Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the period for morning business be extended until 7 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 25 minutes.

Mr. President, to the millions of Americans who are struggling to find jobs or make ends meet, this is simply stating the obvious, but I rise, a decade after we were told the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would stimulate the economy and create jobs, to say they have done neither. A decade of the Bush tax cuts have proven what we knew from the beginning; that they disproportionately benefited the wealthy, shifted wealth, did nothing for the middle class, and nothing trickled down.

The tax cuts exploded the debt and continue to be an economic burden that has been twisted into a Republican mantra, an ironic rallying cry for what clearly is a failed economic policy. Yet adherence to the tax cuts for the wealthy is a Republican political litmus test, no matter how clear the evidence is that they have failed to deliver on the promise.

We again hear our colleagues on the other side of the aisle pursuing their ``my way or the highway'' approach to legislating. This time they are protecting these failed tax policies in the current debt limit negotiations, and they are putting tax cuts for millionaires ahead of poor seniors in nursing homes.

These are the very same tax cuts for millionaires that helped get us into this fiscal mess, and they should most certainly be on the table to help us get out. It is like my Republican colleagues have thrown a lavish dinner party for the past decade and now they want us to pick up the check. What we are saying is: Let's go dutch and share the tab.

Ten years later, it is abundantly clear that tax cuts for the wealthy are nothing more than an ideological and political pivot point, not a sustainable economic policy. Our Republican colleagues use this failed notion as a one-size-fits-all for political sleight of hand for all economic circumstances: tax cuts in bad times, tax cuts in good times, tax cuts in all types of economic circumstances. That is not policy, it is a convenient bumper sticker slogan.

Our Republican friends on the other side come to the floor prepared to end Medicare as we know it. They come to the floor prepared to slash government to the bone. But they are unwilling to even entertain revisiting this failed economic policy, unwilling to consider adding a single penny to the revenue side of the equation by limiting this blind giveaway to those who need it the least. They will not entertain asking the wealthiest to be part of the solution for America, and I believe if asked, they would be. They would not put tax cuts on the table but have made ending Medicare, as we know it, the centerpiece. They told us from the beginning that wealth will trickle down, tax cuts will lift all boats, those who get the benefit of the cuts will do what is right for America and its people and create American jobs for American families. Well, the facts do not suggest such an altruistic outcome. Tax cuts for the wealthy have turned out to be the greatest failed jobs program in American history. All of the grand promises aside, all of the rhetoric about job growth and economic stimulus, all of that lofty rhetoric aside, just 3 years after the Bush tax cuts in June of 2004, we lost almost 1 million jobs, more than 300,000 jobs a year for each year of 3 years.

The fact is this economic policy did not stimulate job growth at home, but it did create job transfers abroad. Factories closed, jobs went overseas, services were outsourced. The rich got richer and tax cuts produced no jobs in America for 3 years. None. In April of 2003, almost 2 years after the tax cuts were passed, President Bush stood before the American people and said:

These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits

to middle income Americans. By speeding up the income tax

cuts, we will speed up economic recovery and the pace of job

creation.

He called the tax cuts ``a victory for fairness and a vote for economic growth.''

The fact is the Bush tax cuts coincided with the most anemic economic expansion of the postwar period. It exploded the deficit and the debt and concentrated wealth at the top unlike any concentration of wealth since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. This, in addition to two wars unpaid for in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new entitlement program passed by Republicans unpaid for, and a marketplace that instead of being a free market was a free-for-all market created the excesses that brought us to the culmination of 2008's incredible economic challenge to this country on the verge of a potential new depression and drove so much of the debt the Nation faces today.

For all the rhetoric from the right, the Bush tax cuts have been the greatest failed jobs program and the most ineffective economic stimulus effort in our history, succeeding only in creating a new class of super-rich in America.

Let's talk about this shift in wealth from the last decade. As much as my Republican colleagues tried to twist themselves into knots and jump through elaborate hoops to disprove the obvious, the facts are clear. Ten years later and the Bush tax cuts have disproportionately widened the income gap to a point today where the wealthiest 1 percent of households in this country owns almost 40 percent of all private wealth in this country, more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans combined. Think about it. The wealthiest 1 percent of households in this country owns 40 percent of all private wealth, more than almost all of the rest of us combined. That is an extraordinary shift in wealth in the 10 years since the tax cuts were enacted that has cost this Nation $2.5 trillion in revenue with about 40 percent of the benefits going to households with incomes over $380,000. Yet our friends on the other side say no to a single mother who sits up in the middle of the night with a sick child wondering if she can afford to take that child to the doctor, praying she can afford the medicine that child needs and still put food on the table, hoping she will be able to keep her job and her health care plan.

All that wealth at the top and Republicans have said no to a young student who needs a Pell grant so he or she can get the education they need to succeed. All that wealth at the top and Republicans have said no to a mom-and-pop grocery store owner who cannot get the capital they need to make repairs or expand. Our friends on the other side have looked into the eyes of that mother, that student, that store owner and said, no; no to health care, no to education, no to small business capital. They even said no to extending unemployment benefits, but asking the wealthy to pay their fair share is off the table. The one thing they have said yes to is ending Medicare as we know it and leaving seniors to fend for themselves.

I have been visiting senior centers in my home State of New Jersey. I just came from, earlier today, to hear thoughts on the current budget discussions of Medicare. A typical 65-year-old at these meetings under the Republican budget proposal would pay an additional $7,000 by the year 2022. Right now over 140,000 seniors in New Jersey are paying more for their medications because they fall into that doughnut hole.

Under the Republican plan, those New Jersey seniors will pay an additional $80 million for prescription drugs next year, and by 2020 seniors currently in the doughnut hole will pay an additional $1.6 billion. Nationwide nearly 4 million seniors will pay $2.2 billion more for prescription drugs in 2012 alone under the Republican plan, a plan that would end Medicare and would also force at least 1 million seniors to pay over $110 million more for annual wellness visits in 2012. Then turning to Medicaid, looking to turn that into a block grant program, the Republican plan could cost America more than 2 million private sector jobs over the next 5 years and threaten our economic recovery.

That is not all. Nationwide the Republican plan could cut more than $503 billion in Medicaid funding for seniors, for the disabled, including lifesaving nursing home care, leaving us with the uncomfortable and unanswerable question I pose to my Republican friends: What will those fellow Americans do? Where will they go? What happens to them under the Republican budget plan? These are people, not budget numbers. What happens to them?

Something is wrong with that picture of America. It is not the America I know. Something is fundamentally wrong when we let seniors fend for themselves and enact policies that lead to inequalities in income and wealth that are the most skewed since the Gilded Age and the Great Depression. How many years are we going to buy into the failed negotiation of trickle-down voodoo economics that reward the winners and leave the middle class behind?

We all know we need to cut wasteful spending, we all know we need to balance the budget, and we have done it before. It wasn't that long ago that, in fact, during another Democratic administration we had budget surpluses as far out as the eye could see. How quickly we forget the day Bill Clinton left office he handed the incoming President a $236 billion surplus with a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. When President Bush left office, he turned a $236 billion surplus into a $1.3 trillion budget deficit with projected shortfalls of over $8 trillion over the next decade and handed the new President, President Obama, an economy headed off the cliff.

Now our Republican colleagues want to go back to the same failed policies. They want to give more tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, continue subsidies to Big Oil while they end Medicare as we know it and gut Pell grants and all that they mean to our economic future. They insist on tax cuts that will cost $700 billion on the revenue side over the next 10 years and trillions more by slashing tax rates for the wealthy and the powerful.

Those making more than $1 million a year will see a windfall of $125,000 each from the tax cuts and tens of thousands of dollars more for proposed tax rate cuts while people in my home State lose $34 billion in health benefits and 400,000 New Jerseyans end up without health coverage at all. They want to shift the balance to millionaires and billionaires while making Draconian cuts to health care benefits for seniors.

Cuts do not reflect our value as a people or as a nation. Even a majority of tea partiers think it is a bad idea according to recent polls. I am reminded that our distinguished Republican colleagues are symbolized in their party by an elephant, a large animal that never forgets. Our Republican colleagues have forgotten what Vice President Cheney told America on national television as he was waging two wars, both unpaid for. He said, ``Deficits don't matter.'' Vice President Cheney: ``Deficits don't matter.''

Well, Republicans have apparently forgotten President Bush's own words on April 16, 2001, about the benefits of favoring the wealthiest Americans:

Tax relief will create new jobs. Tax relief will generate

new wealth, and tax relief will open new opportunities.

He was right about one thing; it created new wealth and new opportunities--all of them at the top. But show me the jobs. Show me the new opportunities for middle-class families. Show me what it did to keep our economy on track and protect hard-working families from losing their homes in mortgage schemes and hedge fund gambles that stole the wealth of middle-class families taking us to the brink of economic ruin.

Let's look at the simple facts about the Bush tax cuts 10 years later. The top one-tenth of 1 percent of American wage earners, those earning more than $3 million a year, received an average tax cut of $520,000 each--far more than most American families dream of making--a tax cut more than 450 times larger than the meager tax cut of an average middle-class wage earner. Those earning over $3 million benefited from lower tax rates on capital gains; lower tax rates on dividends, and lower marginal rates for the top two tax brackets.

From 2002 to 2007, the top 1 percent of American wage earners enjoyed 65 percent of the total income gains during that 5-year period. In those 5 years nothing trickled down. In fact, real hourly earnings fell by almost 2 percent for men in the bottom 10 percent of wage earners. It fell one-half of 1 percent for men in the middle of the 50th percentile but increased almost 3 percent for men in the top 10 percent. Nothing trickled down.

If the Bush tax cuts were designed as a stimulus, they failed again. Moody's has said making the cuts permanent would generate only 35 cents in economic activity per dollar they cost.

Under the American Recovery Act, the payback would be $1.17 for every dollar of the Making Work Pay credit and $1.38 for the child tax credit. Clearly, the stimulus effect of the Bush cuts was not a stimulus at all. As far as the debt is concerned, from 2001 to 2010 the cuts added $2.6 trillion to the debt, 50 percent of the total accrued during that 10-year period. The fact is the Bush cuts averaged out to lower revenue levels as a share of the economy than any previous decade since the 1950s, even as we have America's sons and daughters in two wars waging abroad, unpaid for. The extension of the cuts in the December tax bill is projected to decrease revenues by $432 billion, from 2012 to 2021, making the total costs more than $5 trillion over the next decade. Yet Republicans will not put any of that $5 trillion on the table, not even the tax cuts for millionaires, but they will happily end Medicare as we know it and kick poor seniors out of their nursing homes. This is something we cannot let happen.

