Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Cincinnati resident Bill Engeman, who has made countless contributions to the sport of rowing over the past 30 years. Bill will be leaving Cincinnati later this year for Lancaster, OH, and I would like to thank Bill for his years of selfless efforts to encourage the sport of rowing.

Since the early 1980s, Bill has been a leader in advancing rowing in southwest Ohio. In the fall of 1981, Bill helped found the University of Cincinnati Rowing Team. Bill also has helped develop many rowing programs and build many boathouses at East Fork State Park and along the Ohio River. He also worked to bring the Men's and Women's National Collegiate championship to the region multiple times in the 1980s and 1990s. Bill was inducted into the National Rowing Hall of Fame in 1998.

In 2008, I had the opportunity to work with Bill to construct the Matt Maupin Memorial Pavilion at East Fork State Park, named in honor of a local high school rower and brave soldier who was killed in the line of duty in Iraq. Over the last 3 years Bill has worked to help rebuild the national rowing program in Iraq and assist in its journey to qualify young athletes for the London Olympics in 2012. This latest project is having a global impact and illustrates his commitment to rowing and the youth of the world.

Bill Engeman has given tremendously to the Cincinnati area and the sport of rowing over the years, and thousands of area residents have benefited from his legacy. Bill will be honored for his efforts on Tuesday, September 27, 2011. I would like to join with his many friends in congratulating Bill and thanking him for all he has done. While he may be moving to another city, he will always be considered the father of rowing in Cincinnati.

I thank my colleague from Kansas, who has just made the case eloquently as to why we need to move forward.

To answer his question, when you apply the metrics the President of the United States and his administration have used for these three trade agreements alone, they would create 250,000 new jobs. I ask my colleagues, with 9 percent unemployment and continued bad economic news, can't we use those jobs? By the way, jobs that are related to trade tend to be higher paying, tend to have more benefits. This is exactly what we need to do in this Senate and in the House and here in Washington--put the partisanship aside and move forward on what makes sense to create jobs.

I can't think of anything that would have a more immediate impact on those exporters Senator Roberts talked about, who right now are seeing their market share eroded because the United States is sitting on its hands. In 2006, the Colombia agreement was finalized. It has been tinkered with since then, but we are talking 5 years ago. It is unbelievable. When we have sat on our hands and not moved forward with giving our farmers and our workers and our service providers the chance to go into that Colombian market, you are exactly right, they have gone ahead and made trade agreements with other folks.

Colombia is a great example. Back when we negotiated this agreement and completed it--and I was the U.S. Trade Representative then, as the Senator indicated, and I negotiated with the then-President of Colombia, President Uribe, who made lots of concessions, including on manufacturing and agricultural services. At that time, we had a 71- percent market share in terms of exports of agricultural products-- wheat, corn, and soybeans--into Colombia--a 71-percent market share. Today, that market share is about 26 percent. Why? Because after we completed our agreement with Colombia, they engaged with other countries, including the Mercosur countries of Argentina and Brazil, and now they are buying their products instead from those countries that got their act together and moved forward with trade agreements that this President will not get his act together on and send to us.

As Senator Roberts said, just recently, in August, this summer, they completed an agreement with Canada. Guess what the Canadians love to export--the same kind of wheat we love to export. So the Senator is right, they are going to take the wheat market away from Kansas and North Dakota and other States that really need those jobs and need those exports.

We have to move forward. It is really a crime that we have not been able to provide our farmers, workers, and service providers these opportunities.

Yes. Absolutely.

Unfortunately, I think some of these countries--all three of which are great allies of the United States: Panama, Colombia, and South Korea--feel as though the United States has let them down.

We are going to move forward here, I believe. I am more optimistic than the Senator from Kansas. I believe the President will finally send these forward. He has to. The logic is difficult to escape. Why wouldn't you? And that is good. We will be able to move forward, I hope, with not just opening more markets but helping on our relationships with these incredibly important allies. But in the meantime, there has been damage done. The Senator is absolutely right. I think they believe in some respects that the rug has been pulled out from under them. They made huge concessions and commitments to the United States and politically took great risks.

Frankly, in Colombia and Panama, where they moved forward immediately to ratify these agreements in their legislature, it wasn't just the administration, it was the elected representatives of the people, as we are, who took risks to say: Yes, we want to be a partner with the United States of America, the greatest economy on the face of the Earth and this beacon of hope and opportunity, and here we are in America letting them down.

So in both its commercial impacts on the United States--we have lost market share, we have lost jobs because of it, but it also has had an impact, as Senator Roberts says, in terms of our standing in the world.

We have to move forward not just with these three, but the important point is that we have to move forward with additional agreements. There are over 100 trade agreements being negotiated right now around the world, and because the United States does not have a trade promotion authority, the ability for the President to negotiate and bring an agreement back here for an up-or-down vote, we are not engaged in these agreements. We are engaged in

one, which is a regional one--the transpacific partnership--but none of these bilateral ones, which is where you are really going to get these trade openings and new exports and, therefore, new jobs.

This is a bigger issue that must be addressed. This Congress, I hope, will address it in the context of the votes we are going to have in connection with the trade agreements. We are going to promote getting the United States back in the game of expanding our trade and helping U.S. jobs.

By the way, it was mentioned earlier that it is not just that we have the opportunity to create over 200,000 jobs. It is also that if we do not move forward on these three agreements, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has done some analysis showing we would lose 380,000 jobs.

This sort of goes both ways. There is a cost to not moving forward, and that is also hundreds of thousands of jobs we desperately need in States such as Ohio and the States represented by the Senators who are here with us on the floor today. The International Trade Commission now says these three agreements alone would expand exports annually by $13 billion--again meaning jobs and opportunity.

It is time for us to move forward. Senator Roberts has talked about what is happening with the European Union, which actually negotiated its agreements after we completed ours.

In the auto sector, by the way, there is an EU-Korea agreement that says the 8-percent tariff on imported cars has already started being reduced. That has resulted in the companies sending UK cars, including Hondas that are being produced in the United Kingdom--they are being exported to South Korea. We have a Honda plant in Ohio. I visited it recently. There are 4,200 Ohio workers there. We want to export Hondas from Ohio to Korea. We can do that with these export agreements.

It is time for us to move forward. It is not the time for us to play politics. We have to move forward because we need these jobs and because, again, the United States should be at the forefront of these agreements in order to not just protect the market share we have but expand it. Ninety-five percent of the consumers live outside of our borders, and we need to access those consumers.

I now ask, if I could, one of my colleagues to talk a little about his experience in his State.

John Hoeven was Governor of North Dakota, so he was like the trade representative from North Dakota. He was out there promoting trade as Governor, and North Dakota is a State that has a lot of exports, including wheat, as we talked about earlier, so they are being hit by what Senators Roberts and Johanns talked about in terms of what is happening in Colombia today with the Canadian agreement and also the EU agreement with Korea.

I ask Senator Hoeven if he would talk a little about why these agreements with Colombia and Panama are so important to his State.

Would the Senator yield for a second? The Senator talked about being at home and talking to his constituents about this, and I am sure all of us have stories like this, but I will tell you this morning we had one of our weekly coffees and the Ohio pork producers came. There were about 12 pork producers from around the State of Ohio. Do you know what the No. 1 issue was they raised with me? Trade

and getting these trade agreements done. Why? Because it affects their prices directly. They have to have these international sales in order to make ends meet. Particularly with the price of feed going up, they have to have these foreign markets. It was interesting that of all the issues they could have raised with me, the one they are most concerned about is to make sure we get these three agreements done, and then move forward with the additional agreements.

It is our job to provide the environment for success. Part of that environment is to give our exporters the ability to have a level playing field to access these markets. They are the best farmers in the world. We have some of the most productive land in the world. They just need a fair shake.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life of Dr. Bernadine Patricia Healy. Dr. Healy was a cardiologist and a pioneer in the

field of medical research. Among her many impressive accomplishments, Dr. Healy served as the first female director of the National Institutes of Health, dean of the College of Medicine and Public Health at the Ohio State University, president of the American Red Cross, and president of the American Heart Association.

