote, we offered to take that out to try to move this forward. So I hope reporters here and around the country will not allow a Republican Senator to say they just couldn't get to the small business bill because Democrats would not let them have amendments. The question is, Do they want to get to a small business bill or do they want to just continue to support big business, big corporations, and Wall Street?

That is the question. Do they want to get to Main Street? Do they want to help Main Street? They have to show that by their votes--not just by their words but by their votes. In this business it is not words, it is actions that matter, and the only action we have is them voting no. No. I am trying to help them say yes. I know they want to say no. That is what they think they should say to America: No on this, no on that. I don't think Americans want to hear no when it comes to help for small business. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think they want to hear yes.

So let's find a way. I am asking my colleagues on the other side to look at their list of amendments again and see if there is some way between the numbers of two and four and eight we can find a way to move forward to help Main Street businesses.

Just so people understand, again, this bill that is pending before the Senate--and I see the Senator from Michigan is here. I am hoping he wants to speak a minute about the provision he has. I am thinking in a minute we may have some word--I know the leadership is talking, and perhaps sometime in the next hour or so we may have something that has come together. But I hope the Members are focusing on the importance of this bill for creating jobs in America today, and that is what people want. That is what we should have been focused on.

We have tried, in many different ways, through many different bills, but this bill has $10 billion in tax cuts to small businesses--not to the big businesses, not to Wall Street but to small businesses. It has so many helpful provisions, through the Small Business Administration, to give small businesses the support they need.

I would be delighted to yield for a question.

Yes, it is true.

That is true.

That is true.

That is a fair characterization.

That is absolutely true.

I say to the Senator, in some ways I have some trepidation of continuing to read this because I have had any number of Democrats come to me and say: But there are more Republican provisions in this bill than there are Democratic provisions in the underlying bill. That is a credit to Senator Snowe, I have to say, who worked so hard and does such a good job. But to come to the floor, I say to the Senator from New York, that there are no Republican provisions in this bill, it is laughable.

For whatever reason, I don't know why. I think maybe they think that is good politics. But I don't believe it is, and I don't think most Americans, even Republicans, would think that is good politics.

I see the Senator from Michigan, and I yield to him.

That seems to be where we are. That is why I said I feel like I am ``Alice in Wonderland,'' because it is topsy-turvy.

You are absolutely correct.

Absolutely.

Well, through the Chair, I thank the Senator from Michigan because he is absolutely right. This is the wrong bill to filibuster. I mean, you may get political points by filibustering other issues, but to filibuster a small business bill, to filibuster a Main Street bill is not the way forward.

Again, I cannot stand here and allow any Member of the other side to say there haven't been Republican amendments that have been accepted, offered. We have done everything to the point where there are almost more Republican provisions than there are Democratic provisions in the bill, which is completely paid for and provides a $12 billion tax cut today.

I see the majority leader, and I will yield the floor in just 30 seconds, but I wish to repeat one thing that is worth repeating. The Senator from Michigan was a cosponsor of this. For 10 years, independent entrepreneurs, sole entrepreneurs--and there are 20 million of them in America--have begged and pleaded to be on the same parity with big corporations so they could get a little bit of a break on their health insurance. This is a big issue for 20 million Americans. You know where it is? In this bill. Two billion dollars will leave the Federal Treasury and go into the pockets of every independent entrepreneur in America, and that side is standing in the way of that. I hope the reporters are following this carefully because the details are important.

I thank the Senator from Michigan, and I see the majority leader on the floor. I think he may have a word or two to say.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, there are a number of Senators on the floor who wish to speak. I see the Senator from Michigan, who has indicated she would like to speak for a minute on this bill. I will talk for the next 5 minutes, and others are going to want to speak as well.

I commend the Senator from Oregon, who has been down here day after day explaining the value of this extraordinary bill that was put together through hours and hours and days and weeks and months of debate in the Finance Committee and in the Small Business Committee.

