Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 381, which was submitted earlier today.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until Wednesday, February 29, at 9:30 a.m., that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half hour and the majority controlling the second half; and that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1813, the surface transportation bill.

Mr. President, tomorrow we will continue to work on a process to complete action on the surface transportation bill.

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here on the floor today to talk a little bit about our economy and something that I think is very important that has been left unaddressed in this payroll tax compromise that I think is a real tragedy for our country and for my State, the State of Colorado, and, most importantly, for people who are suffering through this incredibly difficult economy.

It is not well understood by people--I think maybe even in this Chamber--that our country's gross domestic product--the economic output of our country--is actually higher today than it was before we went into this recession. We saw it rising all the way in the 1990s and 2000s, and then we had the worst recession since the Great Depression. Now we are seeing economic output that is actually at a level that is higher than it was before we went into the recession.

Our productivity is higher today than it has been at any time in the history of the United States of America. It has become fashionable to talk about what has happened or not happened since the founding of our country. Since the founding of our country, our economy has never been more productive than it is today, and there are several reasons for that. Competition from abroad that has become a daily occurrence-- something we have to fight hard every day to stay ahead of--has driven productivity. That is a good result. Technology has driven productivity. That is a good result. And the recession itself drove productivity straight up. As our business men and women of this country did what they had to do to get through this incredibly tough economic time to keep their businesses alive, to keep their doors open, to keep a promise to the next generation of Americans, productivity went ever skyward. That is a good result. That is progress. And we are only going to become more productive over time as we face competitive threats from around the world.

But we can see what else has happened over this period of time. Median family income has fallen over the last decade for the first time in our country's history. The middle class is earning less today in real dollars than in the early 1990s. And, as the President knows, we are producing this economic output with 23 or 24 million people who today are unemployed or underemployed in this economy. There are no jobs for these Americans in this economy even though our output is as high as it was before we went into this recession.

There are a lot of people smarter than I am who could figure out the answers to this, but there are at least two big ones we have to keep in mind. The first one is education because the worst the unemployment rate ever got for people with a college degree during this recession was 4.5 percent. That is the worst it got for people who had a college degree, who could compete in the 21st century, even in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

As I have said on the floor of this Chamber that has 100 seats, 100 desks, if we were poor children living in the United States of America today, only 9 of these 100 seats would represent college graduates because 91 of 100 poor children in the United States in the 21st century cannot get access to a college degree. So that is job No. 1, to keep a promise to the next generation of Americans.

I think job No. 2 needs to be driving innovation and job growth in this economy, which is what has brought me to the floor today because we are failing in this package, among other things, to extend the wind production tax credit which cuts right to the core of whether and how we want to compete in the 21st century in this global economy.

For people here or elsewhere who think these jobs aren't real in the wind industry, I brought some pictures. I brought some pictures of a manufacturing plant made in America--made in America--in this case, in Brighton, CO--a manufacturing plant, the towers from which wind turbines are going to be hung, driving electricity and jobs in the United States. So we are not talking about some fly-by-night, experimental industry. This credit has triggered enormous economic growth in Colorado and across the country.

Congressman Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, wrote today in an op- ed that he published that ``the production tax credit has driven as much as $20 billion in private investing.'' This isn't some Bolshevik trick, some Socialist trick; it is $20 billion in private investment in real American manufacturing jobs.

Wind power accounts for more than one-third of all new U.S. electric generation in recent years. In Colorado alone, I can tell you it has created 6,000 jobs in my State. It has moved our State toward a more diversified and cleaner energy portfolio, so that Colorado today is a leader among the 50 States in diversifying our portfolio.

Let's be clear. We have oil and we have coal and we have natural gas. We have abundant wind and abundant sun and entrepreneurial horsepower all across the Front Range. What we don't have is Washington's cooperation. What we don't have is the decency of people coming together and doing better than just keeping the flickering lights on in this place.

It is because they can't get any certainty out of Washington that developers and manufacturers are starting layoffs already in anticipation of the credit expiring at the end of this year. This is the result of nothing other than our political dysfunction in Washington.