So, Mr. President, as I have said before on the floor of the Senate, in their ideological haze they seem to have lost sight of the real people whose lives would be affected by the choices we make. The Republican vision of America is about the bottom line. It seems to me they failed to realize that budgets are not just about numbers, budgets are about people, their hopes, their dreams, their expectations for a better life for themselves and their children. They are about the promise of this country and the dream we have come to expect, the vision we have of safe, clean, vibrant communities in which to raise our families.

Budgets are a reflection of our values, not a faceless calculation of pluses and minuses just to reach an arbitrary number regardless of the impact on middle-class families looking to get back to work and pay the bills. All of us have a budget. Maybe it is not a formal budget, but we all have one. On the revenue side we have what we earn from gainful employment, investments, interest on savings. On the flip side we have our expenses, mortgage payments, groceries, utilities, and we have our contributions perhaps to our church or synagogue or donations to a favorite charity or a worthy cause. These are expressions of our personal values, just as the Nation's budget is an expression of its collective values.

We may not always think of the budget in those terms, but we should. It is about our values. The Bush tax cuts enacted a decade ago are antithetical to the values that we as a people and nation have. Middle- class families and seniors should not be left to pay the tab for a decade of lavish tax cuts that did nothing but make millionaires richer. Those tax breaks helped us to get into this mess, and they certainly should be on the table to help us get out of it. If we do that, then we have the wherewithal to do what we did once again under President Clinton: Balance the budget for the first time in a generation, create record surpluses, low unemployment, low interest rates, low inflation, and the greatest peacetime economy in over a generation. Those are the choices before the Senate and the country, and I hope we can get our colleagues to understand the right choice on behalf of the Nation's progress and prosperity.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I was unavoidably detained for rollcall vote No. 82, a vote on the motion to table the Paul amendment No. 363 related to firearm records. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' to the motion to table the amendment.

Mr. President, I was also unavoidably detained for rollcall vote No. 83, a vote on the motion to table the Paul amendment No. 365 related to suspicious activity reports. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' to the motion to table the amendment.

Mr. President, further I was unavoidably detained for rollcall vote No. 84, adoption of the motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 990 with the Reid amendment #347, PATRIOT Act extension. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Madam President, I rise with deep concern about what the proposed Republican budget does--in real terms--to real families in this country.

I am deeply concerned that my colleagues on the other side--in their ideological haze--seem to have lost sight of the real people whose lives will be affected by the choices we make.

It seems to me that the Republican budget proposal fails to realize that budgets are not just about numbers. Budgets are about people-- their hopes, their dreams, their expectations for a better life for themselves and their children. They are about the promise of America-- the vision we have of safe, clean, vibrant communities in which to live and raise our families.

Budgets are a reflection of our values, not--as the House Budget Committee chairman would have us believe--a faceless calculation of pluses and minuses just to get to an arbitrary number--regardless of the impact on families, seniors, students, and every community in this country.

We all have a budget, every family has one, maybe not a formal budget, but we all have one. On the revenue side we have what we earn from gainful employment, investments, interest on savings. And on the flip side we have our expenses: our mortgage payment, groceries, utilities--and we have our contributions perhaps to our church or synagogue, donations to a favorite charity, a favorite cause. These are expressions of our personal values, just as the nation's budget is an expression of our collective values.

We may not always think of the budget in those terms, but we should. It is about our values.

Well, we found out last night, in upstate New York, that the Republican vision of ending Medicare as we know it does not reflect American values, and voters are not buying it.

Once again, our Republican colleagues have shown that they are out of touch with the American people and are on the wrong side of history when it comes to what Americans think is fair--what they think is right.

Americans don't think it's right to give subsidies to big oil companies, tax breaks to millionaires, and take Medicare away from seniors.

They are saying that it is time to abandon the tired refrain of privatization and ending Medicare as we know it. It is time to abandon their ideological agenda that leaves seniors to fend for themselves.

It is not who we are as a people, and it is not what Americans want.

This week I met with a group of seniors in Fort Lee, NJ. We discussed what

the Republican budget cuts would do to the Medicare system they have depended on for decades.

At the Fort Lee senior center, a typical 65-year-old, under the Republican budget proposal, would pay an additional $7,060 by 2022. Right now, 142,834 seniors in New Jersey are impacted by the donut hole. Under the Republican plan those seniors will pay an additional $80 million for prescription drugs next year, and by 2020 seniors currently in the donut hole will pay an additional $1.6 billion.

Nationwide, nearly 4 million seniors would pay $2.2 billion more for prescription drugs in 2012 alone under the Republican plan. The Republican plan to end Medicare would also force at least 1 million seniors to pay over $110 million more for annual wellness visits in 2012.

And, by turning Medicaid into a block grant program, the Republican plan could cost America more than 2 million private-sector jobs over the next 5 years and threaten our economic recovery. But that is not all. Nationwide, the Republican plan could cut more than $503 billion in Medicaid funding for seniors and the disabled, including life-saving nursing home care.

Leaving us with the uncomfortable and unanswerable question I pose to my Republican friends: What will those people do--where will they go? What happens to them under your budget plan?

These are people, not budget numbers. What happens to them?

The Republican budget, in my view, satisfies a narrow political agenda that has obsessed about diminishing the role of government at all costs, no matter the trade-offs, no matter who it hurts, or what we lose.

I believe we can debate the role of government, but let's have it straight-up. Let's not play this game of tearing away at the fabric of America thread-by-thread to satisfy a political agenda, and falsely claim it to be ``fiscal responsibility.'' It is not fiscal responsibility; it's the single-minded goal of a conservative political agenda.

Fiscal responsibility is finding common ground and making difficult choices together. In a democracy, one view does not make a budget.

We can negotiate responsible cuts. We all agree that we must make cuts and reduce the deficit. So let's agree now to negotiate fair cuts and include revenue expenditures that truly balance the budget, and are truly fiscally responsible.

Cutting the deficit should not be a game of political brinksmanship. It requires serious people coming to the table willing to make difficult choices that balance cuts against revenues--balance necessary services and investments that protect our values and our way of life against wasteful spending--while creating opportunity for every American.

Balancing the budget isn't just about numbers. It is about protecting middle class families who are struggling to make ends meet in this economy--and about reflecting their values, their hopes, their vision of what America is all about.

When considering our values as a nation, the question in this Senator's mind is: Who pays to lower the deficit and who does not under this Republican budget proposal?

The answer is clear. Middle class families pay. Seniors pay. Anyone looking for a Pell grant pays, but nothing is asked of the wealthiest Americans, and Big Oil still gets billions in subsidies.

The fact is the Republican approach to balancing the budget is anything but balanced.

It is skewed to those who have the most and have already benefited the most. A balanced long-term deficit reduction plan would have to include discretionary spending cuts, including defense, as well as entitlement changes. It would have to reduce revenue expenditures by closing tax loopholes.

That is what fairness demands; it is what balance would demand. And it is what makes sense.

In my view, the Republican plan--with $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy--makes no sense. It is as unbalanced a proposal as one could imagine. Yet our friends on the other side come to the floor and embrace it as rational, reasonable, and perfectly fair.

They look America in the eye, and say that giving the wealthiest Americans more in tax relief will magically create jobs. Although there clearly is not evidence that it has in the past. They tell us that it will raise all ships. They tell us--once again--that wealth will trickle down.

How many jobs-lost, how many jobs-outsourced, how many companies- moved-overseas do we have to endure before we admit that trickle-down- economics is a quaint but false notion? The one thing lacking in trickle-down is the trickle-down.

The fact is the Republican budget is not a balanced approach. It is, in fact, the epitome of imbalance. It memorializes a far-right political ideology and codifies it into a budget document that is fundamentally flawed.

My colleagues on the other side believe balancing the budget means putting $1 trillion dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy on one side of the ledger, and $1.4 trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years on the other. They believe it means a trillion dollars in tax cuts for millionaires who hold 40 percent of America's wealth while eliminating protections for seniors, children, and the disabled--a choice that will leave 34 million Americans with no medical insurance at all.

If we were serious about reducing the deficit in a balanced way, we would start with the obvious, subsidies for Big Oil. The top five oil companies earned nearly $1 trillion over the last decade. Passing my bill to repeal oil subsidies would save taxpayers $21 billion over 10 years.

We can safely assume oil profits will be much greater in the decade to come with higher oil prices, but let's assume the top five oil companies only get another $1 trillion in profits over the next decade.

And let's not forget that these profits are in Federal waters and on Federal lands, so they are making these profits with America's own resources. According to the data, the cost of exploration, development, and production of oil for the big five oil companies is about $11 per barrel.

Oil has been trading at about $100 a barrel. That means Big Oil companies are enjoying a profit of over $90 per barrel of oil they extract.

Why in the world would they ever need subsidies in such conditions?

Handing out money to Big Oil companies and to the wealthiest Americans shows that the other side is not interested in balancing the budget or reducing the deficit, it wants to enact policies that favor the rich. They would rather dismantle Medicare, cut Social Security, cut Medicaid for seniors and the poorest among us in nursing homes who have no other place to go rather than solve our long term deficit problems in a fair and balanced way.

It wasn't long ago that the budget was, in fact, balanced--during another Democratic administration--when we had budget surpluses as far out as the eye could see.

How quickly we forget. The day Bill Clinton left office he handed the incoming president a $236 billion surplus with a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years.

When President Bush left office he had turned a $236 billion budget surplus into a $1.3 trillion budget deficit with projected shortfalls of $8 trillion over the next decade and handed the new President an economy headed off the cliff.

Now, our Republican colleagues want to go back to the same failed policies. They want to give more tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, subsidies to Big Oil while they end Medicare as we know it, and gut Pell grants and all they mean to our economic future.

They insist on tax cuts that will cost $700 billion on the revenue side over the next 10 years, and trillions more by slashing tax rates for corporations and millionaires. Those making more than $1 million a year will see a windfall of $125,000 each from the tax cuts, and tens- of-thousands-of-dollars more from the proposed rate cuts. While people in my State lose $34 billion in health benefits and 400,000 New Jerseyans end up without health coverage at all. They want to shift the balance to millionaires and billionaires, while making draconian cuts to make up for the deficits they created--cuts that do not reflect our values as a people and a nation.