I was very pleased to hear the leadership--although we came to no final agreement in the last hour, I am feeling and hearing, as the Senator from Oregon alluded, that perhaps we are moving closer to that opportunity because this bill was built with good will, with hard work, with some smart and innovative ideas.

Just to say how proud I am of the effort, this is just a list of headlines today that have come out in support of this bill. Some of these headlines are questioning, is someone blocking this bill? What is happening? Why can't we get this small business bill done? It is a good question.

So it is Thursday night. We have some time to continue to work. The problem with the four amendments that were offered by the minority is that they are not exactly offering side-by-sides to that, but it is better than eight. So we are making some progress. So I am going to stay on the Senate floor tonight and talk about the fact that this bill has, if you count it, actually probably more Republican provisions than Democratic provisions in the bill. They are all good.

As the majority leader said, this will be a great victory, not for us but for the small businesses we represent. This will be a great step forward to turn this recovery into a job-filled recovery rather than a jobless recovery because the only entities that will be creating jobs, Mr. President, as you know, because you were a former banker, are small businesses.

I want to show the chart about the jobs lost to just repeat this. The job loss in America has been from small businesses. If people want to know what happened to the 15 million jobs, what happened to the 10 million jobs, I will tell you. They ran out the front and back doors and out the windows of small businesses all over this country. If we don't do something, either tonight or tomorrow or next week, they are going to go through another whole month and maybe longer.

We have been debating this for a year and a half. It is bipartisan. I believe we are coming to some conclusion, and I am very proud I have helped lead a part of this effort. But I see the Senator from Michigan and one of the members of the Small Business Committee here, and I say to them that I think we are just speaking in morning business. So under the previous order they can be recognized.

Mr. President, I am pleased to join my two outstanding colleagues on the floor tonight to continue to talk about this extremely important bill. I follow up on what the Senator from Michigan said about the Senator from Washington State. There are only a handful of Senators in this Chamber who have actually built a business, a small business--it was when it started--and then of course it was an extremely successful larger business in the State of Washington State, and then it went national. So she knows about what she speaks, the details of how a business needs to be built.

You cannot build it without access to affordable capital. Our businesses, some of them that are lucky enough to have something, are paying exorbitant interest rates on their credit cards. Some of them have watched their lines of credit evaporate, so they have to scramble to go get high-cost--it is hard to run a small business if you are paying 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent or 50 percent on the money you are borrowing to run your business.

You know you have to get affordable capital. That is what small businesses need. That is what they do not have. Members on the other side of the aisle

could not run fast enough to bail out big banks on Wall Street, but they are walking at a snail's pace to get small business help on Main Street, and it is a shame.

But these headlines today say it all: ``GOP Filibusters Small Business Bill After Criticising Dems For Delay,'' ``Senate Republicans Block Small-Business Lending Measure,'' ``GOP blocks small business bill,'' ``Republicans block Senate vote on small business,'' ``Republicans block small business lending bill.''

The New York Times article today is actually pretty devastating. I would think if anybody bothered to read the top two paragraphs--I am going to ask my staff to get that to me in just a second, and I am going to read it into the Record. It goes on and on and on.

I think that this debate has shown that we actually brought a bipartisan bill to the floor, that has been worked on openly in public all year or longer, in two committees, Finance and Small Business. As I said earlier today, and I put the red-line chart up, which I will put up in just a minute, this chart that we sent out to many people today showed every provision of the bill and who suggested that provision. As you can see, there are many Republican names listed here--Senator Snowe, Senator Crapo, Senator Risch, Senator Snowe again. Senator Grassley is on here. Senator Hatch is on here--because this bill was built with some of the best ideas from these committees over a long period of time.

This is not a little bill. It is not a technical bill. It is not a bill that you pass and nobody knows you passed it because it does not do anything. This bill does some great things that we have needed to do for a long time.

