Floor Statements

The author Lois McMaster Bujold wrote:

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create

them and then fail them was surely damnation.

Before 1997, we largely failed the children of the working poor. The Children's Health Insurance Program changed that. For millions of working families, the Children's Health Insurance Program has truly been a blessing.

Before 1997, kids of the working poor had nowhere to go to get health insurance--nowhere. Their parents' employers did not offer health insurance benefits, and the individual market offered only low-quality insurance options at unaffordable prices. Without health insurance, kids could not see the doctor for a checkup, they could not get a prescription for an earache, and they could not get treatment for common chronic conditions such as asthma. Unhealthy kids cannot run and play, they cannot do well in school, and they cannot grow into healthy and productive adults.

In 1997, Congress took action to address this problem. We established the Children's Health Insurance Program. Today, we finally move forward to keep the program going. The Children's Health Insurance Program has bipartisan roots, and it has achieved what we created it to do; namely, it covers low-income, uninsured kids.

Congress enacted the Children's Health Insurance Program as a bipartisan compromise. Members of Congress wanted to address the rising number of children without health insurance, and Senator Rockefeller, Senator Hatch, Senator Kennedy, and the late Senator John Chafee led the way. I am proud to have helped write and pass the Children's Health Insurance Program 12 years ago. It has been a tremendous success.

The Finance Committee reached a compromise that allowed States to set up children's health insurance programs that would meet their unique needs. States can choose whether they want to participate in the program. Within 2 years of CHIP's creation, every State decided to participate. It was a no-brainer. Every State wanted to address the health care needs of our most vulnerable children.

In its first decade, CHIP cut the number of uninsured children by more than one-third. Today, because of CHIP, nearly 7 million children get the doctors visits and medicines they need. Those healthier childhoods will enable those 7 million kids to become healthy, productive adults.

Health insurance is important. It is more than important; it is critical. Children with health coverage are more likely to get the health care they need, when they need it. Because of CHIP, 7 million kids have regular checkups, see doctors when they get sick, and get the prescription medications they need.

The task before us is to reauthorize this important program. Many will recall that we started this process back in the year 2007.

Congress worked hard, very hard to pass a bipartisan reauthorization package. I can tell my colleagues, Senators Hatch, Rockefeller and myself and Senator Grassley worked hours on end. I cannot tell you the number of hours we met and how hard it was, but we worked together and got that compromise. We got it passed on the floor, passed the House. But President Bush vetoed it twice. Times have changed. President Obama is looking forward to signing the Children's Health Insurance Program bill, and Congress is prepared to act.

Americans overwhelmingly support covering kids. The bill before us today will keep coverage for all children currently in the program, and we will start to reach more than 4 million additional uninsured, low- income kids. In

drafting this legislation, we relied heavily on the two vetoed bills. We keep CHIP focused on kids. That is the focus. Childless adults whom CHIP covers today will transition out of the program. This is focused on kids. This bill will not allow new waivers for CHIP coverage of childless adults. Low-income parents whom CHIP covers today will ultimately transition out of CHIP to Medicaid, with its lower match rate. This bill precludes new waivers for coverage of parents in CHIP. We cover low-income kids first. We agree that low-income kids are our first priority, but we do not limit State flexibility in designing CHIP programs. States choosing to cover kids above 300 percent of poverty will receive the lower Medicaid match for those kids. If they want to do so, they can, but they will get the lower match rate. We also included bonuses for States that meet enrollment targets for kids in Medicaid. Nearly three-quarters of uninsured kids are eligible for either Medicaid or CHIP but have not enrolled. We encourage States to improve their outreach practices to streamline enrollment procedures to keep them enrolled. We maintain State flexibility. We have given States the option to cover legal immigrant children and pregnant women during their first 5 years in the United States. States can decide whether they want to cover those children. Currently, Federal law prevents States from covering legal immigrants on Medicaid or CHIP until they have been in the country for 5 years. But some States have found this provision to be too restrictive. Those States have chosen to use their own money to meet the needs of their residents.

In 2008, for example, 18 States chose to cover legal immigrant children, and 23 States chose to cover legal immigrant pregnant women, rather than deny them the health care they need for 5 years. The Federal Government should not penalize States for trying to help needy populations who are here legally. This bill would allow States the option to cover legal immigrant children and pregnant women in Medicaid or CHIP and receive the appropriate Federal match.

More broadly, we have also created a State option that allows States to designate CHIP funds to offer premium assistance. Premium assistance can help families to afford private coverage offered by employers or other sources. We improve the quality of children's health insurance. Discussions about health insurance often get bogged down in talk about cost and coverage but we ignore quality. Discussions about quality often ignore the unique needs of children. Our CHIP bill launches a substantially new initiative to improve children's health quality. This initiative will invest $45 million a year for 5 years to develop national core measures for children's health quality, improve data collection in CHIP and Medicaid, and promote the use of electronic records. These efforts will help to improve the quality of care available in CHIP and Medicaid.