A brilliant scientist, an innovator, and a strong leader who could effectively communicate technical information, Dr. Healy was also a valued Presidential adviser. Dr. Healy selflessly answered the call to public service from Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

Dr. Healy was a courageous champion of women in science and medicine. While serving as the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Healy introduced a number of initiatives, including the Women's Health Initiative, which resulted in monumental advances in understanding the causes and researching the cures of diseases that affect women. Dr. Bernadine Healy was truly a source of inspiration who touched the lives of so many of us in Ohio and around the world, and her extraordinary legacy lives on. She will not be forgotten.

Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Indiana whom I heard a moment ago. I think he is absolutely right. We have deeper and more important problems we need to address, along with the important decisions we make over the next 24 hours on the debt limit. It is necessary to extend the debt limit, but it is not sufficient. We also have to deal with these underlying fiscal problems, and I think my colleague from Indiana stated that well.

I rise to talk about the debt limit proposal and how we can provide a pathway forward on a bipartisan basis--again, not just to solve this immediate problem that confronts us but also to deal with these deeper and very serious problems we have with our fiscal deficits and a weak economy. It may be good to start by asking why we are here. We are here because we have a law that says the U.S. Government can borrow only so much. The law says the U.S. Government can borrow only up to $14.3 trillion.

That is a lot of money--$14.3 trillion. It is approximately 95 percent of our economy. This is unprecedented, of course. We have never had debts at this level before. Many economists look at this and believe it is already having a very negative impact on our economy to have this huge debt out there because it affects the private sector. But we have come to this $14.3 trillion limit, and now, in order for government to continue to provide everyday government services, benefits to our troops, veterans, Social Security, and so on, the limit needs to be raised.

The Federal Government now borrows more than 40 cents of every $1 that is spent. It seems to me only common sense that when we have maxed our credit card, which is what the Federal Government has done, and when we have this deep underlying problem of these huge deficits--$1.4 trillion this year, a record level also--and mounting debt, we should deal with the underlying problem before we extend the credit card limit. So that is why we are here.

I think it is an appropriate debate. I wish it could have been resolved sooner. I think it can be resolved over the next day or so, but I think it is an important discussion we have to have. The President has made it clear he would like the debt limit increased, and he would like it increased high enough to last through the 2012 election. Interesting, because election day is not part of the economic calendar. It is not the end of a fiscal year. It is not the end of a calendar year. It is the political calendar. It is unfortunate during this time of such budgetary uncertainty, we seem focused on political deadlines.

Meeting this request the President has made--that it be extended until beyond the election--would be the largest debt increase that has ever been approved by the Congress. It would be over $2 trillion. So, again, I think it is appropriate we have this discussion before we agree to the largest debt limit increase in the history of our country. We have never raised the debt limit that much at one time before.

The President also says we need to do this because the markets want the certainty that a long-term debt limit increase will provide. I think there is something to that, in the sense of market certainty. If there could be a longer debt limit increase, I suppose it would add to market certainty. But markets don't just want a solution to this debt limit issue. In fact, I would argue what they want even more is a solution to the soaring debt itself, and this is not based on conjecture, it is based on looking at what those who are analyzing our economy say.

We have all heard about Fitch, Moody's, and Standard & Poor's. These are the credit agencies a lot of people have been talking about. They are the ones threatening to downgrade our debt. They say we should extend the debt limit, but they also say that is just the first step; that we also have to deal with the underlying fiscal problems in our country or the downgrade will occur. They want a serious commitment to reining in the spending spree that has buried us in debt in the first place. So this has to be dealt with.

A friend of mine, Keith Hennessey, sent me an e-mail tonight, and he had an interesting way to put it, for people who follow the financial markets. He said: We face both a liquidity crisis right now--which is that the Federal Government can't borrow to meet its needs--but we also face a solvency crisis--which is that the accumulation of the Federal Government deficits into the debt are at historic levels, and already harming the economy in very significant ways. So we need to deal with both.

One way to show this commitment to the solvency problem--to the debt problem--is to be sure we guarantee $1 in spending cuts for every $1 we raise the debt limit. There is a formula that was laid out several months ago by Speaker Boehner, and I think it has been widely agreed to. We will see it in what Majority Leader Reid has proposed. As we will talk about in a minute, unfortunately, some of the budget savings he thought were there, based upon the Congressional Budget Office analysis, are not real cuts, but that was the formula he used. The President has also talked about this formula, and I think it is widely agreed we need to be sure we are only extending the debt limit to the extent that we are reducing spending. So if it is going to be over $2 trillion of debt limit extension, we need to find $2 trillion in spending reductions over time.

It is interesting. As I have analyzed how this formula would work over time, it actually makes sense for our economy. If we raise the debt limit $1 but also cut $1 in spending, it not only helps us in the short term but over a 10-year period, what the CBO tells us in terms of what the debt is likely to be, just about at the 10th year we would actually balance the Federal budget. We will not get rid of the debt-- the debt will continue to grow all during that time period, unfortunately--but there would actually be, at the end of that process, an annual balanced budget by repeatedly applying that formula

every time we need to raise the debt limit.

I don't think that necessarily was the intent when the formula was derived, but it is interesting that it is a formula that makes sense to get us to, at least over 10 years, the point where we are not spending more than we are taking in. Given that the President and the majority leader would like to see a debt increase of over $2 trillion, and Republicans--and even many Democrats--want to be sure there is an equal size spending cut, it seems to me there is an obvious way forward.

We can raise the debt limit for this extended period of time, but we have to require equal spending cuts, and they have to be real. If they are not meaningful and credible spending cuts, then we will have the same negative economic consequences we have been talking about tonight: The credit agencies will downgrade our debt and we will have higher interest rates, which will affect every American family--student loans, credit card loans, certainly our mortgages. It will affect small businesses trying to get credit and that are trying to hire people. If you have a car loan, it will affect you. It affects the entire economy. So we have to deal with this issue in a real way, in a way that is credible and meaningful.

Unfortunately, the proposal that Majority Leader Reid put forward, which was intended to meet this formula we have talked about--$1 spending cuts for every $1 in increases--has some spending cuts that do not meet that standard of being credible and meaningful. The biggest one is about $1 trillion in what is called the global war on terrorism spending reduction.

A little background on this. When we are writing the budget baseline, the Congressional Budget Office says we have to assume all the discretionary spending that is happening now will continue into the future. So they assume, for the next 10 years, we will spend about $150 billion a year on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But nobody believes or hopes that will happen. It has not been requested by the President. No one intends to spend that money. In fact, the President's own budget assumes that instead of the $1.7 trillion that would be spent over the next decade, we will spend about $600 billion. That is what the President's budget says. That is what people assume. This means Senator Reid's proposal to take credit for cutting an additional $1.1 trillion that is not going to be spent anyway is not going to be viewed as a credible proposal. Why? Because it is money that is not planning to be spent.

It is a little akin to a family saying: Let's assume we are going to take a vacation we are never going to take, and it is going to cost us $10,000 and then saying: We saved $10,000 on our budget.

I wish it weren't so. I wish the $1.1 trillion was a credible spending reduction we could rely on. But the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other observers have looked at this and said: Frankly, it is not a meaningful reduction in spending. So there are some meaningful reductions in spending in the proposal of the majority leader, but this particular one, unfortunately, is a big part of what he has proposed. Out of his $2.7 trillion in cuts, about $1.1 trillion is this proposal on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We might hear it referred to on the floor as the OCO spending--overseas contingency operations.

I think one thing we should do as a Congress is make sure these cuts are meaningful and credible, and we can do that.

Second, let's expand this initial round of spending cuts. Right now, if we take out the war spending we just talked about and then look at the Congressional Budget Office's score of the majority leader's proposal, the cuts are just under $1 trillion. It is still a substantial, and I think a credible, proposal of just under $1 trillion, but that is all that is guaranteed. However, Washington is scheduled to spend about $46 trillion over that same period--the next decade. Think about that: $46 trillion and increase spending, by the way, by about 57 percent during that time period.