That is why we are fighting so hard. That is why we are not going to give up, and we cannot wait much longer. As Senator Cantwell said, it is heartbreaking for small businesses that had nothing to do with the Wall Street meltdown. They never owned a derivative. They never heard of the word ``derivative.'' They never heard of the word ``swap.'' All they were doing was serving pancakes in their diner day after day. All they were doing was selling hardware equipment so their neighbors could build or repair their houses. They never heard the word ``derivative.''

Then a couple things happened. They started seeing some very scary headlines. All of a sudden, the entire world economy was at risk, and they are standing there saying: Wait a minute, what did I do? I have been doing the same business. I am not a millionaire, but I am happy, I take care of my employees, I am bringing home a nice paycheck, I am building my business, and the floor fell out from underneath them through no fault of their own.

This Congress has scrambled and scrambled and could not run fast enough to go help the big businesses and the executives. Sometimes I read in the paper what they make and I sit there and I almost want to cry, not because I am jealous of what they make in that way, but I think to myself, how does it feel to be struggling in a business and you--I have had letters from people who said: Senator, I stopped paying myself completely. That is what business owners are doing right now. They have stopped paying themselves completely, and I have to wake every morning and read about big company executives who are complaining because their take-home salary is $20 million a year or $200 million a year.

I mean, think about that, $20 million, $200 million a year. We have business owners, 27 million small business owners, and many of them right now--because as Senator Cantwell said, this catastrophe did not start just 2 months ago--who have been holding on.

I think about them at night. I see them. I think they are holding on with just their bare knuckles, by the remaining strength they have. They are not making any money. So the article today says--and they have gotten it right. This is dozens of articles:

Senate Republicans on Thursday rejected a bill to aid small

business with expanded loan programs and tax breaks, a

procedural blockade that underscored how fiercly determined

the party's leaders are to deny Democrats any further

legislative accomplishments before November's midterm

elections.

This is a small business measure championed by myself and others and has the backing of some of the Republican party's most reliable allies in the business world, including the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. Several Republican lawmakers, the article says, helped to write the bill. But Republican leaders filibustered.

As the Senator from Michigan said, this is unprecedented. I do not know if the Senator from Michigan has that chart, but I would like to ask her to show it again, if you could hold it up or let me take it here because it is unprecedented in the number of noes and filibusters.

I think this is a no that might have been said, but we need to find a way to say yes. I know a no was said, but we have to find a way to say yes. So that is what we are going to be doing tonight, tomorrow, through the weekend. I wish to say how much I appreciate the 70, now over 100, organizations that are supporting this bill. I know the NFIB has said, and I wish to be very clear, they want the bill. They also would like a few amendments.

But they did not say they wanted 100 amendments. They did not say they wanted 50 amendments. We are now sort of down somewhere between one and four. That is better than 8 or 12 or 10. We are somewhere between one and four. If we can just keep narrowing it and try to be as fair as we can, we can deliver for the American people and share this wonderful victory, and I mean that. Share it. This is not a Democratic victory. It will not be a Republican victory. It will be a victory for our constituents and for the 27 million small businesses in America that are waiting for someone to stand and help them, cheer for them, and encourage them.

That is what we are trying to do. I appreciate the support the President himself has given. He has been leading. He has been saying, as he is trying to work our way out of this recession--and I have not agreed with every single thing, of course, and no Senator does with any President, but I think this President has said that he understands the recession will be over when small businesses start to hire because big businesses are not going to.

They basically say that in their reports. They are holding their capital. The big banks are holding their capital. It is going to be the small businesses that create the jobs. It is where the jobs were lost.

I am going to show this chart again. This is from the monthly National Employment Report: Small business, 81 percent of the jobs lost were lost by small businesses. So it makes common sense that if it was the small businesses that lost the jobs in a recession, as I said, they were not in the back when they were making the ``donuts,'' they were not trading on derivatives. They did not have anything to do with that.