We pay for what we do. Like the vetoed bills, this legislation will increase the Federal tax on a pack of cigarettes by 61 cents. We also make proportional increases for other tobacco products. Increasing the cigarette tax will discourage smoking, particularly among teens, and that will be good for kids as well.

The bill we are considering today is a good bill. In putting together the Finance Committee's bill, we worked to cover as many low-income, uninsured kids as possible. We respected our budgetary limits, and we made compromises in good faith with our Republican colleagues. In committee, we made further compromises which I hope have strengthened this bill even more. I prefer to be standing here today with all my colleagues beside me, especially my good friends, Senators Grassley and Hatch. But we could not agree on everything. I hope the remaining disagreements do not prevent Senators from doing the right thing. Let us not fail the children of the working poor. Let us get these kids to doctors visits and medications they need, and let us continue the blessing that is the Children's Health Insurance Program.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Finance Committee detailees, fellows, and interns be allowed floor privileges during the consideration of H.R. 2: Mary Baker, Lauren Bishop, Pete Harvey, Laura Hoffmeister, Matt Kazan, Bridget Mallon, Toni Miles, Kelcy Poulson, Aris Prasetiyo, Daniel Stein, and Kelley Whitener.

Mr. President, pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I submit for publication in the Congressional Record the revised rules of the Committee on Finance for the 111th Congress, adopted by the committee on January 15, 2009. I ask unanimous consent that the rules be printed in the Record.

Madam President, the House bill before us contains a provision that causes me great concern. The provision would make the U.S. Government an active participant in an abusive tax shelter transaction.

In the past, Congress has voted to shut that tax shelter down. And this week, I sought to offer an amendment to strike the provision from this bill. But I have been prevented from offering that amendment. That this provision will remain in the bill makes this bill a far less attractive measure.

Section 18 of the bill requires the United States to serve as a guarantor of obligations incurred by domestic subway and other transportation systems. These obligations arise from the systems' participation in leasing arrangements called lease in/lease out, or LILOs, and sale in/lease out, or SILOs.

LILOs and SILOs are sham transactions. The IRS has designated them as ``listed'' tax shelters. That means that these tax shelters are among the most egregious abuses of the tax law.

LILOs and SILOs are very complicated deals, designed to look like legitimate leasing transactions. But in reality, they are shams.

In a SILO, a tax-exempt entity nominally ``sells'' an asset, like a subway system. The other party to the deal is an investor who is subject to taxation and who needs a tax write-off. The investor nominally ``buys'' the asset. The investor then nominally ``leases'' the asset back to the tax-exempt entity.

In truth, the benefits and burdens of ownership never shift. And the sale and the lease have no economic reality.

These parties purport to make purchase payments and rent payments. But in reality, these payments are just paper entries, facilitated by a bank that is in on the deal. The investor pays the tax exempt entity an up-front fee in exchange for its willingness to participate in the deal. But other than that, no real money changes hands.

There is little, if any, risk to any party to these transactions. That is because the deal is cooked from the beginning. It is planned so as to eliminate any risk.

But there are significant tax benefits to the investor. The investor gets interest and depreciation deductions. And those deductions generate tax losses. Employing these tax losses, the investor pays less tax on income that the investor earns elsewhere.

This chart illustrates how a SILO transaction works. You do not have to understand all the details to see how complicated the transaction is.

As Chairman of the Finance Committee, I have had these deals on my radar screen for quite some time. In 2003, the Finance Committee held a hearing with a confidential informant. The witness risked his professional reputation to tell us how abusive LILO and SILO transactions are.

I pushed for legislation to shut these deals down. The 2004 Jobs Act eliminated the tax benefits for most of the investors who had entered into these transactions.

Since 2005, I have worked to shut down the remaining deals that the Jobs Act failed to address. Unfortunately, our efforts have met with resistance. Some argue that shutting down these transactions would be applying law retroactively. But I believe that these transactions always violated the law, as they lack any economic substance.

In the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005, Congress imposed excise taxes on tax-exempt entities and their managers who entered into tax shelter transactions. That law recognized the role that some tax exempt entities, including transit agencies, played as ``accommodating parties'' to tax shelter deals.

Since 1999, the IRS has devoted considerable resources to shutting down these deals. The IRS has designated both LILOs and SILOs as ``listed'' tax shelter transactions. The IRS has audited every one of these transactions that it could find. The IRS has litigated four cases, and won every time. Recently, the IRS announced a settlement initiative to shut down the remaining cases and reports an 80-percent participation rate.

We have been trying to stop these tax shelters for years. So how does the Government end up guaranteeing this kind of tax shelter? The complicated structure of LILOs and SILOs plays a part.

Under the terms of the agreements, transit agencies are required to obtain a guarantee from an insurer. The insurer guarantees that the agencies will be able to buy back the subway at the end of the lease period. The agreements require that the insurer have a very high credit rating.