I think we can do a lot better than just cutting $1 trillion over the next 10 years, and I think we can do it in a bipartisan fashion. I say that because I have identified $2.8 trillion in spending reductions that have been agreed to by some bipartisan process.

The Biden talks, the Gang of 6, the President's fiscal commission, and some of the President's own discussions specifically came up with some spending reductions in addition to this $1 trillion. So my hope is, we can take some of these spending cuts that have been agreed to through some bipartisan process and apply them to this initial package.

Finally, Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Boehner's proposals both have this deficit reduction committee. It is an approach which makes sense, to be sure we get at the longer range problem, which is our unsustainable--very important but unsustainable--entitlement programs; tax reform, which will help stimulate more economic growth; and budget reform, which is clearly needed.

I have been here 6 months. We have done nothing on a budget. In fact, the Senate hasn't done a budget in 2 years. It sounds like we are in need of some reforms to make this place work. So this committee makes sense.

The majority leader calls for the committee to reduce the budget deficit to 3 percent of GDP. I think that is an interesting proposal. I think we need to be sure we know how long it would take to reach that level and how long we should maintain it, because there is no timeframe in his proposal.

So 3 percent of GDP, does that mean we would wait until a certain time period and, say, if it is a 10-year proposal, the ninth year or tenth year and suddenly make those reductions? If so, the reductions would not be nearly as significant.

Instead, we should put a timeframe in place, 5 years or 10 years--I would prefer 5--and say that there will be reductions starting in the first fiscal year to meet the 3-percent target. If you don't do that, then over that period of time, 5 years or 10 years, we will not see the kinds of reductions in spending that I think Majority Leader Reid wishes to see and I know that many of us here on this side of the aisle believe are necessary.

Eventually, we have got to balance the budget, as we talked about earlier, and it needs to be something within the 3-percent committee that leads us to that.

Also, under the majority leader's bill, there is no requirement to actually enact any of the deficit reduction committee's reforms. I think he has a very interesting proposal in terms of having an expedited process on the floor, an up-or-down vote, no amendments. I think that is smart. But if the deficit reduction committee deadlocks or if the deficit reduction committee fails to get the votes here on the floor of the Senate, there needs to be some mechanism, a fail-safe mechanism or so-called trigger for accomplishing dollar-for-dollar cuts.

The House plan responsibly makes much of this debt limit increase contingent on the cuts being actually approved and signed into law. If the President and Majority Leader Reid want the entire debt limit increase now, we would need some guarantee that this deficit reduction would actually take place. A commonsense compromise would be to add sequestration language, meaning you sequester across the board all spending, if the deficit reduction doesn't work, deadlocks, or doesn't pass on the floor even under these procedures. I would say you could limit that sequestration to the size of the debt limit increase, not even the size that Speaker Boehner has, which was $1.8 trillion, or Leader Reid I think assumes, which is even higher than that for his debt reduction committee, but just be sure it meets this formula of $1 spending cuts for every $1 of extension for the debt limit. That seems to be the kind of proposal that, at this late hour, could be agreed to and certainly should be.

Sequestration, by the way, is not a new concept. It has enforced nearly every budget reform law of the past 20 years in the Congress. It can guarantee that, one way or another, we will receive the deficit reduction equal to the debt limit increase, which is, again, the intent by Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Boehner, and others.

Finally, I think we need to allow the Senate to vote on a balanced budget amendment. Let's have a vote. Leader Reid has talked about that, Speaker Boehner has talked about that. I think it is important to provide the representatives of the American people

the opportunity to have an up-or-down vote on a balanced budget, or in many forms of a balanced budget, because there are different iterations of a balanced budget.

It seems this path forward should be able to satisfy both sides. The President and the majority leader would get the larger debt increase limit they want; there would be guaranteed deficit reduction necessary to begin fixing the budget and assuring financial markets that we are up to the task.

I think when you look at the various options we have before us, there is a way forward here. There is a way forward that says, Let's ensure that we have this upfront spending; let's remove the global war on savings gimmick; let's strengthen the initial savings, provide guarantees that this deficit reduction committee will actually work; and then let's have a vote on the balanced budget amendment.

Finally, I have heard the President talk about the importance of having a debt limit increase because of the market uncertainty in the economy. I agree that we need to do everything we can to stimulate this economy right now. We had bad news this week.

I ask unanimous consent for 30 additional seconds.

However, again getting back to our earlier discussion, if we simply extend the debt limit and don't deal with the underlying issue of our fiscal problems, what we called earlier the solvency crisis, we will have these same negative economic consequences.

With low growth in this quarter and, unfortunately, high unemployment over 9 percent, we need to do everything we can to encourage pro-growth economic policies, including tax reform, as we talked about, as well as using the energy resources we have in this country, regulatory relief, and, yes, dealing with our debt and deficit.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to discuss an amendment to the underlying bill. This amendment is designed to give American employers some relief from the regulatory burdens that continue to hold back our economy and hinder job creation. This amendment is actually identical to the bill I introduced in April, S. 817, which has been endorsed by both the Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. It is the same amendment I also introduced on the small business bill, the Economic Development Administration bills, and also part of the larger regulatory relief bill I introduced in June, which currently has 22 cosponsors.

Last week, as we know, we heard more troubling economic news. This time it was the June jobs report, which unfortunately showed the unemployment rate had actually risen to 9.2 percent and hiring slowed to just 18,000 new jobs.

These are, of course, very disappointing numbers, but much more important are the families who are affected by it, families in my home State of Ohio and across the Nation who are struggling to find a job and to get the paycheck they need to make ends meet. The real discussion in Washington, this month in particular, has been focused on the fiscal reforms we need to get our fiscal house in order, to get the economy back on track. But there are other things we can do as well and one, of course, is to reduce the regulatory burden, particularly on small businesses. I hear from them all the time. I am sure my colleagues do as well.

This burden is increasing. One recent study commissioned by the Small Business Administration put that burden at $1.75 trillion annually. By the way, that is more than the IRS collects in income taxes. I have been encouraged by what the current administration has been saying about improving our regulatory system, but I continue to be deeply concerned about the new regulatory costs this administration is imposing on the private sector as we meet here today.

We have seen a sharp uptick over the past 2 years in what are called major or economically significant rules. These are regulations that have an economic effect of $100 million or more. According to OMB and GAO data, the current administration has been regulating at an average pace of 84 of these major rules per year--which, by the way, is a 50- percent increase over the average regulatory output during the Clinton administration, which had 56 major rules per year. These figures include both the executive branch agencies and the so-called independent agencies. Today, I was pleased to see that President Obama issued a new executive order that specifically addressed independent agencies. These are the regulatory bodies that are not within the executive agencies but are considered independent. They would include the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the newly created Financial Protection Bureau, which has been subject to a lot of debate on the floor. These are all independent agencies which are designed by law to be insulated from Presidential control. This new order the President issued today and the accompanying Presidential memorandum endorsed two goals. First, it asks independent agencies to participate in ongoing regulatory look-backs. That means looking back retrospectively at rules that are already on the books to see if they make sense. Every administration since President Ronald Reagan has done this, undertaken some kind of look- back, and it is important this work continue. Second, and more importantly in my view, it calls on independent agencies to evaluate the costs and the benefits of new regulations, as executive agencies are already required to do under executive orders, including an executive order by President Clinton and an executive order by President Obama in January. I am encouraged by the words of this new executive order and Presidential memorandum on independent agencies. It endorses a very commonsense principle; that independent agencies, no less than executive agencies, should evaluate the costs of new regulations before imposing a new burden on the economy. It is common sense. It is also consistent with these amendments I have been offering on legislation this year and the independent agency part of the regulatory relief bill that was introduced in June.

The problem is the President's order today is entirely nonbinding because independent agencies don't answer to the President, so it has no force of law. The amendment I will offer would effectively write the President's new request into law. The President has now agreed with this principle. We need to expand this cost-benefit analysis to

independent agencies, but we need legislation to do it because these independent agencies are not answerable to the President.

Specifically, this amendment would extend the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, which was a bipartisan piece of legislation, where I was the Republican cosponsor in the House. It expands the two independent agencies. Major rules issued by what is sometimes called the headless fourth branch of government are today exempt not only from the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act but also from the cost-benefit review overseen by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OIARA, at the Office of Management and Budget.