The fact is ``balance'' is not about subsidies to Big Oil while ending Medicare as we know it. It's not about $1

trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while slashing Pell grants by18 percent.

Balance means fairness. It means evenness and equality. It denotes a state of equilibrium, an equal distribution, a proportionate approach. It implies symmetry--not a lopsided view that protects those who need no protection, but does not protect the interest of middle class families struggling to make ends meet.

The Republican notion of ``balance'' not only ignores the concept of equality, fairness, shared responsibility and shared burden, but it flies in the face of the fundamental concept of American community articulated in our motto--E Pluribus Unum--Out of Many, One.

That we are all in this together and should benefit together, sacrifice together--each of us working together for the betterment of all of us.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse.) The Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about the Republican bill to expand coastal drilling without environmental review, without the normal planning process, and without important safety measures. But before I do, I just have to respond to the remarks of my distinguished colleague from Alabama about our bill debated on the floor yesterday.

Only in Washington--only in Washington--could taking $21 billion from the oil companies' tax breaks, which the legislation clearly stated would go to deficit reduction, at a time that oil companies are making anywhere between $125 billion and $144 billion in profits--not revenue but profits--would that be not reducing the deficit. Only in Washington could you say taking $21 billion from the oil industry and the tax breaks they get, with record profits--and the law said very clearly that was going directly to deficit reduction--only that could be viewed a different way. And to suggest the oil companies cannot do without that $21 billion of the taxpayers' money when they are making $125 billion to $144 billion in profits is pretty outrageous.

But I know what today's legislation is about. Yesterday, the Republicans were standing up for Big Oil and today they are standing up for Big Oil again because this is not about reducing gas prices.

Haven't we learned anything from the tragic death of 11 men aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig a little over a year ago? Haven't we learned anything about the families who lost livelihoods and the gulf economy that will take decades to finally rebuild? Just over a year ago, I came to the floor to speak about this human and environmental catastrophe, a spill that many in this Chamber said was inconceivable--well, inconceivable despite the fact that a remarkably similar spill had happened a year before off of Australia's coast. Two hundred thirty miles of coastline in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida was spoiled by toxic oil, and countless families who made their living on the coast had their lives turned upside down. This chart reflects the oilspill in Australia, but this is similar to what happened in the gulf.

Despite that sobering reality, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have introduced a bill that would open new areas to coastal drilling and put millions more families at risk of losing everything. And at the same time they are calling on coastal communities, such as my home State of New Jersey, to risk everything, they have blocked efforts to address the fundamental safety concerns raised by the Deepwater Horizon blowout and the results of what the commission said. This reckless bill would allow drilling in sensitive coastal areas even though current safety and oversight laws have been deemed to be inadequate to prevent a repeat of the gulf disaster.

So I ask, have we learned nothing? My home State of New Jersey would face a risk of drilling along Virginia's coast, less than 100 miles from the Jersey shore. If the gulf spill happened in Virginia waters, many New Jersey families and much of our coastal economy would be ruined. We have magnificent pristine beaches. The dunes along the coast are breathtaking, wildlife is abundant, and tourism depends on it. It would all be in jeopardy. This is the second major driver in billions of dollars for our economy. And for what?

This photo shows what happens to wildlife when coastal drilling goes wrong. It shows a risk we cannot take. A spill similar to the one in the gulf could quickly travel to Cape May and blanket the entire Jersey shore in a sheen of toxic oil. This would not only be an environmental disaster but also an economic disaster for New Jersey. If our coast was covered in oil and our wildlife disappeared, tourists wading into the ocean would be replaced by cleanup crews in biohazard suits. That is not what I want for the people of the coastal communities of my State or any other State.

With approximately 60 percent of New Jersey's $38 billion tourism industry generated by the Jersey shore, we cannot afford to let this happen. And when we add the effect a spill would have on my State's multibillion-dollar fishing industry, the economic consequences are unimaginable. It simply does not make sense to play Russian roulette with an asset that generates thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars per year for drilling assets that could never generate even one-tenth of that.

My colleagues argue that we must risk our coastal economies in order to bring down the price of gas; that what we need is more production domestically. But here is the problem. As this chart shows, we now have greater production than at any time since 2005. Yet what do we see? Gas prices haven't gone down. So how does that theory play out? We have greater production domestically than ever before, but gas prices haven't gone down.

What does the Department of Energy tell us? It estimates that opening all the shores--all shores--to drilling would reduce gas prices by--how much, Mr. President?--one, two, three cents in the year 2030. That is from the Department of Energy of the United States. Drill everywhere and a 3-cent reduction in 2030. I don't think that is about providing relief right now. Three cents per gallon in 20 years, and yet we would risk tens of billions of dollars in damage to our coastal economies?

So instead of doubling down on 19th-century fuels, we should be investing in a new 21st-century green economy that will create thousands of new jobs, billions in new wealth, and will help protect our air and water from pollution. It is time for this country to move forward and embrace the future rather than clutch at the ways of the past.

Over the last 2 days, we had two bills presenting clear choices--my bill to cut oil tax breaks and this bill to recklessly expand oil drilling. Neither bill will do anything to gasoline prices. And despite rhetoric on the other side of the aisle, neither bill is about gasoline prices.

I said it very clearly. My bill to cut oil subsidies was about lowering the deficit and doing so by cutting wasteful subsidies. It is hard enough to be paying nearly $4 a gallon for gas, but then to have the taxpayers reach into their pockets and give more money to Big Oil to have them make bigger profits is pretty outrageous. The Republican leader's bill is about enriching oil companies by granting them new areas to drill without normal safety or environmental review. My bill was designed to help taxpayers, and their bill is designed to help oil companies.

When it is all said and done, this is what we are deciding today: Are you with the working, middle-class Americans or are you with Big Oil? I think there is only one fair answer, only one answer that makes sense for American families, and only one answer for ourselves as a country looking to future generations.

If we learned nothing from the tragedy of a year ago, then that is a sad commentary. But if we have learned, yes, we can pursue drilling in certain areas, but it must be done safely or else we spend billions afterward cleaning up the mess. I don't want to clean up the oil companies' messes. I don't want to put future generations of Americans at risk in terms of the conservation of their environment. And I certainly do not want to wait for 2030, to take all of that risk, to risk all of the billions of dollars in our coastal economies for three cents.

Mr. President, let's vote no on this suggestion, and let's move forward to a green energy future that finally breaks our addiction to foreign oil and breaks our addiction to those gas prices we suffer with today.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to follow on the majority leader's bringing this legislation to the floor, which I am privileged to sponsor with a whole host of my colleagues, and really to speak out for taxpayers and against continuing to provide subsidies to multibillion-dollar big oil companies. We are talking about the big five. We are not talking about any other entity, just the big five.

A positive vote on my bill presents a simple choice for everyone in this Chamber: Are you on the side of working class families or are you on the side of Big Oil? There are lots of ways to cut the deficit. Many of our colleagues, particularly in the other body, want to end Medicare and cut student loan programs. What I and my cosponsors want to do is end wasteful oil tax breaks for a wealthy industry that does not need them.

Clearly, we all need to tighten our belts to help address the deficit--all of us--even the oil companies. We all know oil companies are among the largest, most profitable companies in the world, but sometimes it is hard to understand the true scale of their wealth. So this chart is a simple attempt to give some perspective.

The median income in the United States is about $50,000. ExxonMobil, just one of these big five, is projected to earn in profits $42.6 billion this year--$42.6 billion. Now, it is impossible to show this disparity on a chart,

but if this chart were to scale and each bundle of money equaled $50,000, then we would need more than 850,000 stacks of bills to equal ExxonMobil's profits over the next year. So 850,000 stacks of bills on this poster would be about 170,000 feet high or about 32.2 miles straight up, through the ceiling of this Chamber, and beyond the stratosphere.

Now, the printing and graphics department is very good at the Senate, but 32 miles of posters was probably a bit much. So I decided not to do that. I appreciate the Parliamentarian acknowledging that I shouldn't have done that.

My bill would close several loopholes for Big Oil--loopholes that, given the current budget climate, would let Big Oil get away without making any sacrifices at the very time we are asking middle-class families, the disabled, and the elderly to tighten their belts and help reduce the deficit. There simply is no commonsense explanation for balancing the budget on the backs of working families and letting multibillion-dollar oil companies keep billions in taxpayer dollars.

At the same time the median income is $50,000 for Americans, here is what it is if you are a CEO of one of the big oil companies. In the last year alone, the CEO of ExxonMobil got paid $29 million. The ConocoPhillips CEO last year was paid about $18 million and Chevron about $16 million. Most Americans will never see that in their lifetime of work. So to have these executives come last week before the Finance Committee and say, as one of the companies put out, the suggestion about taking away some--not all, some--of their tax subsidies was un- American is pretty outrageous.

Let me explain the provisions of my proposal. The first provision has to do with foreign tax credits. U.S. taxpayers are taxed on their income worldwide, but they are entitled to a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for any income taxes that are paid to a foreign government. They get that taken off. It makes sense because we don't want to tax the same activity twice, but U.S. oil and gas companies have pretty smart lawyers and clever accountants. They have figured out if they can convince a foreign government, such as Indonesia, to charge them taxes instead of a royalty, which is, in essence, a fee they pay for the purpose of drawing that oil out of that country, they can get a big break on their U.S. taxes. But what this amounts to is that the U.S. taxpayer is subsidizing foreign oil production. This bill would close that loophole and return $6.5 billion to the Treasury.

Another one. In 2004 Congress created the domestic manufacturing tax deduction. It was designed to help U.S. manufacturers that export a product to a foreign market; so cars, iPhones, iPads, all of that. Well, few would see the extraction of oil from the ground as manufacturing, but, again, Big Oil's lobbyists earned their money. They saw an opportunity, some made phone calls, and, lo and behold, according to the Tax Code, oil companies are in the manufacturing business.

This legislation closes that loophole and saves taxpayers almost $13 billion. That would be $13 billion more toward deficit reduction.