The current economic crisis has caused downgrades of insurers' credit ratings. That has put the tax-exempt entities into technical default on their agreements. Under the agreements, when the tax-exempt entities default, the investors have a right to terminate the lease.

The investors are taking advantage of this legal opportunity. They are trying to cash in. The investors are attempting not just to recoup the nominal purchase price of the assets. They are also demanding that the transit agencies pay over the value of the tax benefits that the investor will lose as a result of the premature unwinding of

the deal. The value of the tax benefits can be many times the putative purchase price.

This chart that I referred to earlier is an exhibit from a lawsuit, Hoosier Energy v. John Hancock Life Insurance. In that case, the Monroe County Circuit Court in Indiana issued a temporary injunction barring John Hancock from collecting on the technical default.

Transit agencies do not have lots of excess money just sitting around. So they have come to the Congress asking for a guarantee from the U.S. Government.

Now I do not want our Nation's subway systems to be at risk. I am open to considering ways to help keep them financially sound.

But I am unwilling to do so at the expense of American taxpayers. The bill before us today asks taxpayers to put their tax dollars at risk. The bill asks taxpayers to guarantee transit agencies who knowingly and willfully entered into deals that had no economic substance and were designed for the sole purpose of avoiding taxes.

The Government has come under much criticism for actions it has taken to jump-start our economy. But deliberately involving the U.S. Government in a tax shelter scam would add fuel to that fire.

We must not add legitimacy to an abusive transaction that the Congress, the courts, the Treasury, and the IRS have spent years trying to shut down.

We must not undermine the good efforts of the IRS to prosecute these cases. We need the IRS to accomplish as much work as it can to eliminate these and other scams.

We must not ask American taxpayers who struggle to pay their taxes to underwrite deals set up to help wealthy investors attempting to shelter their income.

The approach in the bill before us today is not a solution. Stepping in to guarantee these deals exposes American taxpayers to ongoing risk. Some event could trigger a requirement that the Government pay the investors. This bill puts taxpayers on the hook for a long time.

In addition, I understand that this proposal applies to only 80 percent of the transit agencies that entered into these tax shelter deals. What about the other 20 percent of the systems who are not covered? What happens to them? We need a fair and balanced approach to resolve this issue.

We would do better to figure out a way to discourage investors from acting on the technical default simply because the insurer's credit rating has been downgraded. A downgrade does not mean that the insurer is not good for the money. I intend to explore options with this goal in mind. We need a solution that protects both the transit agencies and the American taxpayer.

Finally, this is an auto bill. We should not forfeit the opportunity to bolster our automotive industry by cluttering up the bill with unrelated and controversial proposals.

There is a proper time and place for everything. This is neither the time nor the place to divert attention from our immediate task, helping our automakers.

This provision has no business in the auto bill. The Senate should take the provision out. And if the Senate does not take the provision out, it will only add to the burdens that are weighing this bill down.

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

Mr. President, in a moment I will ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to passage of H.R. 7327, the pension bill. Before I do that, I wish to say this is very important relief for seniors and for the country. The bill includes a provision that would allow seniors who are 70\1/2\ years of age not to have to make withdrawals from their IRA accounts that the current law requires. Under current law, if you are 70\1/2\ or older, you must begin to withdraw significant amounts from your 401(k) accounts or IRA accounts and if you don't, you pay a big penalty. At these times it is not wise to require that, because the accounts are lower in value and they should not have to make those withdrawals if they don't want to.

In addition, this legislation would allow companies to postpone making increased contributions to their pension plans also required by the recent pension law. When we revised pension law a short while ago, we were pretty strict to protect employees by requiring companies to make contributions to the pension plans at a much faster rate. That made sense then, but given the economic downturn, with the market values down so much lower than they were back then, it makes sense, I believe--and I think most Senators agree--that those contributions should be postponed or later modified in order to keep companies viable.

A lot of companies need this to meet payrolls in these difficult times, and this will prevent them having to freeze their benefits.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 7327, which was received from the House.

Mr. President, we are living through an unprecedented economic downturn. Over the past 15 months, the Dow Jones Industrial companies have lost more than one-third of their value. An end does not appear in sight.

This sharp market decline hurts more than just Wall Street. It hurts every American with a retirement plan. When the market drops, so do the assets in pension plans.

Over the past 15 months, because of the current financial crisis, retirement accounts have lost as much as $2 trillion in assets due to the current financial crisis. That is $2 trillion that disappeared from the retirement accounts of American workers. And that is $2 trillion that disappeared from the accounts of pension plans.

Congress must act now to protect individual retirement accounts and pension benefits and assets.

This bill provides relief for seniors age 70\1/2\ and older whom current law requires to take distributions from their retirement plans.

Individuals would have the option to keep their retirement savings where they are. We should not force them to take out huge portions of their savings when the market is down.