This amendment would change that, effectively making the President's order he issued today binding on these independent agencies. They would be required, under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, to evaluate regulatory costs, benefits, and less costly alternatives before issuing any rule that would impose a cost of $100 million or more on the private sector or on State, local, and tribal governments. Based on the GAO data, it appears there are nearly 200 independent agency regulations that have been issued between 1996 and 2011 that would be considered major; in other words, have over a $100 million impact on the economy. They were excluded from review under this cost-benefit analysis we have been talking about. In 2009 and 2010 alone, the last couple years, independent agencies issued 56 economically significant regulations, representing billions of dollars in regulatory costs exempt from the standard cost-benefit analysis rules. But this affects our economy in a big way. It affects jobs and our ability to get this economy back on track.

Closing this independent agency loophole is a reform those of us on both sides of the aisle should join the President in supporting. This is the right vehicle to be able to achieve that. No major regulation, whatever its source, should be imposed on American employers or on State or local governments without a serious consideration of what the costs are, what the benefits are, and whether there is available a less burdensome alternative to achieve the same objective. This amendment moves us closer toward that goal. It is a commonsense amendment, again, taking the President's executive order and memorandum of today and actually putting it into force through the force of law.

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

I rise today to talk about some of the enormous challenges facing our economy, about Washington's failure to address those challenges and a way forward. Today there are nearly 23 million Americans looking for full-time jobs. This includes people among those 9 percent of Americans on the unemployment rolls, but also includes a lot of Americans who want to work but have given up looking for work or are scraping by on part-time jobs when they want a full-time job. What makes it more troubling is that, among the Americans being counted in that 9 percent, the average length of time on the unemployment rolls is now nearly 10 months. That is the longest ever recorded. These folks are looking for help, looking to us for leadership and looking for us to help get the economy back on track by creating a better environment for job creation and economic growth. As we have heard from the two previous speakers, the government faces serious, unprecedented budgetary challenges. Washington is borrowing nearly 40 cents of every dollar it spends. It looks as if we may have another record deficit this year, and we will have the highest debt ever. Government spending has gone from $25,000 per household to more than $31,000 per household in the last 4 years. The national debt has doubled over the 2008 levels--doubled since 2008. We have hit this $14.3 trillion debt limit, and if we do nothing about it, we are going to end up with an economic crisis much like Greece is facing today.

I just listened to the comments of my colleague from New York and my friend from Alaska, and they are talking about the fact that interest rates might go up unless we vote to extend the debt limit. I am talking to a lot of economists and thinking about the impact it will have on Ohio if we don't do something about the deficit and debt. When we extend the debt limit again, interest rates will go up. The value of the dollar will continue to go down. Inflation will go up.

The point is not that we want to go into default--I hope nobody does in this Chamber. Despite what my friend and colleague from New York said, there is no Republican interest in defaulting on the debt. No one wants to default on the debt. But it is just the same as when we have a credit card in our families. Once we max out on the credit card, before we try to get a higher line of credit, we ought to look at the underlying problem, otherwise we will fall right back into the same financial problems. That is what Republicans are saying.

It is this: If we do not deal with the underlying problem, which is this huge fiscal imbalance we just talked about--a $14.3 trillion debt that has doubled

since 2008--then we are going to find ourselves with a financial and economic problem that will result in a spike in interest rates and will result in this negative impact on all Americans via car loans, mortgages, and student loans.

So this is why it is so critical over the next few weeks as we work through this; That we deal with not just extending the debt limit--I guess that is a pretty easy thing to do, to just say let's go borrow more; we are already borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar--but we have to deal with the underlying problem.

So what are we doing in the Senate to deal with that underlying problem? Very little. This week we are debating a meaningless sense-of- the-Senate resolution. It is what is called a nonbinding resolution. It will not create a single job or reform a single part of our tax code. It will not save $1 of government spending. It does nothing to address the debt limit. It is a distraction, and that is why earlier today I voted against proceeding to it. Serious times demand serious work.

I was pleased when the Senate came together to cancel this week's scheduled recess because we should be here. We pledged to return to Washington and to confront these economic challenges we talked about and the budget problems we face. I supported doing that, but this has not been a serious effort.

By the way, the Senate has not even passed a basic budget for this year. There is no budget, which is highly unusual. It also never passed a budget last year. So instead of talking about nonbinding resolutions, we should be talking about a budget. We should have a budget on the floor. We should be debating it. The other side will have their issues, and we will have issues to talk about. None of us will necessarily agree with one another on the precise provisions of a budget, and that is fine. Let's have the debate and end up with a blueprint for our spending going forward.

President Obama talks about getting involved and showing true leadership but, to be honest, he hasn't stepped to the plate. The best example would be his own budget. He is required by law to submit one every year. He did submit a budget. That budget was voted on by this Senate. Because we didn't have our own budget, we voted on his budget. It was unanimously rejected 97 to 0 partly because, as Democrats will say, a few weeks after he submitted the budget, he gave a speech where he said: My budget wasn't really adequate to the task. So he rejected his own budget, in a sense, but he offered no alternatives, no specifics.

His own budget, by the way, was so unserious that it doubled the debt over the next decade, and that is why, again, it was voted down by this Senate.

What is our budget? What do we believe in? We should have that debate.

We need to know what the numbers are; and what vision the President has for the next 10 years. That is what the budget is supposed to do. And, of course, we need to know what he will do to help grow the economy. In my view, getting the budget under control is a matter of restraining spending, but it is also a matter of growing the economy. If we don't grow the economy--and that will increase revenues, by growing the economy--we will not be able to get out of this deep fiscal hole we are in with record deficits, record debt, and, again, an increasing negative impact on our economy.

The lack of a true debate is not from a lack of ideas, by the way. Senate Republicans have developed a commonsense jobs plan, much of which I think should be and can be bipartisan. It includes a lot of commonsense ideas. One is to reform the Tax Code. Senator Begich from Alaska talked about that earlier. That is to make sure that our Tax Code works better for our economy; that it is simpler, that it encourages investment and job creation. Economists across the board would agree that our current code is inefficient. We should do that as a body. That will help develop the economy and jobs and economic activity which will increase revenue.

We need to rein in regulations. When I am home talking to small businesses, the first thing they talk to me about is the latest Federal regulation. A new one out today from the Environmental Protection Agency which is affecting my home State of Ohio is going to cost jobs at a time when we need jobs desperately. These are very specific proposals. Maybe they are not proposals everyone can agree to. What are the other side's proposals? Let's debate this issue. Let's pass legislation that forces a cost-benefit analysis of regulations. Let's be sure the regulators are using the least burdensome and least costly alternatives.

These are commonsense ideas: creating a competitive workforce to make sure we are competitive for the 21st century. This is incredibly important. Expanding exports to create more jobs. On energy, being sure we have the ability to get away from our dangerous dependence on foreign oil by developing more resources right here in this country. These are all commonsense proposals we should work on because they relate to the very issue we should be talking about this week, which is how to deal with our budget imbalance.

The proposal, by the way, also caps government spending. It says we need to have a balance between revenues and expenditures, which is only common sense because until we get the fiscal house in order it is going to be very difficult to get our economy moving. It is like a wet blanket over the economy creating uncertainty and unpredictability.

On the budget, let's be clear. The long-term problem is from soaring spending, not falling revenues. This is from the Congressional Budget Office. It is a nonpartisan group. Their job is to give us the data to tell us what is going to happen with spending and with revenues. This is what they tell us.

Even if we keep current tax rates for everybody--in other words, don't get rid of the so-called Bush tax cuts--revenues are still expected to rebound above the historical average of 18 percent of the economy. If, in fact, the Bush tax cuts do not get extended, which is current law--right now they are expected to end at the end of next year--those tax revenues will be well above the historic average. Instead of 18 percent, they get up over the next several years to about 20 percent. Over the last 50 years, it has been about 18 percent. The deficit is rising not because of lack of revenue but because spending is now at 24.5 to 25 percent of our economy as compared to its historical level over the last 50 years of 20.3 percent of the economy.