Now, the American people understand this bill. They understand Big Oil makes enormous profits. There is nothing wrong with making profits, by the way, but they don't need to have our tax dollars in order for them to make those profits. The American people understand Big Oil does not need taxpayer subsidies, and they understand if Big Oil wants to lower gasoline prices, they could put a lot less money in stock buybacks and a lot more in lowering prices or producing more oil.

But in order to combat this straightforward, commonsense bill that even the CATO Institute supports, Big Oil and its supporters have come up with some pretty straining rhetoric. The strangest by far, as I alluded to before, is suggesting that those who support cutting these wasteful subsidies are un-American. It seems to me when a company stoops so low as to question the patriotism of those who would suggest that maybe they can do without $21 billion in taxpayer subsidies when they are going to make anywhere between $125 billion in profits--not proceeds, profits--to $140-some-odd billion, to question the patriotism of those who suggest they don't need further taxpayer subsidies is to suggest they don't have very good arguments on their side.

The charge of un-American is outrageous, and I think the 74 percent of Americans who support ending oil subsidies know they are more American than that point of view.

Another argument I keep hearing is that oil companies are entitled to these breaks. This argument seems to suggest that the wealthy and powerful deserve what they get, and working class families should know their place and know better than to ask oil companies to do their fair share as well. Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in America, said:

There's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the

rich class, that's making the war and we're winning.

This bill says even the most rich and powerful among us must do their fair share to help us reduce the deficit. Their high-priced lobbyists cannot stop us from doing what is fair and what is right.

Some in the industry have also claimed that cutting $2 billion in annual oil subsidies to the big five oil companies will somehow make oil and gasoline more expensive. That argument is absolutely false. This bill would save taxpayers $21 billion over 10 years, roughly a little over $2 billion per year. Compare $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies to the projected--anywhere between $125 billion and $144 billion in profits the big five oil companies are expected to make this year. So if the big five oil companies could just live with $142 billion in profits in 2011, they could pay their fair share in taxes, help lower the deficit, and not raise the price of gasoline.

Let's put it a different way. The Finance Committee recently went through the corporate filings of the big five oil companies and found their costs of extracting oil is about $11 per barrel. When oil is trading at nearly $100 per barrel, it is simply absurd to suggest that the costs oil companies are facing is what is determining the price of oil or that cutting $2 billion per year in subsidies will somehow force oil companies to raise prices.

In addition, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service just came out with a definitive report echoing the sentiments of countless economists and other disinterested observers concluding that my legislation would not increase gas prices at all.

So it is time for the big five to do what is right for a change and pay their fair share. This should not be hard since in 2005, the CEOs of some of the big five oil companies testified they agreed with former President Bush that they do not need subsidies to drill for oil when it is selling at $55 per barrel. Well, it is selling at nearly $100 per barrel right now, so it is quite strange that anyone thinks they need government handouts to drill when the marketplace is driving them that way. We simply cannot expect the average working family to shoulder the burden of lowering the deficit alone.

I hope some of the favorable comments I have been hearing from my Republican colleagues in recent weeks means they are ready to join in this effort and lower the deficit because all of the savings go directly to deficit reduction under the legislation, and do so in an equitable and effective manner.

What is fair is fair, but nothing about continuing these subsidies is fair. Those on the other side would end Medicare as we know it in the name of deficit reduction while continuing to pump billions of dollars in corporate welfare into a $100 billion profit industry. That is the height of hypocrisy. It is not fair to working families. It is not a wise use of limited Federal resources. If this body does the right thing today, it is not going to continue. There is nothing fair about the suggestion of ending Medicare in favor of Big Oil subsidies.

Big oil has to do the right thing by America. They can be part, and should be part, of the solution to our deficit challenge, and that is the opportunity we have today.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, the American people understand this bill. They understand that if working families must sacrifice to help lower the deficit, then so should the most wealthy and powerful industry in the country. If Big Oil wants to lower gasoline prices, they would put a lot less money in their stock buybacks or their multimillion dollar CEO salaries and a lot more in producing oil or they could use some of their enormous profits to lower prices. But I guess in that world greed is good.

While the American people understand this bill--it is clear for them what it does--many on the other side of the aisle simply do not. Because this is such a simple, commonsense idea, they have made up arguments just to get through this debate.

One of my colleagues said it would raise the deficit. Only in Washington--only in Washington--could that comment actually be made when the Joint Tax Committee has clearly made it known this would lower the deficit by $21 billion. It would lower the deficit by $21 billion, not raise it.

Another argument I have heard is that this bill will somehow raise gas prices. That argument is absurd. With the big five oil companies poised to make $144 billion in profits this year alone, it means Big Oil would simply have to settle for $142 billion in profits this year to pay their fair share of dealing with the deficit, and they wouldn't have to raise gas prices 1 cent. That is what the Congressional Research Service independently decided, as well as the Joint Tax Committee.

I have also heard the argument Big Oil actually pays more taxes than other companies. That is not true for multiple reasons. ExxonMobil's effective tax rate is actually lower than the average American family's rate. They pay far higher taxes abroad than they do here, so there is no competitive disadvantage, and we have the lowest royalty rates in the world.

We have rarely seen in this body a more stark contrast and a more obvious choice. American families are sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to make ends meet within the constraints of their own family budgets. We are simply asking Big Oil--making $144 billion--to do their fair share. That is what this vote is all about.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act. This important legislation would provide competitive grants for educational organizations to make Holocaust education more accessible and available throughout this Nation.

I would like to commend my former colleague in the House, Congresswoman Maloney, for her leadership on this issue. I also want to thank my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Lautenberg, for agreeing to be an original cosponsor.

This past Monday, we solemnly commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, in memorial of perhaps the greatest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. As we reflect upon the tragedies of the events surrounding the Holocaust, the lives lost, the families destroyed, the potential unfulfilled, we must renew our oath to never forget, so this dark chapter in history will never be repeated.

We must forever remember the approximately six million Jewish men, women and children, as well as millions of others who faced persecution, displacement, and death at the hands of the Nazis. We must remember their stories not just to honor their lives, but more importantly, to educate the next generation about the dangers of intolerance, ignorance, and bigotry. I could not think of a better namesake for this bill, Simon Wiesenthal, who honored the memories of those lost by dedicating his life to bringing those responsible to justice.

Some people might ask why we need to learn more about something that happened over 65 years ago and an entire ocean away. The same critics might argue that anti-Semitism, while terrible, is a relic of the past that will never be repeated. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and we, as a Nation, must not ignore this appalling truth.

Even to this day, we do not have to go half way around the world to find examples of intolerance and hate; rather we can look into our own neighborhoods and communities. According to the FBI, there were 1,376 hate crimes motivated by religious bias in 2009. More than 7 out of 10 of these crimes were perpetrated against Jews because of their religion. In fact, even in my own State of New Jersey, a State of immense diversity, tolerance and understanding, we have seen a number of incidents that tear at the fabric of our society.

In July of 2010, a Rabbi and his 12 year old son were subject to anti-Semitic slurs from an unidentified man in a sedan as they walked towards their synagogue in Edison, NJ.

A few days after, the Edison Police Department investigated a second anti-Semitic incident at a Lexus dealership where eight cars had been vandalized with swastikas.

Last year in Chatham, New Jersey, anti-Semitic leaflets with the words ``Kill Jews'' were littered throughout the town. Local police found the culprit and arrested him. However, Chatham Township Police said they could only charge the offender with littering because he was not apparently targeting an individual.

New Jersey college students at Rutgers University have also experienced this terrible discrimination on numerous occasions. This past fall, when a guest speaker came to present at a Jewish event on campus, he was continually harassed by a large group of students that shouted slurs and disrupted his speech several times. Since then, there has been an escalation of anti-Semitic incidents. One of which included a student event this past January that attempted to exploit the Holocaust and accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. When students showed up in peaceful protest, they were charged an admission fee, while supporters of the event were admitted for free.

These troubling events do not occur in a vacuum. They are fed by bigotry, hatred, and above all else: ignorance. This ignorance is fueled by provocative, dangerous, and bigoted rhetoric that both threaten the safety and well being of individuals, while also insulting the honor of millions of Jewish people. So called academics seek to rewrite history to minimize and spin the facts surrounding the Holocaust; the government of Iran has waged campaigns not just to rewrite, but to simply erase an inconvenient truth. This is not an academic issue shrouded in intellectualism; Holocaust denial is bald- faced anti-Semitism, rooted in hate, and it has no place in our society.

We cannot sit idly by and hope that time alone will heal these wounds. We must take proactive steps to ensure that our society may properly study and take lessons from the Holocaust. Holocaust education is essential for school children so that we may achieve this goal.

Although some States now require the Holocaust to be taught in public schools, the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act goes further and makes grants available to organizations that instruct students, teachers, and communities about the dangers of hate and the importance of tolerance in our society. This legislation would give educators the appropriate resources and training to teach accurate historical information about the Holocaust and convey the lessons that the Holocaust can teach us today.

However, while much growth and healing have come about in the 66 years since Auschwitz was liberated, there remains a significant barrier that we must break through. After 6 decades, many of our youth may view the Holocaust as an event that occurred in the distant past. Only by proper acknowledgement of the incredible loss of life during the Holocaust, will we ever be able to ensure that such an event never happens again.

It is in our common interest to raise our voices against anti- Semitism and against all hatred and discrimination. Funding accurate educational programs on the Holocaust is a step toward winning this battle.

So as America stands with Israel and all followers of the Jewish faith in condemning anti-Semitism, let us do everything in our power to end discrimination and educate future generations about the danger of hatred and bigotry.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act. This important legislation would provide competitive grants for educational organizations to make Holocaust education more accessible and available throughout this Nation.

I would like to commend my former colleague in the House, Congresswoman Maloney, for her leadership on this issue. I also want to thank my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Lautenberg, for agreeing to be an original cosponsor.

This past Monday, we solemnly commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, in memorial of perhaps the greatest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. As we reflect upon the tragedies of the events surrounding the Holocaust, the lives lost, the families destroyed, the potential unfulfilled, we must renew our oath to never forget, so this dark chapter in history will never be repeated.

We must forever remember the approximately six million Jewish men, women and children, as well as millions of others who faced persecution, displacement, and death at the hands of the Nazis. We must remember their stories not just to honor their lives, but more importantly, to educate the next generation about the dangers of intolerance, ignorance, and bigotry. I could not think of a better namesake for this bill, Simon Wiesenthal, who honored the memories of those lost by dedicating his life to bringing those responsible to justice.