This bill also contains a number of provisions to help ease the strain on pension plans. And this bill would help to prevent the need for some plans to reduce benefits or make extraordinary funding contributions due to the market downturn.

If we fail to act and provide short-term funding relief, pension plans would be unable to afford their increased contributions. By one estimate, current law would require 350 of the Fortune 500 companies to contribute an extra $100 billion or more to their pension plans next year, even if the market rebounds. If these companies did this, they would reduce their investment spending by $60 to $70 billion next year. That is something that our economy cannot afford.

This bill provides relief for single-employer plans that fall below the set funding target percentage set in the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

And the bill provides analogous relief for multi-employer plans that are faced with significant underfunding due to market losses. This relief would allow them to temporarily freeze their current funding certification or extend the time period that they have to restore their funding levels.

The bill also helps prevent benefit restrictions for those single- employer plans that may be significantly underfunded next year due to the market downturn.

This bill also contains a number of critical technical amendments to the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 arguably marks the most sweeping changes to the pension laws since the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

Like many complicated pieces of legislation, technical corrections to the law must be made.

Technical corrections to the law are often time sensitive. That is, many of them must be passed by both Houses of Congress before the effective date of the statute.

Many of the rules under the Pension Act were effective January 1, 2008. This means that the time for passing technical corrections has come and gone.

If we were not to act and pass these time-sensitive provisions now, the pension community and the Department of the Treasury--the agency tasked with interpreting the statute and providing the necessary details on how the new law works--would be placed in a very tough spot.

That is, the Department of the Treasury would not have the necessary corrections and clarifications of the original intent of the act to sufficiently issue the details necessary to allow the pension community to achieve proper compliance. This would not be fair to the pension community or the Treasury Department.

Failing to pass these technical corrections would therefore be irresponsible.

Here in the Senate, we passed the technical corrections contained in this act back in December 2007. We already said that these corrections are good pension policy.

Americans need real help from Congress to make sure that their retirement savings are safe and sound and available to them when they need it. This bill contains a number of provisions that would help to provide relief to individuals and pension plans and move the economy toward recovery.

Individuals and the pension community warned that individual retirement account holders and pension plan participants could be adversely affected without the provisions contained in this bill. Passing this pension package sends the right message to individuals, plan sponsors, and pension plan participants.

I thank my colleagues for helping to make passage of this bill possible today.

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

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

Mr. President, today I rise in tribute to the spirit of recovery for the Huntley Project High School which was destroyed in an early morning fire on Thursday, September 18. The bottomless community spirit and immediate outpouring of support from around Montana has enabled this school, its faculty and staff, 230 students, their parents and supporters to put their energies and efforts into opening its doors. Through the extraordinary leadership of school superintendent Dave Mahon and principal Tynie Mader, students gathered in the junior high auditorium at 8:15 a.m. on Monday, September 22, to receive school supplies and restart the school year in the wake of the fire. Classes are being held in trailers located on the practice field west of the burned high school.

The weekend following the fire, families and members of the community came together to clean up temporary classrooms for use, donate funds to replenish music and sports equipment, books and computers lost in the fire. Donations have come in from communities across Montana the Malta School District sent $500 to help, having experienced a devastating fire in 1995. The school has received bandstands from Absarokee schools, cleats from a major sports corporation, backpacks from Billings elementary schools, donations from the local banks and area businesses and offers from as far away as North Carolina.

The students have taken it upon themselves to shoulder part of the burden. They have applied to the television show ``Extreme Makeover'' to get their school rebuilt. They have been an integral part of sorting, carrying and cleaning school equipment. And their academic and extracurricular activities are getting an extra dose of school spirit these days.

The school and community rallied around the athletic teams at Huntley Project following the devastating fire. This burst of school spirit helped propel the Huntley Project Red Devils to the Montana Class B State championship in football on November 22. Huntley Project defeated Fairfield High 41-28. The victory in the State title game on the Red Devils home field capped off a perfect season for coach Jay Santy and his players. A sign on the fence encircling the field said ``Devils risen up with the flames.'' Indeed this statement is true of all in the Huntley Project community. The Red Devils girls volleyball team also rose to the occasion to excel this season. After being displaced from their gym due to the fire, the team was forced to practice and play all their games away from home. Despite this added challenge the squad led by coach Iona Stookey placed third at the State class B volleyball tournament. I would like to congratulate these fine student athletes, their coaches and teachers, and all in the Huntley Project community not only for their achievements on the playing field but also for coming together to support each other and working to rebuild the school.

Much has been done. More will need to be done. But we are Montanans, and we have that frontier spirit and grit that pulls a community together without question and without hesitation in times of need. In the meantime, we are all pulling for the Huntley Project Red Devils until their school is rebuilt.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to have supported the nomination of Neil M. Barofsky to be the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, at the Treasury Department.

I have a great interest in the Special IG for the TARP. I raised the idea in the first place, the first weekend that we were examining the Treasury financial bailout proposal.