What is going to happen? Well, CBO has it right there. It is projected to rise on the spending side to 26 percent of the economy over the next several years; then 30, then 40, then 50 percent of the economy on spending alone. We talked earlier about the fact that we have gone from $25,000 per household government spending to $31,000 per household in the last 4 years alone. That spending is projected to grow and grow. If we don't deal with that spending we will never be able to get the budget in balance. That is the top issue. Again, we have to face this before we extend the debt limit again. If we don't, there will be major economic problems.

Look at what Standard & Poor's and Moody's and Fitch--the so-called credit agencies--are telling us. They are saying: Yes, default would be a terrible thing. Let's not default. But they are also saying: If we don't deal with the fiscal imbalance, if we don't deal with the record deficits and debts, there will be major and negative impacts on the economy, and they will be in a position where they may downgrade our debt, which means higher interest rates.

Having tax rates chase spending is not the solution. It will not balance the budget. Moreover, it will not spur this sputtering economy to grow and to create the jobs we talk about today. It will not work to get us back to work. In fact, virtually all economic theories agree that tax increases harm economic growth. When we tax something, people do less of it. That is why we tax smoking. So if we want economic growth, the last thing we should do is to raise taxes on working, raise taxes on savings, raise taxes on investment. These are not the ways to get the economy moving again. Instead, we should be unleashing American entrepreneurs, not putting more taxes on them.

Some suggest we must choose between creating jobs and reining in government. My view is that the opposite is true. Reining in government can help create jobs. The less the government spends, the more money remains

in the private sector for families and entrepreneurs to spend. The less the government borrows, the more savings are available for businesses to borrow in order to expand, as well as for families to borrow for a new home, a new car, or a student loan. Think about it. The government borrowing all this money is like a big sponge soaking up our savings. Today, we are borrowing, again, more than 40 cents of every dollar the government spends. That is harming the economy. Reducing the deficit also reduces the risk of a debt-induced financial crisis that might otherwise dwarf what we have seen happening in Greece today.

But don't take my word for it. Lots of economists have looked at this. There is a great study out there that I encourage people to look at. It is done by the economists Ken Rogoff and Carman Reinhart. Rogoff and Reinhart do something very simple. They go around the world and look at different economies and determine what happens when their debt gets too big for their economy. Their view is that when the debt gets to 90 percent of the size of a nation's economy, it has a substantial negative impact on the economic growth and jobs in that country.

Their data suggests that when the debt gets to 90 percent of the economy, there is a 1-percent reduction in economic growth rates. So instead of our economy growing at 1.8 percent in the first quarter, it should have grown at 2.8 percent. What does that mean? That 1-percent growth would otherwise mean 1 million jobs.

So if we didn't have this huge debt--and right now it is about 93 percent of our economy; it will be at 100 percent of the economy this year--then we would have more jobs. If we look at what Rogoff and Reinhart have said, it means we would have about 1 million more jobs in this country. Could we use those jobs? Yes. We need them desperately.

So there is a connection between this overspending--and this huge gap we have between revenues and spending--and our ability to get this economy back on track.

Over 25 years, by the way, annual growth rates 1 percent lower would leave the economy nearly one-fourth smaller than it would otherwise be. Think about that: a 25-percent reduction in the size of the economy as a result of this debt.

In order to create jobs and growth, we have to balance the budget, and we have to reduce that debt that is now over 90 percent of our economy. There are two ways to reduce the debt's share of the economy: One is to make the debt smaller, and the other is to make the economy larger. We know raising taxes will shrink the economy. Instead, we have to keep tax rates low to create jobs and expand the economy, and we have to reform the Tax Code so it works better.

Again, economists across the spectrum will tell us we can have a better economy if we have a more sensible Tax Code. We must also responsibly reduce government spending, of course, to rein in the debt. Low tax rates and spending restraint will bring prosperity and alleviate this immoral avalanche of debt that we are otherwise leaving in the laps of our children and grandchildren.

I understand some of my colleagues have their own approaches to this--to jobs, to the economy, to the budget deficit. That is fine. Let's have the debate. There are numerous proposals in Congress to reduce spending, balance the budget, and reform entitlements. Instead of voting on political nonbinding resolutions as we have done this week in the Senate, let's have that debate. We have too many important issues. Let's stop fiddling while Rome burns.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

First of all, I thank my colleague from South Dakota for coming to the floor today to talk about the economy and jobs. It is clearly a top issue on the minds of folks in Ohio. And, no, the Ohio economy is still hurting. We are not creating the jobs we hoped to create.

If you look at it nationally, there are now 14 million Americans who are out of work, and more than 1 million want to work but have given up looking for work. So when you look at what is

going on out there, you add the 8.5 million Americans who are getting by with part-time jobs--even though they would like to work full time-- that is about 23 million Americans suffering from a lack of the full- time job they want. This unemployment issue continues to be the No. 1 issue in Ohio and nationally. We have got to address it.

You talked a little bit today about some of the ways that we need to approach it, including the regulatory overreach and its impact on jobs and small businesses. But let me talk about even a deeper concern in Ohio. That is the length of time people have been out of work. The average unemployment now is 40 weeks. That is about 9 months. It is 9 months of stress, 9 months of uncertainty, 9 months of wondering how to make ends meet. This is, I am told, the worst statistic in terms of length of being unemployed that we have had since the records were kept. So it is not just about these terrible unemployment numbers, it is the fact that when have you been out that long, you lose some of your job skills, you have a gap in your resume, and it is harder to get a job. This is not what was promised, by the way.

If you look at what the President and his economists promised when the stimulus was passed, they said that unemployment today would be about 6.7 percent. Instead, it is over 9 percent--9.1 percent. So it has not worked. The President has called it a bump in the road. Unfortunately, I think it is a lot more than that.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve talked about this yesterday, that he was very concerned now about some of the economic projections. He thinks we are not in as good a shape as even the projections--which were not very optimistic--show. There was 1.8 percent growth in the first quarter. At this point in the last deep recession we had, the growth was 7 percent.

This chart is interesting because it shows Federal spending as a percent of the economy, which as we all know has gone up significantly, and part of that is because of the stimulus package and then the unemployment rate. Unfortunately, when you look at this, there has not been an increase in spending and a decrease in unemployment. There has been an increase in spending and an increase in unemployment. So this simple notion that you cannot spend your way to prosperity, which is a commonsense notion that most Americans agree with, has been proven to be true.

Unfortunately, the stimulus package did not lead to the kind of progress the President and his team predicted. We are all paying the price for it. So, instead, we need to approach it in a different way.

Again, as Senator Thune mentioned earlier, part of the answer to this is dealing with the regulations, dealing with our tax system, dealing with these high energy costs, dealing with the high health care costs, which do impact employment, getting the economy back on track through smart progrowth policies.

I know the Senator from South Dakota has done a lot of thinking about how do we get out of this mess we are in, instead of the spending. But I do not know if the Senator has any thoughts about what the debt and the spending is doing to our economy. He mentioned the Rogoff and Reinhart study showing that our economy would be growing much faster than it is now but for this big overhang of spending and deficit and debt.

I wonder if the Senator has additional thoughts.

That is right. There are a number of things that can be done. There is no reason it can't be done on a bipartisan basis.

I left a hearing in the Government Affairs Committee, where we talked about regulations and their impact on the economy. Today, the cost of regulations to the economy--in particular, small businesses--is about $1.75 trillion. That is more than the IRS collects in income taxes. There were both Democrats and Republicans talking about proposals and who are concerned about the administration's continued regulations. The President said some of the right things, but there are more regulations that have a bigger impact.

In Washington, it is tough to get this under control without changing the law, in my view. We need to have a better process in the agencies to force them to look at cost-benefit analyses and force them to use the least-cost burdensome alternatives. I talked about legislation in that area today, as did Democrats and Republicans alike. There are things we have to do. Regarding the Senator's point about the impact of the debt and deficit on the job front, the Senator is right. The poll he talked about indicated that 65 percent of Americans think the debt and deficit is a major factor in high unemployment. They are right. The study the Senator talked about said if the debt gets past 90 percent, it will cost our economy about a million jobs. We are now at about 100 percent, and it will be 105 percent in 2012--next year.