Vestas, which has a huge manufacturing footprint in Colorado--from Windsor all the way south to Pueblo--is poised to lay off 1,600 workers if we fail to act. Iberdrola Renewables, also doing business in Colorado, has already laid off 50 employees for no reason other than our inability to get our work done. Nationally, 37,000 jobs are at risk, not to mention the ones we could have created after 2012 but won't if we let this credit expire.

I brought a couple of other pictures just to make sure people know this is distributed all over the United States.

This is Pennsylvania and Texas.

I know I sound like a broken record when I say this because I have said it over and over on this floor, but we should not be confused that the rest of the world is somehow waiting for us to get our act together, that they are somehow waiting for us to cure our politics and do something that will actually solve those curves that I mentioned earlier and put Americans back to work manufacturing in jobs that are actually driving middle-class family

income up, rather than down, which is what we are doing today.

Our largest single export from the United States of America is aircraft. We export $30 billion a year. China's export of solar panels last year was $15 billion--half our largest single export. They didn't export one solar panel 10 years ago, and we invented the technology here in the United States. In fact, some of us believe we invented that technology in the State of Colorado. I am sure the Chinese would love to have this business as well. And my concern is not that this is a temporary interruption in our wind industry but that this will become a permanent shutdown of our ability to drive economic growth across the United States. This is a perfect example of an industry that can move this employment level back up, an industry that we don't have today, one that is in its infancy but 50 years from now or 20 years from now may be driving significant employment growth across the United States of America. This is an industry that, by the way, would drive this curve up as well.

I met a young man in Logan County not long ago. He was working--he was giving me a tour on the top of a wind turbine. I was standing on the very top of the box. It was about 10,000 feet in the air--or it felt that way to me. I was wearing the shoes I am wearing right now on the floor of the Senate, which is not what you should wear when you are on the top of a wind turbine, swaying in the wind. He told me he would be unable to live in his home community and raise his family in his home community if it had not been for that job, a job he could not even have imagined there being 5 years ago. And there it is today.

These are high-quality, high-paying jobs in the United States of America. It would seem to me the Congress ought to figure out a way to support these industries. I actually do not believe any of these kinds of credits should be permanent. I want to be clear about that. I think we would be doing ourselves and the country a service if we designed them in a way that phased them out over time, because at a certain point every business has to sink or swim based on its merits. We are ``this close'' to being there with wind production and we are ``this close'' to turning it over to the rest of the world.

This is not a partisan issue. This is not a partisan issue. Last week Republicans and Democrats from the Colorado delegation came together in the House and the Senate to urge a quick extension as part of the payroll deal. I know my colleagues Senators Harkin and Grassley did the same with the delegation from Iowa.

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

As I recall, Senator Grassley actually was the one who wrote this to begin with. We have also recently filed an amendment, a bipartisan, fully paid for, 1-year extension of the credit to the surface transportation

bill. I thank Senator Moran, a Republican from Kansas, for joining me to lead on that amendment.

There is plenty of support out there for us to get this done. More important than that, if we do not act, there are thousands of people who are going to have to go home to their families and say they were laid off from their job for no reason other than the political dysfunction here in Washington, DC.

I think enough is enough. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to a time when we have a thoughtful, bipartisan, fact-based tax reform in this country; when we are thinking about our Tax Code and our regulatory code and asking ourselves: Are we driving job growth here in the United States with these policies? Are we driving up middle-class family income with these policies? Are we addressing the income inequality gap by having an economy that truly does lift all ships and, as the President would make the point, are we dealing with the fiscal challenges this country faces so we do not strap our kids with this mountain of debt?

I know there are people on both sides of the aisle who are anxious to work on this, but we have failed that test in this compromise measure. It is my hope that at some point in the near future we can get a vote on this amendment, Senator Moran's amendment, and we can put Americans back to work in these industries before we lose them forever.

Mr. President, today I come before you with a heavy heart to honor the life of Gil Chavez. Mr. Chavez died on November 30, 2011, of injuries sustained in a car accident outside of West High School in Denver, CO. He was 63 years old.