As many will remember, the Treasury's original proposal for the TARP was three pages long. It gave the Secretary of the Treasury unlimited power over $700 billion. And it provided no oversight by anyone.

The House and Senate spent 2 weeks hammering out a better bill. That better bill included strong oversight, and it included the office of a Special IG for the financial rescue program, as I proposed that first weekend.

The size and complexity of this effort is unprecedented in recent memory. It is essential to have a team that focuses exclusively on the TARP program as managed by the Treasury Department, and it is essential for that team to report to Congress on the status of this new program.

My proposal for a Special IG was based on the Iraqi Reconstruction Special Inspector General. That was another massive oversight challenge. As the Congress debated what to include in the rescue package, 33 Senators signed a letter to the congressional leadership endorsing the idea of a Special IG to oversee the troubled asset program.

During the negotiations, the Treasury Department resisted. But then the administration and Congress agreed that the Special IG should be part of the final legislation. Congress passed it, and the President signed it into law.

The law gives the Special IG a $50 million budget. He will have the duties and responsibilities of inspectors general under the Inspector General Act of 1978. He will have the power to supervise and coordinate audits and investigations of TARP activities. He will have the power to appoint staff to carry out the activities of the office. And he may enter into contracts for audits and studies. We expect a report to the Finance Committee every 120 days on the activities of the TARP, and the law also directs the Special IG to report to Congress if information he requests is refused.

I support the nomination of Mr. Neil Barofsky. I congratulate him for his willingness to serve his country. It is going to be a demanding job. For some time, he is going to be playing catchup. I believe Mr. Barofsky's experience as a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York will serve him well in his new role as the Special IG.

The financial rescue program is huge--$700 billion. The number and variety of financial institutions receiving money from Treasury is extensive. Tracking the path of the bailout dollars through these institutions is going to be a difficult task.

The harsh reality is that almost half the $700 billion is already out the door of the TARP. The new Special IG will be looking back at Treasury's use of about $290 billion dollars in 45 days.

Anyone who has seen a number of the congressional hearings this week, including our Senate Finance Committee on November 17, knows there are a lot of questions about how the TARP is operating.

We know that the Treasury Department has named Neel Kashkari, Assistant Secretary for International Economics, to head the financial rescue program.

Treasury has decided to send $125 billion to nine major banks, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Another $125 billion will be allocated for thousands of small and midsized banks. The American International Group, or AIG, will receive around $40 billion of TARP funds in return for issuing preferred shares to the Treasury Department.

Secretary Paulson has also announced a policy regarding preferred shares and warrants for common stock. Standards for restrictions on executive compensation are being developed. Those include a clawback provision and a ban on golden parachutes during the period that Treasury holds equity issued through this program.

Several senior posts have been filled. And the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has been selected as a legal adviser.

Treasury has announced that the Bank of New York Mellon will serve as its custodian for the implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young have been hired to help with accounting and internal controls services.

These decisions made by the Treasury Department are critically important to the financial rescue program. Yet the Treasury has made them all without any oversight by a Special IG.

As for the use of the funds, the bottom line, frankly, is that the Secretary of Treasury told Congress and the American people that the Bush administration needed $700 billion to purchase troubled assets. Yet last month, the Treasury Secretary announced that, in fact, there were no plans to purchase troubled assets. To say that this was a surprise is an understatement. Congress needs to find out why the first plan was rejected and a new plan was developed. What is the theory behind the new plan for providing equity to these financial establishments? What exactly are the agreements with the financial institutions who have received TARP funds? And what conflict of interest standards were followed? Once the Special IG is in place, we can start to answer some of these questions.

Half the money is gone. And it is way past the time when we should have had a Special Inspector General on the job overseeing the program.

I am pleased that the Senate has confirmed Mr. Barofsky, and I look forward to helping him conduct aggressive oversight of the TARP program.

I am happy to respond to the Senators from Arkansas, Oregon, and Washington, whom I have worked with for several years on this issue. They and others have persuaded me that the timber tax provisions are fair and are important. That is why I strongly supported including the provisions in the farm bill.

That said, I believe that the timber tax provisions are in a different category than the extenders that are included in the current bill. The extenders in this bill are provisions that have been in the Tax Code for some time, and most already have expired. The timber tax provisions, in contrast, are new--enacted earlier this year--and, as the Senator said, they do not expire until May 2009. In light of that, although I strongly support the timber tax provisions, I believe that it is better to address them early next year rather than as part of this bill. I anticipate that we will be considering tax legislation early in the next Congress. I will work with Senator Lincoln, Senator Murray, and other interested Senators to see that the timber tax provisions are extended.

I want to thank my distinguished colleagues from Massachusetts and Nevada for raising this issue with us. I want to assure them that we are aware of this problem and we will work with our colleagues to consider legislation to eliminate the burden for employees and employers as early as possible.

Mr. President, President John F. Kennedy said that ``if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.''