But they got caught up in a terrible financial collapse because of greed and poor regulations and all sorts of shady dealings, and they did not have anything to do with it. But they lost the jobs. So in order to get this recovery moving and get jobs in the recovery, so it is not a jobless recovery but a job-filled recovery, we have to focus on small business.

My ranking member, Senator Snowe, has worked very hard on many provisions of this bill. She has been a remarkable champion for small business. Max Baucus, every time we have sent him a couple things we want to do, you know what his job is? It is to find a way to pay for it. He has a thankless job around here. I want everyone to know. He has probably the toughest job in this entire place because everything everyone wants to do, everything, we have to find a way to pay for it.

You know the guy who tries to find that is Max Baucus. I have given him page after page, amendment after amendment. He has been so gracious. Every time we say: We need this amendment paid for, Max, can we find a way to pay for it, he goes to work.

But we are getting exhausted through this process, but we are going to continue to fight. Senator Baucus has found amazing ways to pay for these amendments because we are not going to add to the deficit anymore. Those days are over. We are going to pay for this bill. This bill has tremendous possibilities to actually make a lot of money. One program will actually earn $1.1 billion, it was so smartly

put together. Then we understand that if more people are hired, of course, they will pay taxes, and that money will come back to local government and State government and that will be a big help to everyone, to try to get us out of our deficit situation.

I see one or two other Senators on the floor. I see the Senator from Pennsylvania. My time has expired under the 10-minute morning business order. But I wish to thank the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Pennsylvania for their support. I am going to be working over the weekend with Members of both sides of the aisle.

I am going to be working with both sides of the aisle over the weekend, through tonight, tomorrow, be in touch with both leaders, and continue to work with Senator LeMieux and Senator Voinovich, who were the two Republicans who gave us a vote on the lending program, and see what we can do to narrow it down from four to potentially one, have a great vote, and claim victory for the small businesses of America. We all share a great victory and can be proud of the work we have done over the last year and a half.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to follow up on what the Senator from Michigan has said because she has been one of the most forceful voices for trying to find a way to get the Senate to be able to move more quickly on so many important things. She is right. We have to stop saying no every day, and particularly on this day, and start saying yes to small businesses. The sooner we can say yes to small business, the sooner this recession will end, the sooner Americans can get back to work, and the sooner we can begin to put a real downpayment on the deficit that has been caused by reckless policies of the past.

She is right. And every day matters. This bill has been debated literally for a year and a half--not on the Senate floor but in committees and meetings and negotiations. As I held up a chart earlier today, most of the provisions in the bill--both from the Finance Committee and the Small Business Committee--were Republican-generated ideas or amendments. As I said, small business has many champions in this Chamber, and we need to show them, not just say we are but actually show them that with our votes.

It is going to be a long weekend for some people. I am going to be working all weekend. But it is going to be a long weekend for some who are concerned about image because I am going to submit for the Record, just today, in the last 24 hours, the list of headlines that are coming out around America from papers--conservative papers, liberal papers, independent newspapers--and they are not good for my friends on the other side of the aisle.

The Huffington Post, more liberal, of course: ``GOP Filibusters Small Business Bill After Criticizing Dems For Delay.''

But Bloomberg, not that liberal: ``Senate Republicans Block Small Business-Lending Measure.''

Politico, one of our papers here: ``GOP blocks small-businesses bill.

CQ: ``Republicans Block Senate Vote on Small-Business Bill.''

An AP article in the Boston Globe: ``Republicans Block Small Business Lending Bill.''

This cannot be good news over the weekend for a group that claims they are very probusiness.

A Las Vegas Sun editorial today: ``Helping Main Street--Senate Should Approve Legislation That Could Spark Small Businesses' Growth.''