Mr. Chavez was a true community leader in every sense of the word. After graduating from Denver's West High School in 1967, Mr. Chavez spent the next 30 years of his life giving back to the school through teaching, coaching, and counseling. He was always there for his students, so much so that after retiring, he came back to volunteer coach for the wrestling team beside his son, Gil Junior, the current head coach at West. Mr. Chavez's family continues his legacy of always striving for excellence in all that they endeavor.

Gil Chavez was a committed educator and coach who was a role model to the students he worked with. He was a sincere motivator, and he backed up his words with promises that he kept to his students. Mr. Chavez was always there for those who needed him with an ear to listen, with help figuring out classes or locating a tutor, and always believing in those who needed it most.

To Mr. Chavez's entire family, I cannot imagine the sorrow you must be feeling. I hope that, in time, the pain of your loss will be eased by your pride in Gil's life and by your knowledge that his community will never forget him. His memory will live on in the team, the school, the community, and all those he has touched along the way.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, be printed as passed by the Senate on December 1, 2011.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, the Senate adjourn until 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, December 7, 2011; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the first hour equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes and the

majority controlling the second 30 minutes.

As a reminder, the majority leader filed cloture on the Cordray nomination. Unless an agreement is reached, that vote will be Thursday morning.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I am going to replace the Presiding Officer in the chair in a few moments, but before that, I wished to come to the floor and talk about our economy and some work this Congress needs to be engaged in if we are going to get things moving on the right track again.

Today, the stock market plunged 400 points because of concerns that are going on in Europe, especially with Italy. It is a debt crisis that has been on the front page of every newspaper around the globe for weeks and in some cases months.

I am reminded of the discussion we had over the summer that consumed the Congress for an entire summer, about the lifting of the debt ceiling. Article after article after article said that if the Congress couldn't figure out how to work this out in a bipartisan way and make a material difference in the trajectory of our deficit and our debt that, for the first time, our credit rating would be downgraded. For the first time in the history of the United States of America, the full faith and credit of the United States would be called into question.

That was on the front page of every newspaper for weeks. In the end, we stumbled across that finish line, and in the end our debt was downgraded. I would argue we are about to face the same thing again and have the chance again to do the right thing--to act in a bipartisan way, to create a thoughtful approach to our debt and our deficit that allows us to continue to invest in our economy.

Families in Colorado, much as the families in Rhode Island, are struggling in an economy that is the worst since the Great Depression. We are coming out of it now, but there are significant structural issues in that economy. I have shown this chart before. There are four simple lines. The blue one is the productivity index, which shows our economy has actually gotten substantially more productive since the early 1990s, substantially more productive during this recession for a variety of reasons. One reason is that our companies have had to learn to compete with the rest of the world in a way they have not before, so they became more efficient. The benefits technology has brought has driven up this curve. Unfortunately for our workers but understandably for our businesses, they have had to figure out how to get through this recession with fewer people so they can get through to the other side.

The second curve is our gross domestic product, the size of our domestic economy, and it is not where it was before the recession, but it is headed back there.

The other two lines are the unemployment level, which this chart says is 14 million people, but I think the number is closer to 25 million, when we consider who has stopped looking for work and when we consider who is underemployed in this economy. Then this line is a tragedy for our families, which is falling median family income.

This chart--it is a little hard to read--is a pretty good depiction of what is happening. This red line represents the bottom 90 percent of income earners in this country. Think about that. We are talking about the bottom 90 percent. That is everyone, except for 10 percent. It shows the share of the income in the United States that they are earning. It starts out here in the 1920s and goes to today, where the bottom 90 percent are earning roughly 47 percent of the income. The last time that was true, by the way, was 1928, the year before the Great Depression and the market crash. The top .1 percent earns 10 percent of the economy--.1, not 1 percent--.1. The last time that was true was 1928. All through the productive times in the 20th century, the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s, there wasn't that kind of imbalance in our economy. This group earned roughly--90 percent earned roughly 70 percent of the economy and everybody else earned a fair share of the economy, and the economy grew and we were able to build for the future.