This week, Congress has worked hard on the American economy. No matter how grave our problems today, America remains the world's richest nation. Our domestic challenges are great. But ours remains a land of opportunity and prosperity.

With our own economy in hard times, it is easy to forget the world's poorest. It is easy to forget that more than a billion people around the world live on a dollar a day or less. Concerned about maintaining our own standard of living, we can forget that the wealth of too many consists of little more than the clothes on their backs and the few coins in their pockets.

The legislation that we consider today proves we are not an island-- economically or morally. Today's legislation accomplishes four key objectives. It extends the Generalized System of Preferences for 1 year, extends the Andean Trade Preferences Act for 6 months to 1 year, with safeguards to ensure that Bolivia and Ecuador comply with that program's rules, affords the Dominican Republic enhanced access to the U.S. market in a way that benefits U.S. producers, and allows our trade preference program with Africa--known as AGOA--to work better.

I am proud that, by considering and passing this legislation, America again proves that we are still capable of thinking of others. By acting on this bill, Americans underscore that those who do not share our wealth must not be denied hope for a better life. By extending our trade preference programs, Americans reaffirm the fundamental belief that the world's poor are no less human than we are, and they deserve a fair shake for a hard day's work.

America has crafted trade preference programs for those hundreds of millions of poor around the world, not with a handout, but with a leg up. These preference programs offer more than 130 countries a way out of extreme poverty--poverty that is not just morally repugnant, but politically destabilizing. Our GSP and ATPA programs give developing country workers a living, rewards productive investment, and grants better access to America's market.

The benefits of these programs are mutual and create jobs that earn good wages in Montana and the rest of the country. Retail and transportation jobs in America depend on flower exports from Ecuador and Colombia. We sell American cotton to Andean and Dominican textile buyers who turn it into fabric and apparel. American manufacturers rely on imports from GSP beneficiaries to lower input costs on electrical parts and building materials. And American consumers benefit from lower priced products from diamond rings to tires.

Our preference programs are not perfect. My colleagues and I are concerned that our preference programs may help those who do not need or deserve our help. We are concerned that certain beneficiary countries boast globally competitive industries and wealthy owners. We are concerned that certain beneficiary countries show disdain for America's foreign policies and do not provide adequate protections for the American companies operating in those countries.

Yet I recognize that the good and prosperity of the many cannot be sacrificed to punish the few. The inappropriate actions of a few cannot lead us to inaction that hurts the many and throws entire economies into a spiral of insecurity and poverty.

This legislation on our preference programs is no blank check. Our preference programs require beneficiary countries to protect U.S. investment and intellectual property and to provide workers with internationally recognized worker rights. Our programs provide the administration with the flexibility to work within the program in order to determine whether or not to designate a country a beneficiary country. And when beneficiary countries do not abide by these eligibility criteria, they must be held responsible. I commend the administration for launching an ATPA review of Bolivia to ensure that it continues to abide by the eligibility criteria.

Our preference programs also contain measures to make sure that developing countries that become globally competitive graduate to operate under the same terms as the rest of America's trading partners.

These policies are not perfect. No policy this body passes is static. Every policy requires review and reevaluation to make sure it works how it should, for whom it should. As chairman of the Finance Committee, I am committed with my colleagues to reviewing and reevaluating our trade preference programs to make them work better for Americans and our trading partners.

Let us do things the right way, the American way, and extend our preference programs.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would like to be able to get in this line too, so I ask unanimous consent that I speak following the Senator from New Hampshire.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I wonder if I could amend that to 15 minutes.

Given the gravity of this legislation, that time was a little short.

Madam President, a cloud hangs over the American economy. It is a cloud made up of thousands of failures, and it is casting a shadow over our country. This cloud of failure is so vast that we have a hard time seeing where it starts and where it ends. This cloud is so thick, we cannot see all the dangers it hides. We cannot tell even if there is light right on the other side. And this cloud is moving fast. It is speedier and stormier than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. This cloud over the American economy contains the failures of people whom we trusted to make this country prosper. It holds the failures of many national institutions, their failure to be prudent, to be honest. This cloud is made up of the failures of the private and public institutions that are supposed to safeguard our financial security. Instead, they let it slip away.

Americans are frustrated by the negligence that let this cloud of economic crisis take shape. This week, many Americans were angry that the Government seemed at first to want to shelter Wall Street from the rain but not America's working families. I share Americans' concerns. I share Americans' frustrations. I share their anger.

I am pleased today because the Senate has heard America's voice. The bill the Senate will consider today improves the Treasury Department's original plan. We made it better. We made this bill work better for working families who are already weathering financial storms and who now face more rainy days because of Wall Street's greed.

The collapse of the financial markets does not sound like Main Street's problem. Most Americans are too busy making ends meet to figure out how frozen credit markets and a shortage of commercial paper affect their lives.