This is what is happening. We are going into that period where our debt

is bigger than our whole economy. This study, by the way, is based on looking at countries all around the world, which will have gone through this experience, including countries in Europe that are going through it now, and seeing what the impact is on jobs.

There are solutions. We talked about regulations. That is one of them. My hope is that this Senate can vote on sensible regulatory reform--and soon. The story the Senator told earlier about the oil and gas industry, we should display that all over. The recent proposed regulations from the EPA on emissions from powerplants in terms of mercury--all of us want clean air. We know you have to have regulations, but the question is, how do you regulate? These are very onerous and will have a big impact on my State. There is a study out saying it is going to result in thousands of jobs being lost, and a few powerplants being shut down, and electricity costs increasing 10, 15 percent in our State. We cannot afford that.

But there is more than that. There is the Tax Code. We should, again, as a body, and the House and the administration should reform our Tax Code to make it simpler and more progrowth. It can be done. Economists across the spectrum say this current code is a mess. It doesn't work because you are encouraging businesses to make investments and allocate resources based on Tax Code-motivated interests rather than business reasons. Getting rid of these preferences and clearing out the Code, as happened in 1986, you could get more economic growth through the Tax Code reform.

I think the time is here, and the President's fiscal commission recommended this when they said, how do you look at the next 20, 30 years and come up with a way to deal with the deficit and debt? Economic growth needs to be part of it. And part of it was tax reform, and making our workforce more competitive.

Today, we do spend money at the Federal level on workforce development. Yet it is not spent very efficiently. There are some organizations that do it better than others. We should take their best practices and apply them generally. There are nine different agencies and departments engaged in looking at how to improve our workforce through the 21st century. It is a Federal program that, when connected with businesses, works; when it is not, it doesn't work well. There are opportunities to reform that program. It should be bipartisan.

I hear from communities and businesses what is working and what is not working. Flexibility is the key. There is a lot of redtape and bureaucracy. We need to enforce our trade agreements and the international rules. Enforcement is critical. But we need to open markets to our products. Every country is engaged in opening markets for their products, workers, and service providers. We need to be more aggressive in forcing other countries to open our markets to them. If we don't, we don't have access to 95 percent of the consumers in the world. The President has said that if you were to pass these three trade agreements out there, you would create over 250,000 new jobs. Think about that. That is something we ought to do. Again it is bipartisan.

Somehow we cannot seem to get these three relatively small trade agreements that we have already done through the process. We need to do that right now, because of this economic crisis we face of unemployment and long-term unemployment. This would help, in combination with a more competitive workforce.

On energy, another part of our seven-point plan--and this is a jobs plan to get us back--we have to use our own resources. There is natural gas in places such as Ohio, and South Dakota and North Dakota have a lot of natural gas. We have the technology. Let's use it. We may have the greatest resources of natural gas in the world, based on geological finds. We need to use that now, and we can help us get less dependent on foreign oil.

Finally, health care costs. We talked about this earlier. There are some commonsense things we can do now to get health care costs down, including stopping frivolous lawsuits, which we all pay for, through sensible medical malpractice reform. Some States do it well. It should be done on a national level to get the costs down. We should allow people to buy insurance across State lines. Several insurance companies could compete for the business. This would help get spending under control. We should reform the Tax Code, have regulatory relief, a more competitive workforce, increase jobs through exports, enforce the trade agreements, power America's economy with our own energy, and have sensible solutions to getting costs of health care down, which will help create jobs. All of these things are proposals the Senator has been working on, and I appreciate that.

I ask the Senator a question. If the Senator is focused on getting at this issue, does he think we have a problem on the debt and deficit because of the lack of revenue through taxation or is it through overspending? Does he have any thoughts or suggestions as to how we deal with that?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 509.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I rise today to offer amendment No. 509 to the underlying bill, S. 679, which is the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011. I am pleased to have Senator Tom Udall and other cosponsors of this bipartisan amendment.

The aim of the amendment is very simple and straightforward. It would preserve the Senate-confirmed status of our Nation's major chief financial officers. I appreciate very much the thoughtful efforts behind the underlying legislation that is before us today. I want to particularly commend my colleague, Senator Collins, who is on the Senate floor, Senator Lieberman, as well as Senator Alexander and Senator Schumer, for their hard work in being sure the nomination process is streamlined. Having been through the process twice myself, it could use some streamlining, and I know they will continue in their efforts to reduce even more some of the barriers to public service so many people feel, and I look forward to working with them.

Having said that, in terms of the specific issue of the chief financial officers, I think it would be a mistake to take them out of the confirmation process and a very unwise thing to do at this point in our Nation's history when we are facing such serious financial challenges. These are, after all, the chief financial management people and the chief budget people in our agencies and departments. We need them right now to be at the highest level possible.

Some of my colleagues will recall the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 created or consolidated the financial or executive positions across 23 Federal agencies. It specifically requires Senate confirmation for the 16 most important departmental CFO positions, as well as for the Controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management in the Office of Management and Budget. As Director of the Office of Management and Budget, I worked closely with that individual. It also, by separate law, requires Senate confirmation of the Assistant Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force who serve as Comptrollers for those military services.

In its current form, the legislation before us today would eliminate the statutory requirement that those positions be Senate confirmed. The basic principle behind the CFO Act of 1990 is that an agency's top financial officer should be a key influential figure in the agency's top management. I believe that principle is more true and urgent today than ever.

With our Federal deficits expected to reach over $1.4 trillion this year, diligent and skillful stewardship of taxpayer dollars is more critical than ever, and these CFOs are at the front lines of that effort. The nominations reform bill now pending would weaken the institutional accountability that is currently in law by denying the Senate a say and by lowering the stature of these individuals in their departments. The practical importance of Senate

confirmation is that it gives individuals the stature and credibility they often need to do their jobs effectively.

I don't believe we want to have a situation in which, for example, the Energy Department's Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability is a Senate-confirmed appointee. Yet the CFO down the hall--who is supposed to be working with this person on his budget, and, frankly, directing this person in terms of financial management--is not a Senate-confirmed individual or the Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science would be a Senate-confirmed appointee but not the Interior CFO down the hall.

When I served as the Director of OMB, I made it a point to meet regularly and personally with the CFOs of our major Cabinet departments. Their roles are critical, and we should be empowering those individuals and giving them not less but more responsibility. These officials do one of the most important jobs in our government. They are responsible for ensuring the integrity of multibillion-dollar agency budgets.

I have spoken to CFOs about this amendment, and they make some very good points. In fact, earlier today I spoke to the CFO of one of the major Cabinet agencies, and he was passionate and very articulate in talking about this issue. As he told me, by law, CFOs oversee the financial management activities relating to all the programs and operations of their agencies, but they also play a lead role in preparing the agency budgets and presenting and explaining those budgets to the Congress. Often this is a more political or strategic role than many realize. During program execution, they are responsible for cost management and auditing to detect and eliminate wasteful spending, and they are closely involved in determining which programs are effective and which programs should be terminated--a tough decision in an agency. You want to be sure that person has the stature to make that argument and to be heard.

These duties are at the heart of sound financial management but also budget policy and strategy, and I believe we should seek to strengthen these positions not weaken them, particularly given the situation we are in with our fiscal problems.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, which simply preserves the stature of chief financial officers within Federal agencies and the accountability that is made possible through Senate advice and consent.

Mr. President, I see one of my colleagues on the Senate floor, and so I yield the floor and again urge support of this amendment.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the Ohio River Way, a nonprofit, volunteer-led organization working to promote, protect and celebrate the natural beauty and recreational benefits of the Ohio River.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the Annual Ohio River Way Paddlefest, the largest paddling event in the country. Each year, Paddlefest attracts more than 2,000 paddlers to Cincinnati to canoe and kayak down the Ohio River and enjoy the gorgeous natural resources in Southwest Ohio. I have been a regular participant in the canoe races as part of Paddlefest and plan to participate again this year.