Some people might ask why we need to learn more about something that happened over 65 years ago and an entire ocean away. The same critics might argue that anti-Semitism, while terrible, is a relic of the past that will never be repeated. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and we, as a Nation, must not ignore this appalling truth.

Even to this day, we do not have to go half way around the world to find examples of intolerance and hate; rather we can look into our own neighborhoods and communities. According to the FBI, there were 1,376 hate crimes motivated by religious bias in 2009. More than 7 out of 10 of these crimes were perpetrated against Jews because of their religion. In fact, even in my own State of New Jersey, a State of immense diversity, tolerance and understanding, we have seen a number of incidents that tear at the fabric of our society.

In July of 2010, a Rabbi and his 12 year old son were subject to anti-Semitic slurs from an unidentified man in a sedan as they walked towards their synagogue in Edison, NJ.

A few days after, the Edison Police Department investigated a second anti-Semitic incident at a Lexus dealership where eight cars had been vandalized with swastikas.

Last year in Chatham, New Jersey, anti-Semitic leaflets with the words ``Kill Jews'' were littered throughout the town. Local police found the culprit and arrested him. However, Chatham Township Police said they could only charge the offender with littering because he was not apparently targeting an individual.

New Jersey college students at Rutgers University have also experienced this terrible discrimination on numerous occasions. This past fall, when a guest speaker came to present at a Jewish event on campus, he was continually harassed by a large group of students that shouted slurs and disrupted his speech several times. Since then, there has been an escalation of anti-Semitic incidents. One of which included a student event this past January that attempted to exploit the Holocaust and accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. When students showed up in peaceful protest, they were charged an admission fee, while supporters of the event were admitted for free.

These troubling events do not occur in a vacuum. They are fed by bigotry, hatred, and above all else: ignorance. This ignorance is fueled by provocative, dangerous, and bigoted rhetoric that both threaten the safety and well being of individuals, while also insulting the honor of millions of Jewish people. So called academics seek to rewrite history to minimize and spin the facts surrounding the Holocaust; the government of Iran has waged campaigns not just to rewrite, but to simply erase an inconvenient truth. This is not an academic issue shrouded in intellectualism; Holocaust denial is bald- faced anti-Semitism, rooted in hate, and it has no place in our society.

We cannot sit idly by and hope that time alone will heal these wounds. We must take proactive steps to ensure that our society may properly study and take lessons from the Holocaust. Holocaust education is essential for school children so that we may achieve this goal.

Although some States now require the Holocaust to be taught in public schools, the Simon Wiesenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act goes further and makes grants available to organizations that instruct students, teachers, and communities about the dangers of hate and the importance of tolerance in our society. This legislation would give educators the appropriate resources and training to teach accurate historical information about the Holocaust and convey the lessons that the Holocaust can teach us today.

However, while much growth and healing have come about in the 66 years since Auschwitz was liberated, there remains a significant barrier that we must break through. After 6 decades, many of our youth may view the Holocaust as an event that occurred in the distant past. Only by proper acknowledgement of the incredible loss of life during the Holocaust, will we ever be able to ensure that such an event never happens again.

It is in our common interest to raise our voices against anti- Semitism and against all hatred and discrimination. Funding accurate educational programs on the Holocaust is a step toward winning this battle.

So as America stands with Israel and all followers of the Jewish faith in condemning anti-Semitism, let us do everything in our power to end discrimination and educate future generations about the danger of hatred and bigotry.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, shortly, we hopefully will be voting on a budget agreement for this fiscal year, and that will start the process of the debate on the next fiscal year. What we are about to do is more than pass a budget agreement; we are about to define a vision of America. We are about to make choices now and in the coming weeks that will reflect our values and our principles as a people and as a nation.

The real question before us, in my mind, is not simply about the numbers, it is about competing visions of America, whether we choose a vision of America where the air and water are clean, where food and prescription drugs are safe, where roads and bridges and transportation systems are modern, well maintained, and fuel prosperity for the future, an America that puts a premium on education and invests in jobs and the middle-class, an America where a mother who wakes up in the middle of the night with a sick child doesn't have to wonder if she can afford to take that child to the doctor or if her insurance will cover the costs, an America in which seniors have a reliable Medicare system they can count on, not just a voucher that doesn't even cover the cost of a plan in the private marketplace. That is an ugly vision of America we have seen before, and it is why we passed Medicare in the first place.

Let's be clear. This is not about the numbers. This is not just simply about the details of deficit reduction. This is about two competing views of this Nation, one in which we embrace the concept of community, each of us working together for the betterment of all of us--all of us sharing in the burden of balancing the budget and reducing the deficit.

The other is a tea party vision, in which no government is good government and the notion of an American community is a myth, and we are simply a nation of competing individuals, each of us working for what we can get on our own. Tea partiers see an America in which the burden of balancing the budget should be borne by senior citizens, students, and middle-class families, while protecting subsidies to big oil companies and giving even more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

We see an America of shared prosperity and shared responsibility that reduces the deficit and balances the budget, knowing that millionaires and billionaires can be just as patriotic and willing to pay their fair share as a soldier in Afghanistan whose family is living on an Army paycheck.

Our friends on the other side tell us tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires create jobs and benefit middle-class families. They told us, when we passed the Bush tax cuts a little over a decade ago, it would create millions of jobs for every American, and what happened? Jobs were eliminated or sent overseas, and the wage gap increased. This tax policy may benefit some, but it doesn't create jobs and it doesn't reduce our deficit.

For some reason, we seem to think the wealthiest Americans are clamoring for more tax cuts, but I find no basis in fact for that. I have spoken to many CEOs and leading corporate executives in my State and around the country, and never have I heard a word about how badly they need another tax cut. I believe the wealthiest Americans are as patriotic as any one of us and are willing to step up to the plate and pay their fair share if we simply ask them to support a rational tax reform program that emphasizes shared fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity.

In my view, tax cuts for millionaires are nothing more than a political sleight of hand, a smoke-and-mirrors vision of America, in which there is no shared responsibility, no sense of community but a misguided belief that only if the rich had more money, the elderly, the sick, the poor, the middle-class families struggling to make ends meet, the disabled child on Medicaid who needs round-the-clock care, we would somehow be better off.

We have been there before, and it hasn't worked. It is a smoke-and- mirror vision of America to believe that if there were no environmental protections, that polluters would protect our air and keep the water clean and safe because it is the right thing to do. Again, we have seen that vision of America, and it came in a poisonous cloud of smog that lingered over America's cities, which is why Richard Nixon, a Republican President, created the Environmental Protection Agency in the first place.

If we are serious about reducing the deficit, we at least should be looking, for example, at subsidies for big oil. The top five oil companies earned nearly $1 trillion--$1 trillion--over the last decade. Passing my bill to repeal oil subsidies would save taxpayers $33 billion over the next 10 years. We can safely assume oil profits will be much greater in the decade to come with higher oil prices, but let's assume that the top five oil companies only get another $1 trillion in profits over the next decade. Taking back $33 billion in government handouts would only shave about 3 percent of those profits. Let's not forget that much of these profits are in Federal waters and on Federal lands, so they are making these profits on America's own soil.

If we were serious about reducing the deficit, we would also be seriously looking, for example, at big oil subsidies and tax breaks. According to the data, the cost of exploration, development, and production of natural oil and gas in the United States averaged about $33.76 per barrel of oil. Oil is trading at $107 a barrel. That means big oil companies are enjoying a profit of over $750 per barrel of oil they extract. Why in the world would they ever need subsidies from the U.S. taxpayer in such conditions?

No, handing out money and reducing regulatory burdens on big oil companies and on the wealthiest Americans is not about balancing the budget or reducing the deficit; it is about a vision of America that favors the rich and would rather dismantle Medicare, cut Social Security, cut Medicaid for seniors, and the poorest among us in nursing homes who have no other place to go, rather than to solve our long-term deficit problems.

I am deeply disturbed at what is being proposed as we move forward in the next debate of the next fiscal year and the so-called push for balancing the budget by shifting $4 trillion from the promise of America to protect this Nation and to create prosperity for its people, to the wealthiest Americans in a tax cut that actually does absolutely nothing to solve the deficit problem. I am disturbed when I see those on the other side lining up to resist any compromise, any effort for a reasonable chance at a workable solution.

Before the President was even done speaking yesterday, the tea party and many Republicans had already made up their minds that there was nothing to talk about, no room for compromise; that there is no other view than their own.

When I first arrived in the other body, we may have had very clear and fundamental differences, but we understood we were there to govern. Now our Republican colleagues seem to have stopped governing in order to score political points and hope they can win an election. The extreme wing of the Republican Party is driving the legislative process and the Republican Party to the darkest reaches of the political spectrum, fundamentally threatening the very notion of democracy. They want what they want, and they want it all. They will accept nothing less than everything. But let's not forget it was Republican policies that got us here in the first place.

It wasn't long ago, not long after the last Republican government shutdown during another Democratic administration, when we had budget surpluses--surpluses--as far as the eye could see. The day Bill Clinton left office, he handed President Bush a $236 billion surplus, with a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. When the Bush administration left office and President Obama was sworn in after 8 years of Republican economic policies that they are espousing, again, including tax cuts to the wealthiest, two wars waged unpaid for, turning a blind eye to the excesses of Wall Street--the new President faced an economy that was at the abyss of a new depression. The Republicans had turned a $236 billion budget surplus into a $1.3 trillion budget deficit and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion over the next decade.

Now they want to give more tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, losing $700 billion on the revenue side over

the next 10 years by extending the Bush tax cuts and trillions more by slashing tax rates for corporations and millionaires without offsetting tax expenditures. Those making more than $1 million a year would see tax cuts of $125,000 each from the tax cuts and tens of thousands of dollars more from the proposed tax cuts, while people in my State would lose $34 billion in health benefits and 400,000 New Jerseyans end up without health coverage at all. They want to shift the balance to millionaires and billionaires while making Draconian cuts to make up for the deficits they create--cuts that do not reflect our values as a people and as a nation.

So let me conclude by saying we all agree we must do more to rein in spending and get back to the kind of surpluses Democrats created in the 1990s, but we can only get there through a reasonable framework that emphasizes shared prosperity and shared fiscal responsibility to achieve our common goal. The way we get there is through negotiation and compromise, not from smoke and mirrors, not through trickle-down theories that have not worked, and strictly adhering to an ideological political agenda that fundamentally starts the clock all over again on the battles for basic American protections that were fought and won in the last century.