To most Americans, banks not lending to other banks sounds like a bank problem, not their problem. But these haywire markets are everyone's problem, and here is why.

If a bank cannot get credit, neither can its customers. Its customers are the local hardware store, the car dealership down the street. Its customers are college-bound young people and the new neighbor who just bought the house next door. These good people rely on their bank to pay their invoices and make payroll on time. The funds they depend on are also now beginning to dry up. For example, a Montana businessman called me this week. His company has an $11 million outstanding loan, a 3-year loan. He uses it to keep his business stocked with inventory. The bank has called that loan in. That 3-year loan is now being called in. He must pay it off, according to the bank, in the next 90 days--not 3 years, 90 days. The crisis is coming home for him now, that is for sure, and that threatens other good people.

If the hardware store and the car dealership lose business, pretty soon employees and suppliers get hurt. If a neighbor cannot get a mortgage, painters, movers, and handymen will have one less paying job. The young person who cannot afford college without a loan and the lady hoping to rent out her basement apartment or the guy who sells school books might come up a bit short. This financial crisis is closer to home than we realize. It affects Americans who earn an honest living, follow the rules, and work hard.

Honest Americans about to get hit harder by the financial storm are the reason I worked to improve this plan. Working families are the reason I insisted on tax relief for struggling homeowners who can't pay the mortgage and can't afford a tax hit when their indebtedness is forgiven. Working families are the reason I insisted on help for hometown banks in Montana and elsewhere that suffered when stock prices fell because of Wall Street's greed--not their fault at all, not the bankers, the Main Street bankers in our States. Working families are the reason we all insisted on finding a way to get back much of the money spent on this plan.

The Treasury will buy assets with the money it spends. Later, the Treasury can sell those assets or hold them to maturity. In either case, there is a good chance the Treasury will get back some or all of these dollars. When I say the Treasury, those are taxpayers' dollars. This bill, therefore, gives American taxpayers a stake in the companies they are helping and a share in their future profits. The American taxpayer's pocket should be the last place companies look for a bailout, but when these companies do ask for help, the American taxpayer should be the first to benefit when the firms get back on their feet. This bill makes sure of that.

Americans taxpayers are the reason I insisted on cutting paychecks and closing golden parachutes of Wall Street executives. In just the past 5 years, the five biggest Wall Street firms paid more than $3 billion to their top executives--5 years, five biggest firms, $3 billion to their top executives. That is not right. It is not right for executives to get more big paychecks while their companies are getting assistance from the Government. If companies ask for taxpayer help on the one hand, they can't give out big executive bonuses with the other. This bill limits compensation to executives with golden parachutes.

The Treasury will have to issue guidelines on cutting executive compensation. The Treasury Secretary will have to say: You can't play if you are going to overpay. These provisions are helpful, but we have a lot more in this legislation, even more guidance given to the Treasury Secretary on executive compensation.

I also developed some provisions to cut tax breaks companies get for executive pay and to make sure executives pay tax on more of their income than they do today. I don't want Main Street to subsidize severance pay on Wall Street.

For taxpayers' sake, I also wrote a provision creating a special watchdog to track and protect taxpayer dollars. I said that American resources must be used wisely and efficiently. This bill includes my proposal to create an independent inspector general to oversee this effort, this effort and nothing else, solely designed for this problem. I designed the office of this inspector general to be truly independent, with the necessary resources to fight for every taxpayer dollar. I designed this inspector general to be accountable only to Congress and to the American taxpayer. It will be my personal mission to make sure this watchdog does his or her job. I want this inspector general on the ground in New York inside the firms that facilitate Treasury auctions, watching every dollar that comes and goes. This investigator will hear from the Finance Committee as we work to protect the American people's interests in this effort.

Finally, America's working families are the reason I am so glad this bill now includes tax relief. Last night, Senators Reid and McConnell announced that this bill would include Senate-passed legislation--that is, earlier passed--that will create and extend tax incentives for renewable energy to protect 20 million Americans from paying what is called the alternative minimum tax and also extend a number of vital expiring tax credits for businesses and families. This is the right call. Adding this tax relief will ensure that regular working Americans get financial help in this time of crisis.

As soon as this legislation passes, good-paying jobs will open in green energy, as wind and solar projects get up and running. Twenty million Americans who can't afford a higher tax bill are protected from the alternative minimum tax. Families will get a break on college tuition, classroom expenses, and State and local sales taxes, and companies will get tax relief to do research and development, to grow, to offer even more good-paying jobs. Adding tax relief that creates jobs, supports families, and secures a new energy future for the country makes this bill a lot fairer for hard-working Americans.

A ``yes'' vote on the financial rescue plan is now a vote to rescue America's working families from this financial crisis with the right tax relief at just the right time. It is now time to act.