The Washington Independent: ``Democrats Go Small. GOP Still Says `No.' ''

They have said no one too many times. We have to say yes. If we want this recession to end--and I believe we do; I believe all of us do--we know our constituents are counting on us to do good work. So it is going to be a long weekend for whoever's job it is--the staffers over there--to try to get better headlines for their bosses. They are going to be working hard over the weekend. One of the ways we can do that is to get a small list of amendments, like one, two, three, four. The leader, our leader, offered three. It was rejected. We have been talking somewhere now between one and four. I think over the weekend we can figure that out, how to pay for these amendments.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a list of other headlines be printed in the Record.

But I want to answer again because these small business groups--we have 80 of them and they are counting on us--keep calling and saying: Vote for the bill. Vote for the bill. And what they are hearing from the other side is: We can't vote for the bill until we get amendments.

If we try to put too many amendments on this bill, even good ones, it will bring this bill down. We have to find a way to come to an end of the debate, give the small businesses of America a $12 billion tax cut, and strengthen the SBA programs that banks and credit unions use--the small business programs--and then get this special lending program, in partnership with community banks, for the banks that know their community the best, the banks that know the businesses down the street.

The Taco Sisters Restaurant in Lafayette, LA--I have used Katy and Molly Richard before, and I would like to repeat some of the things they said. This is in 2008, looking back now--not a great time, but Molly convinced her sister Katy to move back home from New Hampshire and they made their dream come true. They leased a small restaurant on Johnston Street in Lafayette and they opened in February of 2009. They sell wonderful Louisiana products. Molly goes on to say they have seven employees but would like to open more locations. The problem has been getting credit to grow. She says:

We have good credit, a good business plan, but have had

trouble finding capital to grow our business. I was surprised

that credit would be so tight for a business like ours--a

short success story but successful nonetheless. Our business

has seven employees and would like to keep growing, open more

locations.

This is the kicker line:

Small community banks know businesses in their towns and

can create jobs by getting more money out to them.

This bill is not about big banks on Wall Street. It is about entering a partnership with banks on Main Street so

they can send capital to the businesses across the street.

It is a very simple bill, and we are going to work hard--hard--to pass it.

On the issue of amendments, again, so we are clear, the minority leader came to the floor earlier today and said something like: The majority leader keeps putting down substitutes, and we don't get to read the substitutes, and we don't know what the substitutes are.

Well, I have read the substitutes. I will tell him what they said. Senator Reid came down to the floor and offered the substitute first. He introduced a new substitute because Senators Snowe, Grassley, Enzi, Isakson, and Collins wanted to put the SBA recovery provisions--those are the very popular loan provisions they had in the stimulus package-- the Republican Senators--I am going to repeat their names: Snowe, Grassley, Enzi, Isakson, and Collins--all five Republican Senators wanted to move that provision from a bill that is pending somewhere else into this bill. So the Democratic leader said yes, and he did it. He put that in the substitute, and then offered it as a substitute. That was not good enough.

So then five other Republican Senators--I am going to get their names right here--Senators Thune, Johanns, Coburn, Inhofe, and Bond--filed an amendment. The record will show it was amendment No. 4453. Their amendment, led by Senator Thune, was to kill the Small Business Lending Fund.

So this is where it really gets interesting. My leader comes to me and says there is a Republican amendment to kill the Small Business Lending Fund, and so he has to accommodate them. I said: But that is the heart of the bill. He says: We still have to accommodate them. So he takes it out of the bill, really against my wishes, but I guess at the time I did not think I had any alternative.

That was a Republican amendment. The leader not only accepted it, we did not even have to vote on it. He just did it automatically.

Those are two amendments they got that we did not even vote on because the leader did it for them, against my wishes, and against a lot of people's wishes.

So we build up again and say: OK, you had to take it out, but we think we have 60 votes to put it back in. And so we did. That is the process. We had 60 votes. We put the lending fund back in.

I see the Senator from Florida in the Chamber. He helped to do that. Senator Nelson from Florida helped to put that lending provision back in this bill.

Now we have come to sort of a standstill because of that, and maybe because of a few other things. I am figuring this out as we go along. But one thing I have already figured out is, we have to find a way now to pass this bill.