Those are structural issues in the economy we can help with, we can work together to fix, but what we have to do right now is avert predictable crises that are within our control so we don't make matters worse.

Sometimes when I travel, people don't know why we need to worry about what is going on in Europe. This afternoon I wanted to bring a chart that shows the soaring debt of all these European economies and the United States. We are the blue line here. This is Greece up here. Everybody is in tough shape. Everybody has made promises they can't keep. Everybody has levered up in a way that isn't sustainable. But what is also true is that we are all interrelated. If something bad happens in Europe, something very bad is going to happen here, just as when the capital markets fell apart at the beginning of the last recession.

This chart shows how dependent our economy is on exports to Europe. Between one-fifth and one-sixth of the total value of our exports goes to Europe. If the European banks fail, if the governments can't pay back their debt and the economy comes to a screeching halt in Europe, they are not going to buy our exports. Those are American jobs we need to worry about. Those are American jobs we need to defend and protect and we need to understand this relationship.

Look at the exposure of our U.S. banks to Europe. This red part is the euro area. It is 29 percent of the total international exposure of our banks, with 23 percent to the U.K. More than half of the foreign exposure of our banks is European debt.

We were unable to come to a rational conclusion on the debt ceiling. So the Congress punted this decision to a supercommittee and asked them to please help us make the decision. My own hope is that the supercommittee takes a page out of the bipartisan proposals that were reached--the one that was led by Bowles and Simpson, the one by Rivlin and Domenici. I think the details are less important, frankly, than the size, but that takes $4 trillion out over the next 10 years, a balance of cuts to revenue of roughly 3 to 1, that sends a message to the world that the United States is serious about dealing with its fiscal matters. If we don't do that in advance of this European crisis that is on the front page of every newspaper in the country, I can assure my

colleagues that the choices we have in front of us will be even tougher than they would have otherwise been.

Sometimes I get the feeling that people around here actually don't think the American people are watching this screaming match, are watching the disagreements, are watching the political games, but they are. They know exactly what is going on here, and they understand the seriousness of these issues because they are living through that economy I spoke of earlier. That is what they are worrying about. They are making less today than they were 10 years ago. They are making the same amount they were making 20 years ago. They can't afford to send their kid to college. They can't afford their health care, and they would like us to help straighten that out, but at a minimum they would like us to prevent matters from getting worse. They would like to see us work together.

Some people here think Congress has always been unpopular, that it is just as an institution an unpopular place. Not so. Look at this. Here is Congress's approval rating today: 9 percent. That is a pretty catastrophic fall-off in the last 10 years, and I would argue it has an awful lot to do with our inability to address problems the way people in their local communities are doing. There is not a mayor in Colorado who would threaten the credit rating of their community for politics-- not one. Not a Republican mayor, not a Democratic mayor, not a tea party mayor, not one would imagine doing it for a second because people in our communities would know that all that would do would be to drive up our interest rates, make us spend more money on interest and less on infrastructure, more on interest and less on education, more on interest and less on the health and welfare of our citizens.

We know that at the local level, but somehow here we get to color outside the lines. We are now at 9 percent, which is almost at the margin of error for zero. We did some research to find out what else is at 9 percent. We could not find virtually anything in public polls taken all across this country. My goodness, the Internal Revenue Service has a 40-percent approval rating compared the our 9 percent. BP had a 16-percent approval rating at the height of the oilspill, and we are at 9 percent. There is an actress who is at 15 percent. More people support the United States becoming communist--I do not, for the record--at 11 percent than approve of the job we are doing. I guess we can take some comfort that Fidel Castro is at 5 percent.

Look, we are suffering--and when I say ``we,'' I mean families across this country--through the worst recession since the Great Depression. We can see on the front page of every single newspaper what the stakes are here if we do not act in a comprehensive way on our debt and our deficit. We know that both parties have different approaches to the challenges we face. But at the end of the day, these challenges are the challenges of the American people, not the challenges of a bunch of politicians in Washington who are worrying about the next election.