As a Senator, I was disturbed by this administration's attempt to rush

through a bill for business. But as an American, I am disgusted also by the negligence and greed that got us into this mess. But at this time of crisis, we must not let our anger paralyze us. So many have failed to act responsibly. We must do better. We here in the Senate cannot fail. Failure to act would make today's economic cloud even bigger and more dangerous. Failure to act could unleash the lightning bolts of recession and the downpour of unemployment. Failure to act could turn this cloud into a storm that tears through our entire economy.

The plan in front of us is not perfect. I wish we did a lot more here. I wish we did not have to be where we are. I know many Americans do not want it. But this is the best way to quickly disperse this economic cloud and guard against a bigger storm. Like it or not, we must have a plan big enough to counter our economic woes in a systematic, comprehensive way.

I will vote for this legislation because America is under a cloud, and we cannot linger here. Congress must make sure this crisis does not get worse. With the addition of significant tax relief to this legislation, Congress can actually lift the cloud a bit. Tax relief will make things a little better for Americans feeling financial hurt.

With this vote, Congress must also promise the American people that this will never happen again. The lesson of the cloud must lead us to build a strong financial framework that will not falter again. The lesson of the cloud must lead us to seek a brighter future for every American family that helps us to weather this storm.

I yield the floor.

Yes, it is. I understand your concern that the language in the bill we adopted on September 23 could still leave some taxpayers in an ambiguous position with respect to additional units of power added to biomass facilities qualifying for the credit. Let me assure you that my staff and I will continue to work with you to address this matter.

Ms. SNOWE: I want to thank the chairman of the Finance Committee as well as Senator Bill Nelson for their work on addressing the incremental biomass production ambiguity. Clearly, at a time when our Nation's manufacturing industry is besieged by historic energy costs, we must provide the incentives for expanded biomass production. The production tax credit was intended to be provided for companies that expand their production in and beyond 2005, and I believe we must have concise and clear language that these facilities should receive the credit for producing renewable energy in their operations. I look forward to working with Chairman Baucus, Ranking Member Grassley, and Senator Nelson to reconcile this inadvertent confusion.

basis reporting

Mr. President, the energy policy in the pending legislation is partially paid for by a proposal that requires brokers to report to their clients and to the IRS the basis of securities that are sold during the year. This provision expands existing information reporting requirements that require brokers to report the sales proceeds of securities that are sold. The IRS estimates that in 2001 the tax gap associated with all capital gains was about $11 billion. Providing this information will reduce burden on axpayers and increase the accuracy of tax returns that are filed.

Congress intends that the Treasury Department issue guidance and regulations that will help brokers implement this reporting requirement, including the issue of year-end reclassifications. The existing regulatory authority under Internal Revenue Code section 6045 fully applies to the new basis reporting rules proposed in this legislation.

To my good friend from Indiana, the answer is yes. The new tax credit for plug-in electric drive motor vehicles was intended to be, within weight and emission limits, vehicle design neutral. Vans are clearly a subset of light trucks and would be eligible if they meet the weight, energy, and emission criteria under the provision.

administrative procedures act review

Mr. President, the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works is correct. The legislation is intended to leave the substantive environmental criteria and requirements for carbon sequestration to EPA, including security- related issues, and as was done with respect to carbon sequestration in section 706 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, this provision is not intended to limit the legal requirements and authorities of EPA. EPA's criteria and requirements for carbon sequestration will be applied by the Secretary of the Treasury after consultation.

foreclosure prevention provisions

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the attached technical explanation of the tax provisions of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague Senator Tester, to recognize MG Randall D. Mosley, Adjutant General for the great state of Montana. MG Randall D. Mosley has served our Nation and the State of Montana for over 38 years and has recently retired. The Montana Guard was established in 1889. Since then, few adjutant generals have faced as many challenges as Major General Mosley. We Montanans were so lucky to have such a great citizen soldier at the helm of our National Guard. I want to take a few moments to recount the career of this great Montanan.

General Mosley's career is a model of public service and serves an example for all those in the military. He never backed down to any challenging issue, of which he had many. During his tenure, duty called several thousand Montana National Guard members to Iraq and Afghanistan. The deployments put great strains on the soldiers and airmen that answered the call, as well as the families of the soldiers that stayed at home. General Mosley worked tirelessly before, during, and after each deployment to support his troops and their families.

General Mosley understood that troops returning home from overseas need the support of the whole community. General Mosley worked to improve community awareness of the challenges troops face upon returning from combat. As it became clear that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were creating new forms of injuries, he led an overhaul of Montana's postdeployment health reassessment program. General Mosley put together a task force with community leaders from around the state. The task force developed better ways to care for his troops as they returned home.

Thanks to General Mosley's leadership, the Montana National Guard has one of the best yellow-ribbon programs in the country. It is a model for the rest of the nation to follow. Improved mental health care is now available to Montana's guardsmen and their families. The Guard offers training workshops to help troops transition back to everyday life. Montanans are truly grateful to General Mosley for his leadership on this critical issue.

I now yield to my colleague from Montana, Senator Tester.