Due in no small part to the efforts of the Ohio River Way and the widespread popularity of Paddlefest, Greater Cincinnati has been designated as the Paddling Capital of The United States. Cincinnati enjoys a great selection of paddling-friendly waterways including the Ohio, Great Miami, Little Miami, Whitewater and Licking Rivers as well as the Four Mile, Caesar, Stonelick, O'Bannon, Indian and White Oak Creeks. Additionally, Cincinnati is home to the largest number of paddling-access points with more than 25 places to launch canoes and kayaks.

I congratulate the Ohio River Way on the 10th anniversary of Paddlefest and thank Paddlefest chair Brewster Rhodes and the hardworking volunteers of the Ohio River Way for the tireless work they do each year to ensure that Paddlefest is an enjoyable experience for all participants.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about Cathryn Hilker on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Cathryn is a resident of Cincinnati, OH, who has done incredible work over the last 30 years to help save the world's cheetah population. On Monday, June 20, 2011, the Cincinnati Zoo will be celebrating her 80th birthday and honoring her commitments to cheetah conservation.

Cathryn's work with cheetahs began in 1980, when she brought home a young cheetah cub named Angel. Over the next 12 years, Cathryn and Angel toured the country, giving live presentations to more than 1 million people and appearing on hundreds of television news programs all around the world. Through the Cincinnati Zoo's Cat Ambassador Program, which Cathryn Hilker founded, she and her team of trainers continue to take cheetahs and other endangered cats to schools to teach students about how we can help protect endangered species. Today, because of Cathryn Hilker's commitment and the support of her Angel Fund foundation, the African cheetah has a future in the wild.

Mr. President, for her commitment to cheetah conservation and her numerous contributions to the Cincinnati Zoo and the community of Cincinnati, I would like thank Cathryn Hilker and wish her a happy 80th birthday.

Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Tremco, Inc., for its energy efficiency efforts. Tremco, located on Green Road in Beachwood, OH, recently completed a multimillion-dollar renovation of their 40-year-old headquarters to transform it into an energy- efficient example for sustainable design. The unveiling and dedication of the facility, which will be attended by our Governor, Members of Congress, and local officials, will take place tomorrow.

The renovation will allow Tremco to lower its carbon footprint, reduce gas usage by 84 percent, reduce electric usage by 43 percent, save hundreds of thousands of gallons of potable water, and reduce materials sent to landfills by 90 percent. In addition, they are hoping to receive the prestigious U.S. Green Building Council's LEED-Gold certification for their energy-efficient improvements.

In today's world of rising energy prices and instability in the Middle East, I would like to commend the management and employees of Tremco, Inc., for their leadership in sustainability and congratulate them as they celebrate their newly renovated headquarters in a ``Building Green on Green'' dedication that will take place on Friday, June 17, 2011.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and that I be allowed to call up amendments Nos. 417 and 418 en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the reading of the amendments.

Mr. President, today we are considering a bill intended to promote economic development, and I think it is only appropriate we also talk about regulations, because, unfortunately, regulatory mandates are stifling economic growth today and keeping us from creating the jobs we so badly need.

I hear it all over my State, and I am sure my colleagues do as well. Companies are saying they want to expand. They say: We have a good idea, we have a business plan that works, but we are deterred by the cost of complying with regulations. It is the redtape and also the uncertainty. It is not just the bureaucracy and redtape, it is the uncertainty about future regulations.

This regulatory burden on employers, by the way, is growing, and it is already a mess. There is a recent study commissioned by the Small Business Administration and the Obama administration which estimates the annual toll now of Federal regulations on the American economy is $1.75 trillion. That is more than the IRS collects in income taxes in a year. With the unemployment rate now at 9.1 percent, we can't continue to ask businesses to spend more on redtape. Instead, we want them to invest in job creation.

The current administration, unfortunately, I believe, is moving in the wrong direction on this score. We have seen a sharp increase over the past couple of years in new ``major'' or ``economically significant'' rules. These are regulations that impose a cost on the economy of $100 million or more.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the Obama administration has been regulating at a pace of 84 of these new ``major'' or ``economically significant'' rules--costing the economy over $100 million--per year, including rules issued by independent agencies. By the way, that is about a 50-percent increase over the regulatory output during the Clinton administration, which was about 56 major rules per year.

I was very encouraged by the words of President Obama as he introduced his January Executive order on improving regulation and regulatory review, but now we need action. We need to be sure the agencies are actually taking the measures necessary to provide regulatory relief for job creators and reducing this drag on our economy.

One commonsense step we can take now is to strengthen a piece of legislation that is already in place. It is called the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. It was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1995. It was bipartisan legislation. I was one of the authors of this legislation in the House of Representatives. UMRA, as it is called--Unfunded Mandates Reform Act--was a bipartisan effort basically to say that regulators had to evaluate a rule's cost and find less costly alternatives before adopting one of these so-called ``major'' rules.

The two amendments I am offering today would improve UMRA in a way that is entirely consistent with the principles President Obama himself laid out in his January Executive order on regulatory review. The first amendment, 418, would require agencies specifically to assess the potential effects of new regulations on job creation and to consider market-based and nongovernmental alternatives to the regulation. It would also broaden the scope of UMRA to require cost-benefit analysis of rules that impose direct or indirect economic costs of $100 million or more. It would require agencies to

adopt the least costly or least burdensome regulatory option that achieves the policy goal set out by this Congress. A commonsense idea.

The second amendment, 417, would extend UMRA to independent agencies. In 1995, it was imposed upon the executive agencies but not on independent agencies. Those independent agencies have grown, and so have their regulations. This would be an agency such as the SEC--the Securities and Exchange Commission--or the CFTC or even the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has gotten a lot of attention here in the Senate in the debate over the Dodd-Frank Act. Right now they are exempted from the cost-benefit rules that govern all these other Federal agencies.

Major rules issued by what is called the ``headless fourth branch'' of government are not even reviewed for cost-benefit justification by OIRA, which is the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at OMB which reviews regulations from all the other agencies.

Based on information from the GAO, it now appears that between 1996 and this year independent agencies issued nearly 200 regulations that had an impact of $100 million or more on the economy. So again, over 200 regulations were not subject to review under UMRA because they were from independent agencies. There is a clear need to extend UMRA to these independent agencies. Closing this loophole is a sensible reform.

By the way, this reform was endorsed by the President's own regulatory czar, Professor Cass Sunstein, who wrote in a 2002 law review article that it only made sense to require independent agencies to undertake the same cost-benefit analysis that we require of executive agencies.

No major regulation, whatever its source, should be imposed on American employees or on State and local governments without serious consideration of what the costs are, what the benefits are, and whether there is available a less burdensome alternative. That is what these amendments are all about. Both would move us further toward that goal, and I urge my colleagues to support them both.

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

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

Mr. President, I am here to talk about the legislation that is before us--that has been before the Senate today and likely to be before the Senate tomorrow--on economic development but specifically to talk about the interest of promoting economic development and job creation.

A couple of amendments I plan to offer will help give American employers some relief from regulatory mandates that are stifling economic growth and job creation.

I hear all the time in Ohio--I am sure my colleagues hear it in their States--employers saying: We would like to expand and begin hiring again, but one of the concerns is that there is regulation that affects us. Almost every business I meet in Ohio--and I was in Ohio last week meeting with businesses in the area of energy, both companies that produce energy and companies that use a lot of energy, including chemical companies and steel companies in Ohio--have stories about some of the regulatory burdens that are making it more difficult to get jobs back and to get our economy back on track. By all accounts, the regulatory burden on employers is growing. A recent study commissioned by the Small Business Administration estimates that the annual toll, now, of Federal regulations on the American economy has reached $1.75 trillion. By the way, $1.75 trillion is more than the IRS collects in Federal income taxes.

With the unemployment rate now at 9.1 percent and the unfortunate news we heard about last month's job numbers, it should be a wake-up call to us to focus on economic development--

specifically, how do we get businesses to do more in terms of hiring, spend less on redtape, less on bureaucracy, and reduce the regulatory burden in smart ways?