My hope is the supercommittee shows leadership here, that it gives the opportunity for every Member of this body to express their leadership here, and that all of us are able to go home to red parts of our State and blue parts of our State and say to the people: We saw the problem coming, and we led the world. We materially addressed the problem we faced. We acted in a bipartisan way. We came up with a plan that said: Do you know what. We are all in this together for the benefit of our kids and our grandkids, for the people who are suffering through this economy.

There is $2.3 trillion of cash sitting on companies' balance sheets in the United States of America tonight that is not being invested because no one knows what interest rate environment they are going to be in because they do not know what Washington is going to do. We shattered confidence in this economy this summer. We should not do it again.

This is a popular number, this 9 percent, these days, you may have noticed, on the Presidential campaign trail. It is not a popular number for the American people: 9-percent approval. Let's do something right here, and let's drive these numbers back up, and let's restore confidence in the American people.

With that, Mr. President, I thank you for your patience and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I want to take just a few minutes to talk about Veterans Day and important work already going on in Colorado to support our returning servicemembers and their families.

This Friday, Veterans Day holds special significance. America's part in the war in Iraq is coming to a close this year, and we have started drawing down combat troops in Afghanistan. In Colorado, that is going to mean about 400 Fort Carson soldiers will come home from Iraq in December alone.

Many of the bravest 1 percent of Americans who shoulder 100 percent of the responsibility of keeping our country safe will be coming home all across the country. As these servicemembers return to their families and many transition to civilian life, we need to make sure we are ready to make good on the promises we have made.

I asked leaders from the Colorado veterans community to make recommendations for how to make Colorado the best State for veterans and military families to live and work. After months of thoughtful conversation, they produced a comprehensive report called ``Better Serving Those Who Have Served'' that offers solutions on how to address the challenges facing America's veterans. A key part of this report is a new proposal to create a National Veterans Foundation, modeled after work being done in Colorado Springs that enabled public and private agencies to better collaborate to support veterans and military families. This week, I will introduce a bill to bring that Colorado- based innovation to the rest of the country. The bill would create a congressionally chartered National Veterans Foundation to support communities attempting to work on a blueprint model like Colorado Springs. The foundation would help fill gaps in services to veterans by helping communities align and leverage their resources.

I have also joined Senator Tester and the Presiding Officer and cosponsored the VOW to Hire Heroes Act. The VOW to Hire Heroes Act does much to help veterans find good-paying jobs, including providing significant tax incentives to businesses that hire veterans. The Senate will likely be voting on this important legislation tomorrow, and I urge colleagues to support its passage.

Before I sit down, I wanted to mention that 2 weeks, maybe 3 weeks ago, I was down in Colorado Springs visiting Fort Carson, and I went to see an elementary school on the post. As a former school superintendent, I have spent a lot of time over the years in schools and tend to want to be there when the children are there so that you can actually get a sense of whether there is any learning going on. This meeting was different because it was a meeting after school, after the children had gone home. Ninety percent of them live on the post. Their entire lives have been defined by these two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their entire lives have been defined by the deployment of one parent--in some cases two parents--who have served two or three or four tours of duty on behalf of this country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thousands of our troops are going to be coming home over the next year. I think we need to be asking ourselves whether we really are ready to honor the commitments and promises we have made.

As others have said tonight, when we are coming out of what is the worst economic calamity we have faced since the Great Depression, we need to make sure we are doing absolutely everything we can for these veterans but also for the people who are the moms and dads, the children at elementary schools just like the one I visited, all across the country.

The children in this school, according to the teachers with whom I met, have faced extraordinary challenges at home as a result of all this. It is another example of the work we should be doing together here in a bipartisan way as we ask people to serve their country in these foreign wars.

I continue to hope at some point there is going to be a breakthrough here and we are going to get past the partisan cartoon we have confronted for the entire time I have been in the Senate and get back to the work of the American people and get back to the work that will support the children in that elementary school at Fort Carson. I want to say on this floor and for this record how grateful I am to their teachers for teaching but also for giving their Senator an insight into the lives of the young people they are serving.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2447 and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 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 statements be printed in the Record.