Let's not go back. Let's protect American values and keep America moving forward and working. As I have said, you show me your budget and I will show you your values.

The Republican vision of this Nation, as defined in H.R. 1, does not represent this Senator's values. It is not the fulfillment of the American promise, idea and ideal, and I do not believe it is who we are as a people and what we want our Nation to represent.

With that, I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I rose yesterday to talk about the consequences of a budget shutdown, and I rise again today--hours away from facing that reality.

What I cannot understand for the life of me is after having agreed to $78 billion in cuts, more than almost 80 percent of the way of where our Republican colleagues originally stated they wanted to be--the last time I checked on a negotiation, when someone comes 80 percent of the way to where you are, you have done rather well. Yet, even in the face of having made those very deep cuts--some of which will clearly affect major services delivered to individuals in this country, but coming together for the understanding of what is necessary to both get this budget year done and being able to begin to significantly reduce the deficit--it is still not enough. Why? Because of a driving force in the House of Representatives on the Republican side that insists on social issues that have nothing to do with the budget and keeping the Nation's business open and making sure this economy stays on track, and growing jobs, and putting families back to work.

I will talk about that issue in a minute. But, again, I wish to revisit that this isn't about some museums closing on The Mall, even though that in and of itself has a tourism and dollar effect on our economy to all those places throughout the country that would be closed down. This is about businesses here in America.

Today the New York Times gave examples of that. It talked about the manufacturing executive whose company supplies goods to Federal agencies; the bank loan officers who make mortgages guaranteed by the FHA, which is one of the single greatest block drivers of mortgages to be done for middle-class working families; the Wall Street analyst who depends on a steady flow of government data. The Federal Government is in and of itself a major driver of the economy and a ripple effect to businesses across the spectrum in our country, and pulls the plug on the other businesses in America that at the end of the day means jobs and at the end of the jobs means a consequence to this fragile economic recovery.

That is why the Chamber of Commerce has come out against a shutdown. That is why the Business Roundtable has talked about it. These are voices of those entities that clearly speak with a one-vision business sense, and they say a shutdown does not make good business sense for America--all, however, risked for some social issues. When the government shut down in 1995, the last time Republicans shut down the U.S. Government--let's not forget that. I was there in the House of Representatives when that happened. The last time Republicans shut the government down for their ideological views, the Nation's economic growth was slowed by as much as 1 percent in that quarter--a full percent.

In an economy that is in recovery--and a recovery, I would remind people, from where we were to where we are--I think there is a little history we need to remember. I remember in the Clinton years when Democrats balanced the budget for the first time in a generation and created record surpluses, lower unemployment, low interest rates, and the greatest peacetime economy in over a generation. We had surpluses. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, said, We are looking at a 10- year outlook that is bright. We were actually years ahead for not only balancing the budget but from ending debt. And here we are. What happened in between? Tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country under President Bush, two wars unpaid for, a Medicare prescription drug benefit unpaid for, Wall Street allowed to run wild, and we went from a surplus with projections of $5.6 trillion in 2011 to the challenges we have today. So I know people want to forget the past, but the past is, in part, the reality of our present challenges.

At a time in this fragile economic recovery, where we are ultimately meeting the challenges of global events that also affect us here at home--the unrest in the Middle East, the driving up of oil prices which drives up gasoline prices which drives up commodity prices which drives up food prices, and, therefore, has a consequence not only to every American at the pump but also at the supermarket and in their lives--it has a collective consequence to our economy. What is happening in Japan and whether they will be able to send supplies for some of the most critical elements of our economy in the technology field; the millions of Americans still looking for work, and we are going to give a domestic body blow, all because of social issues--all because of social issues, that doesn't make sense, and it is not necessary. We could have consequences to the markets, the Asian markets. If we close down this government, don't open, the Asian markets on Sunday will begin and that begins setting a trend throughout the globe. This has real consequence to our economy here at home.

It is amazing to me that we have those who wear the uniform of the United States fighting halfway around the globe and they will continue to fight for their country, but they would not be paid. They will earn the pay and eventually they will get it, but while they are in the field they wouldn't get the pay. How about their families here at home who are already suffering not having them with them? All because we are driven by the Republican voices in the House of Representatives over a program called title X. What is title X? Title X is a law signed by President Nixon and ultimately had, as one of its strongest supporters when he was in

the House of Representatives former President Bush, to provide lifesaving health care services for women.

Some voices continue to falsely say this is about abortion. The Federal law is very clear: No Federal dollars can go for abortion services. No Federal dollars can go for abortion services. This is about an array of confidential preventive health services from pregnancy testing to screening for cervical and breast cancer, to screening for high blood pressure, anemia, diabetes, screening for STDs, including HIV, basic infertility services, health education. This is about the very essence of a woman's ability to get health care if she does not have the wherewithal on her own financial condition to be able to go to a doctor. There are many institutions--by the way, including Catholic and religious institutions--that receive title X money. I am sure no one would claim they are providing abortion services.

Why, when we are looking at the very essence of whether it be my daughter or anyone else's daughter in America, or anybody's wife or mother, why is it we must have an ideologically driven issue in the midst of a budget debate? A budget debate is about numbers and it is about making sure services are continued, and it is about making sure the economy continues to prosper and it is about getting people back to work, but it certainly isn't about using an ideological view that this program which ultimately helps women have preventive health care services is somehow an abortion issue when the law clearly says it cannot be under any circumstances. Why would we deny women in this country the ability to have the health care they need so they can be healthy, so they can continue to prosper, so their families can continue to have that mother, that breadwinner, the person who holds that family together, be healthy? I cannot imagine for the life of me that we will shut the government down based on those issues. But that is, in fact, where we are.

When I look at that and when I look at the other elements of what has recently been discussed as a prelude--this is just the opening salvo of a debate that will continue on. Hopefully, we will have a vote. I am ready to vote to keep this government open. I am ready to vote to make sure those who wear the uniform of the United States are paid when they are committing the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of their country. But, more importantly, I wish to be able to vote to have $78 billion worth of cuts and, at the same time, make sure this economy continues to move forward, continues to grow, continues to put people back to work.

I hope cooler minds can prevail in the House and that the ideological views can be told it is not for a budget debate; have that debate some other time--have those votes, if you want, another time. That is fine. But do not hold the Nation hostage to that issue. But I see that as only the beginning of what is a broader plan, and that broader plan is another reason why we need to get this budget done so we can move to that other plan in the next fiscal year.

I commend to my colleagues, as we look at that plan, the column written today by Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize recipient, entitled ``Ludicrous and Cruel.'' Basically, he talks about the Ryan plan that privatizes Medicare, that has large tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country, that ultimately doesn't do either one of the things that they suggest, in this column, which I commend to my colleagues. He says:

In past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care

of those in need, like Medicare and seniors and Medicaid for

children, but as the Center on Budget and Policy priorities

points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes

over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs

that mainly serve low-income Americans.

Then he goes on to say that it is a continuation of the voodoo economics of the tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country that supposedly are going to create prosperity, and we saw that simply wasn't the case. What it did do is a big part of unraveling the surpluses that Democrats helped to create and drive an enormous amount of the debt that we are realizing and debating today.

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

Mr. President, this is a time to make sure there is a vote

on this Senate floor on a budget that ends the fiscal year, that encapsulates the $78 billion in cuts, that strips out social riders that have nothing to do with the budget, that preserves a woman's preventive health care services and moves the country forward in terms of its economic advancement, creating jobs and making sure we don't get thrust back into a recession.

That is what this debate is about. That is what the vote should be about today. I and other members of the Democratic Caucus stand ready to do that.

I yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise to express my strong concerns about the direction Republicans and the tea party want to take our country, beginning with an irresponsible

Government shutdown simply for the sake of pursuing a social agenda and continuing their reckless budget plan that will devastate seniors and those most vulnerable over the next decade while rewarding millionaires with even more tax breaks. I look at this Republican budget put out by Chairman Ryan and it is a proposal that takes $1.5 trillion out of health care for seniors and children and gives it to the wealthiest, but it does not even limit subsidies for special corporate interests or big oil. In so doing, it fundamentally resets our values and turns back the clock on the progress we have made to protect our parents and grandparents, seniors and children in this country and keeps the playing field reasonably level.

But even before that discussion, I wish to make a few things clear about the implications of shutting down the Government and what we on this side have already cut from the President's budget to reach an agreement. We started this year with $41 billion less in spending than the President requested. Plus, in March we cut another $10 billion below last year's funding levels, including the complete elimination of 33 Federal programs. In total, we have offered $33 billion in cuts for the remainder of the current funding year, which ends in September.

But the most radical elements of the Republican Party will not take yes for an answer. They say we have not come far enough, which in tea party terms means we have not given them everything they want. So they will shut down the Government rather than take yes for an answer.

I saw a picture on the front page of one of the papers with a tea party banner that said: ``Shut her down. Shut her down.''

I thought we were here to make sure we kept the Government going. It is clear their real reason for shutting down the Government is to promote a social agenda that is not acceptable to the broader part of the country. They are willing to shut down the Federal Government, put our economy, our small businesses, our veterans at risk and potentially delay tax refunds for millions of American families, all simply to make a political point and to try to impose the social agenda of a minority on the majority.

Shutting down the Federal Government over a woman's right to choose or the Federal Government's ability to enforce laws that protect our children's health, in my view, takes irresponsibility to a whole new level. Even the Speaker of the House himself has said a shutdown will ``end up costing more than we save.'' The Speaker is right. It would cost about $8 billion every week or .2 percent of GDP every week the Government is shut down.

The Speaker is right on the substance, but he has not yet been willing to lead and deal with the tempest in the tea party on his right, threatening to cut this economic recovery short to satisfy a narrow, rightwing political agenda.

At a time when small businesses are just beginning to get access to capital they need to create jobs for American families, a shutdown will result in $400 million in capital each week not going to small businesses through the SBA loan program and will throw the engine of small business job growth into neutral when we want it to be in overdrive.

In the last shutdown, more than $1 billion in small business loans to 5,200 businesses were delayed, so we know what small businesses are in for if we have another shutdown. This is not the time in our recovery efforts to say no to helping small businesses put people to work.