The leader has had some very good discussions on the floor--just a couple of hours ago. But I have to defend my leader because when the other side says that Harry Reid, the Senator from Nevada, will not give them amendments, he does more than that. He puts their amendments in his substitutes, which means they do not even have to offer them. He does it for them automatically.

So they deserve headlines like this. I hate to say it. They earned them. They tagged themselves with these headlines.

Maybe other people around here would not call them out, but I think it is my job as the chairman of this committee because I said when I took this chairmanship that this committee was going to be a champion for small business and we were going to fight hard for them. I offered lots of amendments for them in other bills. Sometimes I was successful; sometimes I wasn't. But I said we would fight for them, and that is what we are going to do. If there was ever a time they needed us to stand up and fight for them, it is now.

There was an article in the Washington Post--and I will conclude in a minute. I see the Senator from Florida. This is what our people read. I know not everybody reads the L.A. Times, and I think this came from the L.A. Times, but this was the headline I read and got upset about, and I want to say why I did.

I think the small businesspeople in my State sit around and read articles such as this, and when their kids come to the breakfast table I think they fold the article at the breakfast table because they don't want their children to see it because it is very upsetting. Lots of kids can't read; they are young. But a lot of teenagers can. This is what teenagers read.

This is by Kenneth Feinberg, who is doing some work in the gulf. He just released a list of firms that gave their top employees bonuses of $1.6 billion. The report found that bonuses and other payments to highly paid executives at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and 13 other financial forums were, he said, ill-advised. The payments, more than $10 million in addition to generous annual salaries for some, came as many of the 17 firms suffered huge losses. Feinberg says they were not good. The President says they were lavish bonuses. I don't know what to say about them because I can imagine a small business owner who has borrowed from everybody he knows to keep his business open the last year and a half; he stopped paying himself 8 months ago, and his children are sitting at the table saying: So, Dad, why can't we go on vacation?

While they are asking that question, he is reading the headlines about the same companies we gave money to on Wall Street gave bonuses of $10 million or $20 million or $30 million, and he doesn't have $200 to take his kids down the street to the amusement park.

Do my colleagues want to know why people in America are mad? I think this might be one reason. They don't understand what Washington is all about.

I am not on the committee that has to oversee bonuses. It makes me so mad I don't know what I would do if I were, but I am just pointing this out. While we are here diddling over small business, this is what small business owners are reading, and they are wondering: Has the world turned completely upside down? The same firms that got our money to bail them out get bonuses, and I can't even pay myself or my wife who works for the business or my child a salary for a month.

I am telling my colleagues, we better get moving on this bill, or I am not sure what is going to happen to either party when this election comes up because we need to do what is right. We need to do it soon. We know what is right, I think. I believe we do. We have worked hard to put a very smart, good bill together that doesn't increase the deficit by a penny; that provides $12 billion in tax cuts--tax cuts, $12 billion. I know those people on the other side, our friends, say Democrats are never for tax cuts. Well, we have $12 billion in tax cuts paid for in this bill for small business.

So to the sisters who started this restaurant in hopes they could depend on us to do some right things for them, for all the small businesses struggling out there, I am saying to them: Just hang on. I know it is hard, but just try to hang on a few more weeks, a few more months if you can, because this bill is going to have a major impact, we hope. We don't know 100 percent for sure, but I can promise you doing nothing is a disaster. This bill has a lot of things we are going to try. Nobody here has a magic wand. But we have loan programs. We have some counseling programs. We have some small bank programs. We have some credit union programs. We are going to just throw it out there carefully, strategically, and hope it hits because if it doesn't, I am kind of running out of ideas because I am not giving any more money to Wall Street.

So these are our best ideas for Main Street. I am proud of the work we have done. I see the Senator from Florida. I am going to yield the floor. There may be other Senators who wish to come down and speak.