The current administration has said some of the right things but actually moved in the wrong direction. We have seen a sharp increase in the last couple of years in what are deemed to be major economically significant rules. That is defined as regulations that impose a cost on the economy of $100 million or more.

According to the administration's Office of Management and Budget, the current administration has been regulating at a pace of 84 major rules per year. By way of comparison, that is about a 50-percent increase over the regulatory output during the Clinton administration, which had about 56 rules per year, and an increase from the Bush administration as well. So we have seen more regulations and more significant regulations.

I was encouraged to hear President Obama's words when he talked about the Executive order in January, which is entitled ``Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review.'' But now we need to see action. We need to see it from the administration, from individual agencies to provide real regulatory relief for job creators to be able to reduce this drag on the economy.

One commonsense step we can take is to strengthen what is called the Unfunded Mandates Relief Act. It was passed in 1995. It was bipartisan. I was a cosponsor in the House of Representatives. It is an effort to require Federal regulators to evaluate the cost of rules, to look at the benefits and the costs, and to look at less costly alternatives on rules.

The two amendments I would like to offer over the next few days as we consider the legislation before us would improve this Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, and it would reform it in ways that are entirely consistent with the principle President Obama has laid out and committed to in his Executive order on regulatory review.

The first amendment would require agencies specifically to assess potential effects of new regulations on job creation--so focusing in on jobs--and to consider market-based and nongovernmental alternatives to regulation. This would broaden the scope of the Unfunded Mandates Relief Act to require cost-benefit analysis of rules that impose direct or indirect costs of $100 million a year or more. So, again, this is for major rules of $100 million or more. It would also require agencies to adopt the least costly or least burdensome option that achieves whatever policy goals have been set out by Congress. It seems to me it is a commonsense amendment. I hope we will get bipartisan support for it.

The second amendment would extend the Unfunded Mandates Relief Act to so-called independent agencies which today are actually exempt from the cost-benefit rules that govern all other agencies. In 1995, we had this debate and determined at that time we would not extend the legislation to independent agencies. In the interim, independent agencies have been providing more and more rules, have put out more and more regulations, and are having a bigger and bigger impact. An example of an independent agency would be the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the CFTC, which is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. These are agencies that, although independent in the executive branch, are very much involved in putting out major rules and regulations. It is sometimes called the ``headless fourth branch'' of government because their rules are not reviewed for cost-benefit analysis, even by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, in its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, so-called OIRA.

We have looked at some GAO data and put together various studies, and it appears to us that there are about 200 regulations that were issued between 1996 until today that would be deemed to have an impact of $100 million or more on the economy but were automatically excluded from the Unfunded Mandates Relief Act because they were deemed to be from independent agencies.

So it is basically closing a loophole and closing this independent agency loophole, which I believe is a sensible reform. It has been endorsed by many people, including, interestingly, the current OIRA Administrator and the President's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, who, in a 2002 Law Review article, talked about the fact that this is an area where UMRA ought to be extended because, again, there were so many independent agencies that were putting out regulations impacting job creation in this country.

No regulation, whatever its source, should be imposed on American employers or on State and local governments without serious consideration of the costs, the benefits, and the availability of a least-burdensome alternative. Both these amendments would move us further toward that sensible goal, and I hope the leadership will allow these amendments to be offered. I think they fit well with the underlying legislation. If they are offered, I certainly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support them.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, over the past couple of days here on the Senate floor we have had a lot of discussion about domestic energy production and there have been a lot of good points made. But, frankly, it is more of a political exercise than something that is going to help the American people.

If one listened to the debate, one might think there is no consensus and no way forward. I disagree with that. I think given our energy challenges, including $4 a gallon gasoline, we need an energy policy that encourages more affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy. I think we can reach a consensus on a few areas, and let me raise a couple of them today.

The first is natural gas exploration and development. In my own State of Ohio, we have had exciting new developments over the past several years. Geologists have known we have big shale formations in the eastern part of the United States for years, but until recently we haven't had the drilling technologies that allowed us to tap into these huge reserves. We now have that.

In Ohio, we have both the Marcellus and the Utica shale finds that, unfortunately, have not been tapped yet but have tremendous potential. Some of the oil and gas reserve estimates associated with these finds are truly amazing. For the State of Ohio alone, in one of those formations--Utica--I am told we could yield over 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. So this is a great opportunity both to be sure we have the energy we need to power our economy but also to create jobs that go into energy production.

By the way, other States around us, including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and upstate New York, as an example, have even more production potential than Ohio. Already there are some Ohio counties, such as Belmont County and Jefferson County and Columbiana County, that are beginning to explore some of these finds, and we are very hopeful that in some of these counties, where there is incredibly high unemployment, we will be able to begin production soon. These counties have been hard hit by the downturn in the economy, and they can use the economic activity and the jobs that will be created by this production.

Earlier this year, I visited an Ohio company that is an example of one of the industries that is going to benefit from this natural gas production. It is V&M Star. It is a company that makes piping. It is near Youngstown, OH. They just decided to expand their manufacturing capability. Why? Because they are looking at Marcellus and Utica, understanding this is going to create great opportunities for them. They are investing in our State. They are investing in jobs. They are doing it because of these finds. We have to be sure we put out the Federal policies to promote and encourage the development of these resources.

In addition to using natural gas for electricity generation and as a feedstock for a lot of industries, including the chemical industry, natural gas holds incredible potential as an alternative to gas. Today, we are talking about the need to be less dependent on foreign oil, which happens to be one of the top issues on both sides of the aisle. Natural gas is a way we can do that very directly because it can be used particularly in fleets. Today, the equivalent price for a gallon of natural gas is $1.60. Think about that: as compared to $4 for gasoline, $1.60 for natural gas. The infrastructure costs create some challenges, but, again, for fleets, where there is central refueling, it makes all the sense in the world. Widespread conversion of our fleets, including our Nation's buses, garbage trucks, and utility vehicles, would help reduce demand for gasoline.

America arguably has the greatest energy reserves in the world, depending on which estimate you look at. We have to find a way to responsibly tap these reserves, in a way that we can become less dependent on foreign nations for energy needs, in a way where we will stop sending so much of our wealth overseas to pay for foreign imports, particularly of crude oil.

Ohio is still in the throes of an economic downturn. Today, we are at 9 percent unemployment in Ohio. Underemployment makes Ohio's situation even worse. One way to create jobs and to get Ohio back on track is by expanding, again, the use of our own resources, including natural gas. There should be a consensus on this issue. We should be promoting Federal policies to encourage the exploration and the development of these resources, and we should do it now.

Another area where I think you could see some consensus on energy policy in the short term in the Senate is in the area of energy conservation and efficiency. We should both find more and use less. It is that commitment to use less that led me, last week, to introduce legislation with Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire called the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act. It is S. 1000, for those who would like to check it out.

It is a bipartisan bill, a targeted and achievable piece of legislation that would leverage energy efficiency investments in a number of areas, including the building and industrial sectors but also with the Federal Government. It would help consumers and the Federal Government save money on their energy bills and help industry improve the efficiency of their production processes.

Again, this is an example of where we should be able to come together as Republicans and Democrats to get something done. There is widespread consensus that energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit, a way to reduce our energy use and, again, to make America's economy more competitive. As with anything, the devil is in the details. There will be some Senators who may disagree with some of the specifics in this legislation, but, again, it is the type of bill we should be debating on the floor of this Senate. With a little hard work, I believe it is one we can ultimately get enacted into law.

Instead, again, we have spent the better part of this week debating two bills; one that, in my view, would have done more harm than good, by raising taxes on certain businesses, while doing nothing to increase energy production or lower gas prices; and another one I supported that I think would do a lot of good but we knew did not have the necessary 60 votes to move forward and, therefore, we were not able to make progress this week for the American people.

We have all the ingenuity, the know-how, and the resources within our own borders to be able to have the energy we need to run our economy and to improve our economy and to create jobs. I hope moving forward we can find agreement on these issues and begin to tap this great American potential.

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

Mr. CARDIN addressed the Chair.

I will.