In housing, the FHA loan process, which accounts for 30 percent of the housing market, will be interrupted just as we enter the height of the spring home-buying season in my State of New Jersey. With prices low and so many houses on the market, this is not the time to prevent 15,000 homeowners from getting a home loan every week, more than half of which are for new home purchases that would reduce the inventory of the surplus properties.

Now, because Social Security is a mandatory funding program, seniors and the disabled will continue to receive their checks. But if we let the tempest in the tea party shut down the government, interruptions at the Social Security Administration could delay changes in people's benefits and payments. In just 4 days of the last shutdown, 112,000 new claims for Social Security retirement and disability benefits were not taken and over 800,000 callers were unable to reach the Social Security Administration. Certainly in this economy, this is not a time to leave those who rely on Social Security with nothing.

With the tax season upon us, it is certainly not the right time to delay tax refunds families are anxiously awaiting in order to make ends meet, put into the economy, and help the recovery keep going.

It is not the time to shut down 368 National Park Service sites, the Smithsonian, the Statue of Liberty, the monuments, museums, and national parks across the country which, in the last shutdown, lost 9 million visitors and the tourism revenues to those communities. Given that our last shutdown occurred in the dead of winter, we can expect a shutdown in the midst of spring breaks and high tourist season to have a much larger impact on tourism revenues and the wallets of families who have already booked trips to national parks and planned visits to national monuments and museums. To put it in context, if we shut down the government for 5 weeks, we could lose up to $1.2 billion based on the $12 billion visitors brought to the national park communities last year.

If the tea party continues to insist on a government shutdown, military paychecks would be delayed at a time when military families are struggling with multiple deployments and struggling like everyone else to make ends meet. They will ultimately get paid but only when the shutdown is finished. In the last shutdown, more than 400,000 veterans saw their disability checks delayed. Now, let's not repeat that mistake when more of our wounded sons and daughters are returning home from two wars raging abroad every day.

If the tea party continues to insist on a government shutdown, clinical trials of lifesaving drugs will be halted and new patients will not be accepted into clinical research programs at the National Institutes of Health.

If the tea party continues to insist on a government shutdown, they will put our entire economy at risk. As a matter of fact, business leaders have said that a shutdown could result in higher interest rates and chaos in the markets. Every week, 350 import licenses could be delayed, resulting in holding up billions of dollars in American exports at a time when we need those exports to help fuel the recovery. During the 1995 shutdown, $2.2 billion in U.S. exports could not leave the country because thousands of export licenses could not be issued.

Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon, who is also the chairman of the Business Roundtable, said:

I don't think any of the CEOs would welcome a government

shutdown. Problems for business would run from contracts

being postponed to disruptions in the supply chain.

John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, said:

Business would face the danger of the law of unintended

consequences. Interest rates could rise and there could be

turmoil in financial markets.

This would all happen because Republicans, being held hostage by tea partiers, have rejected $33 billion in spending cuts for this year because they did not get all they wanted, because they are not getting their way on unrelated, extraneous social issues such as women's reproductive rights and enforcing laws on our books to protect our children's health. They simply will not take yes for an answer because yes on spending cuts is not really their only goal. Spending cuts is not why they are trying to shut the government down.

I would remind our colleagues that democratic governments are not about total victory. Authoritarian governments do that, not democracies. In democracies, we are all fairly elected to represent our constituents. We all have a view. We all have a vote. We all have an obligation to govern and legislate for every American, not just for those who hold the views of the tea party. With all due respect, tea partiers claim to love our right to free speech and yet clearly do not believe anyone's views other than their own are acceptable.

I say to our colleagues, we all have deeply held beliefs. Defending them and shouting them from the rooftops is

easy, but listening to those who disagree with us and working on the differences is the hard work of government.

I remind my colleagues on the other side that the word ``congress'' is derived from a Latin verb meaning ``to walk together.'' We have already made cuts to the President's budget. We have already made real cuts in this year's spending. We have offered a reasonable compromise that seeks even more cuts but, more importantly, a compromise that seeks common ground, not capitulation, and neither should our colleagues expect capitulation. All we ask is that those on the other side do what is right and act in the broader interests of the Nation, not shut down the government, disrupt services, and put the economic recovery at risk, all to satisfy a narrow political agenda.

I know there was a lot of fanfare on the Republican budget proposal that was put out as we look to the next fiscal year. In my view, it is by far one of the most partisan, ideological, and fundamentally destructive budgets I have seen in my time in Congress--destructive of fundamental protections for every American and for what we have come to accept as fundamental protections that are uniquely American.

It fundamentally takes $1.5 trillion out of health care for seniors and children, and it gives it to the wealthy. It would take health care from seniors and children rather than take subsidies from special corporate interests such as big oil companies. If Republicans got their way, New Jersey residents would lose $34 billion in health benefits, and almost 400,000 New Jerseyans would see their coverage cut entirely.

The Republican proposal talks about cutting taxes, but in reading it, I find only two groups whose taxes would be cut: the rich and those who are even richer. Corporations and millionaires and those soon-to-be millionaires will keep all of their recent tax giveaways and would actually see their tax rates slashed by 30 percent. This proposal loses $700 billion on the revenue side over the next 10 years by extending the Bush tax cuts, particularly to the wealthiest in the country, and trillions more by slashing tax rates for corporations and millionaires. Those making more than $1 million a year will see tax cuts of $125,000 each from the tax cuts and tens of thousands of dollars more from proposed rate cuts, while people in my State would lose $34 billion in health benefits, and 400,000 New Jerseyans end up without health coverage at all.

This budget proposal shifts the balance to the wealthy and makes cuts that do not reflect our values as a people and as a nation. At the top of the list of Draconian Republican cuts is Medicare. Let's for a moment look at the logic of the Republican budget proposal when it comes to Medicare, a program that since 1965 has protected seniors and made sure no older American would be without health care when they need it the most.

In 1965, we passed Medicare. Why? Because senior citizens could not get health insurance. And the reason health insurance companies would not take the risk of insuring older Americans, who, logically, would need to see doctors and receive treatment more often than younger Americans, is rather clear. Even if there were such a plan, the cost would be prohibitive for a senior on a fixed income. So we created Medicare, and today it is one of our most successful programs. No senior is left without access to lifesaving, life-enhancing drugs or the care they need.

What are the Republicans proposing in this budget? They are proposing to end Medicare as we know it. In fact, they want to privatize Medicare, and they say their privatization plan is just a way of asking wealthier seniors to pay more. But let's ask ourselves, logically, how much do we think an insurance company will charge in premiums to a 65- year-old American male who may have had a heart attack or heart ailment or suffers from diabetes. How outrageous do we suppose the premium will be, and how much of a voucher will that 65-year-old American need to purchase even a minimal health care plan? That logic escapes me. Today, buying a private plan on the open market for a self-employed, middle- age couple can cost as much as $18,000 a year. The average retiree in America is living on about $19,000 a year. So, again, the logic escapes me. The fact is, this proposed privatization plan for Medicare completely overlooks the history of why we needed Medicare in the first place. It illogically assumes insurance companies will provide quality health care coverage at a huge discount to older Americans. If that is not wishful thinking, I don't know what is.

Let me close by simply saying that it is time to make sure this government stays open, it is time to make sure we don't thrust the economy backward, and it is time to ultimately ensure that those who have given service to this country, such as the men and women in uniform, don't get hurt, and that we do by coming together on a reasonable budget.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be a period of morning business until 5 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to the McConnell amendment. I listened to my distinguished colleague from Wyoming, and I enjoy working with him, but this is one subject on which we fundamentally disagree.

This isn't about energy production; this is about clean air. This amendment is a blatant attack on the Clean Air Act, and, from my perspective in New Jersey, any attack on the Clean Air Act is an attack on New Jersey.

Primarily because of dirty, old, out-of-State coal plants, every county in New Jersey is noncompliant with the Clean Air Act--not by what we do but what other States do. One of those coal powerplants is the aging Portland Generating Station, located just across the Delaware River. This plant emitted 30,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in 2009. That is almost three times the amount of all seven of New Jersey's coal plants combined. So we have cleaned up our act. Others need to do it for the collective air we breathe as Americans. Its pollutants waft across the Delaware River into numerous New Jersey counties, causing and exacerbating a whole host of respiratory illnesses, from asthma to heart disease. If not for the Clean Air Act, my State or any other State similarly situated would not have been able to petition the Federal Government to stop the pollution this Pennsylvania plant spews into New Jersey's air.

Just last week, New Jerseyans received some good news. Under the authority of the Clean Air Act, the Federal Government proposed a rule that would grant my State's petition. If finalized in coming months, the rule would lead to an over 80 percent reduction in the Portland coal plant's sickening sulfur dioxide emissions. If not for the Clean Air Act, my State would not have this victory within its grasp. It wouldn't have the opportunity to protect its citizens. We simply cannot gut the one piece of Federal legislation that protects the air we breathe.

Imagine having to tell your children they cannot go outside to play because the wind is not blowing quite the right way, because the air they will breathe will damage their lungs. The McCloskeys from Delran, NJ, don't have to imagine that scenario; they know it. Let me tell you about Erin McCloskey. On poor air quality days in the summer, their daughter Erin could not even make it to the family car, much less go outside and play, without starting to wheeze. Family activity began to revolve around trips to the doctor, treatments, and stays at the hospital. It was a severe economic hardship on the family not just because of costs but also because all of these trips made it difficult for Erin's mother Natalie to hold down a job.

The McCloskeys are not alone. Four-year-old Christian Aquino, from Camden, NJ, suffers from severe asthma. He takes six different medications a day to control asthma attacks, but still his mother, Iris Valerio, lives with the constant fear that an attack is around the corner. On bad air days, they avoid going outside, and when on the highway in traffic, the windows are kept closed.

Fourteen-year-old Samaad Bethea, of Elizabeth, NJ, also suffers from severe asthma. He has been on daily steroid medication to control his asthma for 3 years. If he skips a day, his lungs start to falter and he can't catch his breath. His mother Sharon realized that pollution in their old neighborhood was triggering attacks and had an opportunity to move the family. Since that move, Samaad has been doing much better, but he still requires daily steroid medication.

These children are part of a sobering national reality, a New Jersey reality. Their days revolve around inhalers, steroids, and constant anxiety over when air pollution will trigger another severe asthma attack.