I wish to thank Senator Nelson from Florida who has been a champion. I wish to again thank Senator Merkley, Senator Snowe for her work earlier today. Although we disagree on one small aspect on this bill, we will still work together over this weekend to see what agreement we can come to. I wish to thank Senator Cantwell particularly, and Senator Schumer, Senator Klobuchar, and others who have been terrific--Senator Boxer, Senator Murray. We are going to continue to work over the weekend to see what we can do to say yes to small business in America soon.

I would be happy to.

Well, I hope not. I wish to answer the question. I hope not. But we are very close because this bill, as the Senator knows, came to the floor because he helped to draft certain provisions of this from two committees with bipartisan support. Our leader, Senator Reid, has bent over backwards.

When Republicans objected, he basically sort of took some things out of the bill to put on the floor in hopes--didn't even make anybody vote on it, against my objections, and then we started a debate. Then it just sort of shut down after we got that lending program back on. We have to open it again. We have to find a way forward because that lending program is extremely important.

The Senator was a cosponsor of that. We have to find a way forward. I think I heard tonight on the Senate floor--I think I heard--that we are somewhere between one and four amendments.

So as we work over the weekend, I am hoping we can find a way to say yes because the Senator knows, representing Florida, it is a whole State full of small businesses. The Senator knows more than any Senator here how many businesses are hurting in Florida. Our whole gulf coast has been under tremendous strain over many issues the last couple of years. So I thank the Senator. I am just responding to his question to say I hope we are not at the point of no return. But we are close.

If we can salvage this bill and move forward and do the right thing for small business, I think we can all be proud of that work.

Well, the Senator is exactly right, but a better question is why would the minority leader insist on voting on an amendment we have already voted on three times. That is even a more interesting question. We have already voted on the Sessions-McCaskill amendment three times.

The Senator knows some people work for 10 years on amendments and never get a vote on the floor of the Senate. That amendment has had three chances--not one, not two, but three--and now we have to give them a fourth vote on the floor of the Senate. That is not anything to do with small business; that is a message.

It sends a terrible message. It says we are looking for bumper stickers and slogans as opposed to bills. I will say that again. Some people work around here for 10 years and can't get their amendment one vote on the floor of the Senate, and the Sessions-McCaskill amendment, in this case, because the minority leader has thrown it out there, we have voted this year three times already on that amendment. I don't think we need to vote on it again. We surely don't need it for this bill. It has nothing to do with spending caps. It has to do with sending money to community banks because they know the businesses that might be able to hire people, to create jobs, to lead us out of the recession. That is all this bill is mainly about.

Exactly. I mean, I don't know how you explain to teenagers. There really is no explanation.

I think it is shameful and we need to fix it. The Senator should know that is what we are trying to do. Again, I don't know what we can do about those bonuses. That is a subject for another committee. I am concerned and the Senator is as well. Maybe we can find a way. The BP writeoff--there will be a tremendous amount of criticism, and perhaps there are some legal grounds for us not allowing them to do that. It is inexplicable to people who are trying to run a small business and they see us having worked for a year and a half, and all that is going on and we still cannot seem to move this bill forward to the House for negotiation and then to the President's desk as quickly as possible.

I thank the Senator from Florida. I am going to speak another 4 minutes. I know staff is tired and we are going to wrap up soon. I wanted to end with a comment from another small business in Metairie, LA, which is right outside of New Orleans. This is a small business owner, Patti Martinez, a lifelong resident of New Orleans, who opened her business in March 2009. I am sure she thinks about that decision every day, thinking: Maybe I should have opened a couple of years earlier or waited. But she didn't know all the derivatives on Wall Street would blow up. She opened her business in March 2009. She has three children, so the idea is she waited for 10 years--there are a lot of moms out there who

have small kids at home. Frank and I have raised our children while I have been in the Senate. He works, too. We know how difficult that is.

I know a lot of moms dream for a long time about what they would do if they had some time. Patti waited 10 years and then opened her business--lucky her--in March 2009. She said: I have 15 employees; they are part time. Our little business has taken off beautifully. We host birthday parties, holiday parties, and sock hops. I recently hosted a 50th birthday party.

She is explaining that her business is going on. She said:

Everyone, once inside our facility, loves our business and

comes back again [even in these difficult times]. We ran one

commercial on Channel 4 for a week and our bookings

quadrupled.

One commercial on Channel 4, which is our big station, for a week and her bookings quadrupled.

If I had additional funds for advertising, video games, and

maybe one more employee, our business would really take off.

This is the story of the recovery. This is the story of the end of this recession. If we don't have more business owners like Patti Martinez who will hire that one more person, this recovery is never going to happen. Don't take my word for that. Go look up all of the journals, the scientific journals, and all of the economic studies. You can go to the fancy schools--Harvard, MIT--and look and they say that. It is not just what I am saying. Big business isn't going to hire. Small business is going to hire--the Patti Martinezes of the world. She ran one commercial and her business quadrupled. Couldn't we give her a loan so she can run maybe two or three commercials? She is not paying herself any bonus, I can promise you that.

I am going to end with a letter we received today from the National Restaurant Association, representing 945,000 restaurants across the United States. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

In part, it says:

We also support the LeMieux-Landrieu Amendment incorporated

into the bill, which would establish a $30 billion Small

Business Lending Fund. . . . As the nation's fragile economic

recovery continues, households are still holding back on

spending and, as a result, many restaurant operators are

continuing to struggle. Expanding access to capital will help

restaurant operators make necessary investments, hire and

retain workers, and, in certain cases, keep their doors open.

The restaurants in my State are having a particularly difficult time because they don't have capital. Now they don't have any seafood to sell. If we keep going much longer, they are not going to have any customers even if I could give them capital and seafood, because people don't think they should come to the gulf now. That is a whole other subject.

Tonight, we can loosen up some of this capital through bankers that they know--they worship with them in church, they worship with them in synagogues; they know them. The bankers know them. If we can help small community banks, maybe--just maybe--and some of these credit unions-- maybe some of the money we shower on Wall Street--maybe we could give a little bit of rain out there to middle America and get this recession over.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the National Urban League on celebrating 100 years of enabling African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights.

The National Urban League is a historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment in order to elevate the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities. Founded in 1910 and headquartered in New York City, the National Urban League spearheads the efforts of its local affiliates through the development of programs, public policy research, and advocacy. Today, there are more than 100 local affiliates in 36 States and the District of Columbia, providing direct services that impact and improve the lives of more than 2 million people nationwide.

This week, some of the Nation's foremost power brokers, celebrities, corporate leaders, and activists are convening at the Washington Convention Center in the Nation's Capital to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Urban League. The Centennial Conference marks the completion of the first century of leadership and service and now prepare for a new civil rights strategy to meet the new challenges to equal opportunity in America.

The National Urban League employs a five-point approach to provide economic empowerment, educational opportunities, and the guarantee of civil rights for African Americans: education and youth empowerment, which ensures the education of all children by providing access to early childhood literacy, aftercare programs and college scholarships; economic empowerment, which invests in the financial literacy and employability of adults through job training, home ownership, and entrepreneurship; health and quality of life empowerment, which promotes community wellness through a focus on prevention, including fitness, healthy eating, and access to affordable healthcare; civic engagement and leadership empowerment, which encourages all people to take an active role to improve quality of life through participation in community service projects and public policy initiatives; and civil rights and racial justice empowerment, which guarantees equal participation in all facets of American society through proactive public policies and community-based programs.

I ask that my colleagues join me in congratulating the National Urban League on its 100th anniversary and in wishing them the best for years to come.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 477, S. 258.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statement related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 486, H.R. 1454.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, without any intervening action or debate, and that any statements related to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 5874, received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record, without further intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 592, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 601, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 308, the adjournment resolution, received from the House and at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.