According to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year over 10,000 New Jerseyans are hospitalized due to asthma attacks triggered by air quality problems. Thousands of sick days are taken each day in New Jersey by either asthmatics or parents of asthmatics, with huge consequences for the New Jersey economy. Asthma attacks triggered by air pollution cause scores of premature deaths in my State each year.

Erin McCloskey, Christian Aquino, and Samaad Bethea bring these statistics to life. While the causes of their asthma are many, air pollution is a common trigger. The Clean Air Act directly impacts their health, their quality of life, and even the ability of their parents to get or keep a job. For them and for thousands of children like them, weakening the Clean Air Act will mean more days sequestered in their homes and more emergency room visits.

The McConnell amendment--the one I call the dirty air amendment--is the first of many amendments we can expect to see that are aimed at preventing the Federal Government from regulating polluters under the Clean Air Act.

Caring about children's health means not allowing polluters to place profits ahead of people, ahead of the well-being of our children--and I mean all children, no matter their race, ethnicity, or class. Low- income and minority Americans continue to be disproportionately exposed to pollution that is harmful to their health. A recent analysis showed, for example, that two-thirds of U.S. Latinos--about 25.6 million Americans--live in areas that do not meet the air quality standards under the Clean Air Act. Perhaps this begins to explain why Hispanic Americans are three times more likely than Whites to die from asthma attacks, why Latino children are 60 percent more likely than Whites to have asthma.

Low-income and minority Americans will also be disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. Let's be clear. The scientific consensus is overwhelming. Climate change will increasingly create more frequent and more extreme storms, more violent and sustained heat waves, meaning more costly and dangerous floods and droughts. Hotter summer days will mean more ozone formation and more bad air quality days. In this way, climate change directly endangers all of us, our children, and our children's children. But changes in weather patterns and increasingly extreme weather events also result in indirect effects. The security of our food supply will be at risk due to more frequent heat stress. The security of water supplies will be at risk due to droughts.

For all of these reasons, scientists agree that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare. That is well understood, and we can curtail these risks by regulating climate pollution. But, no, big polluters want to kick the can down the road. They want to pretend they aren't polluting. Big polluters want to pretend these risks aren't real. They want the McConnell amendment to pass so they can continue business as usual.

This is not about energy because if the New Jersey coal-fired plants ultimately reduced their emissions by 80 percent, it is a question of an investment. They are still producing energy. There are 9.3 million people in the State. They are producing energy, but the reality is that they are doing it in a cleaner way. That is what this issue is about.

We must not allow polluters to set our priorities. How many children in New Jersey or in other parts of the country face the reality of dirty air? How many children are we willing to have deathly ill in order to allow polluters to continue to spew toxins into the air we collectively breathe? Doing so risks not only our health and that of future generations, it risks the promise of a green economy built on clean energy jobs, energy-efficiency innovations, and reduced waste and pollution.

I urge my colleagues to stop the effort to gut the Clean Air Act and to defeat this amendment. Let's make sure we bequeath to future generations the ability to have air that, ultimately, we can collectively breathe, that doesn't sicken our families and undermine our collective health.

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

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

Madam President, I rise to call up amendment No. 284, cosponsored by Senators Kerry and Rockefeller, which is at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Thank you, Madam President. I understand Senator Baucus is on his way from a meeting, and in the interim I will start off and recognize myself.

I offer this amendment on behalf of middle-class families and on behalf of small businesses. I support repealing the 1099 reporting requirement and have, in fact, voted no less than six times on this floor to repeal 1099 in this body. However, I strongly believe we must do so in a manner that does not increase the burden on our small businesses and their employees, and that is exactly what I fear H.R. 4 does.

The broad bipartisan support for 1099 repeal comes from the fact that it provides relief to small businesses, but the only problem with this version of the repeal is that while it provides relief on the one hand, it may very well take it away with the other. It repeals the 1099 reporting requirements but, at the same time, I am concerned it increases the health care burden on the very same people to whom we are seeking to provide relief.

Some have argued we have already used this very same offset before. We have. Therefore, there is no reason to be concerned now.

The difference is, however, H.R. 4 is very different than what we did 4 months ago, and it risks driving up health insurance costs and cutting health insurance coverage for small businesses and middle-class families. It increases tax penalties--tax penalties. As we approach April 15, I know we are all very tax sensitive. It increases tax penalties on middle-class families, leaving some with a potential tax burden of $10,000 or more.

How would most middle-class families deal with a tax bill of $10,000 or more just because their income may have increased $1 above the eligibility limit during the year for which they got a subsidy?

Some have also argued my amendment will block implementation of the 1099 repeal. That is just factually incorrect. It is an outright misstatement of the facts. My amendment simply directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services after--emphasize ``after''--the 1099 repeal passes into law to study the offset in H.R. 4 and determine its effect on small businesses. If the study finds the offset increases health care costs or decreases coverage for small businesses, then current law on the repayment remains in effect. If the study says, no, it didn't do any of those things, then there is no harm.

Let me be clear. We all want 1099 repeal. My amendment does not in any way affect the repeal of 1099. My colleagues can vote for this amendment and for H.R. 4 because this would repeal 1099. The only potential change my amendment makes would be to the risky offset in the underlying amendment, and only if the study finds that it hurts small businesses after the repeal has taken place.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to frame this debate as either for or against small business, but they are, in my mind, both helping and harming them at the same time under H.R. 4. With this amendment, we can have not only the ability to help small businesses and repeal the 1099 provision, but we can also ensure that small businesses and their employees will not get hurt at the end of the day.

For those who may consider opposing my amendment, think of this: On the one hand, if you do not believe this offset will hurt small businesses and their employees, there is no harm in voting for it because you are saying the study will not show an impact and the offset will remain in place.

However, if you believe my amendment would have a revenue score, you are assuming that the offset hurts small businesses and their employees. Either option would argue for supporting my amendment. Either it has no impact, in which case there should be no problem supporting it, or it provides protections for small businesses and their workers, in which case you should want to support it.

I realize what I am concerned about is the harmful effect of this offset provision won't hit small businesses until 2015, and I know the voices for 1099 repeal are much louder than those against the payback tax. But I also know this is an issue that we will hear about when our constituents get those tax bills at that time, when this provision goes into effect and taxpayers get that first big $10,000, or more, surprise on their tax bill.

Do you want to be on the record as having given them the tax bill or do you want to be on the record as trying to have saved them from it and saved rising costs for small businesses in their health insurance? I think you want to be on the side of this amendment and having saved them from it.

In closing, I ask, why in the world--especially during these fragile economic times--would we want to do anything that could raise the costs on small businesses? That is why my amendment is supported by entities such as the Main Street Alliance, a probusiness organization; Families USA; the American Cancer Society; Cancer Action Network; Health Care for America Now, to mention a few.

With my amendment, we can protect those who earn a living making our Nation's small businesses run and repeal 1099 without delay. To me, that is the ultimate show of support for small business.

Madam President, I urge support of my amendment. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I know we often read that Democrats and Republicans cannot agree. Here is a news flash: We agree on repealing 1099. I have listened to my three distinguished colleagues spend a lot of their time talking about repeal of 1099. We absolutely agree. I have voted six times to do that. That is not an issue.

What is an issue, and my distinguished colleague from Nebraska--with whom I have worked with before in passing some important legislation, and I have a great deal of respect for him--talked about a victory for small business. I agree. But I want a total victory for small business, and a total victory for small business is not repealing 1099 and then giving them a bigger tax bill for their employees or raising the cost of insurance for that small business. A real victory is an opportunity to make sure we repeal 1099--my amendment clearly has 1099 repeal going forward--but then does a study that says if small businesses are going to face higher costs or their employees are going to face a $10,000 tax bill, then that part of it should not proceed.

If I am wrong, nothing will happen. The study will come. They will say: No, small business is not going to have an increase; no, taxpayers are not going get a surprise tax bill. Then the repeal will have already gone through and there is no foul, no harm. But if I am right, then voting against my amendment is voting for a tax bill for middle- class families, voting to increase insurance on small businesses.

The issue about going quickly to the President, first of all, is a priority. So if we pass this, this is not, as has been suggested, an alternative; it is just a single amendment to the existing bill on a provision that allows for the repeal to go through but makes sure small businesses and individuals do not get higher costs. That can go to the

House. The House can pass it and send it to the President--away we go; we do not have a problem. Helping small businesses by reducing their paperwork while at the same time driving up health care costs and forcing coverage cuts for small businesses is simply not good policy.

In all fairness, I did not hear voices rise up when this bill was being delayed over the last week by some of my Republican colleagues trying to get their amendments considered, and those amendments were extraneous to small business. So we either have a double standard here or a desperate attempt to defeat what I think is a good amendment.

The House could have taken up the amendment, H.R. 4, and passed it into law by now. So I think it is somewhat disingenuous to have an argument that says we can't afford one amendment to proceed on this bill when our colleagues, at the beginning of this Congress, made a big production about a full debate and an open amendment process on all things considered on the Senate floor, but when there is one amendment that is meant to protect taxpayers and small businesses, oh, no, that is going to create an inordinate delay, after we had well over a week of delays by Republican colleagues seeking extraneous amendments to a small business bill. Please.

Now, I love Senator Hatch's jalopy. I remember that movie, took my family to see it. But the worst jalopy would be taking away 1099 and then going ahead and giving small businesses higher costs and a higher tax bill for individuals. That is a real jalopy. That is a lemon.

So we have an opportunity to take away and undo and repeal the 1099. My amendment permits that to go forward but at the same time makes sure small businesses do not get hurt.

How will they get hurt? How may they get hurt? Well, a lot of States, for example, are considering whether to combine their small business and individual pools. For States that combine their pools, small businesses could see an increase in premium costs. The healthiest people with little to no health care costs will have the most flexibility to decide whether to purchase coverage, and they may simply pay the mandate penalty versus the potential for a $10,000 to $12,000 tax bill. With more healthy people opting out of buying insurance, the pool of people who ultimately enroll in the exchanges that would consist of, on average, less healthy individuals--that is going to push up the premiums for everybody else buying insurance in the exchanges, including small businesses and employees. That is only one example.

The other problem is, when you are facing your constituents, I hope you are ready to tell them that through no fault of their own--when they had a job, they lost their job, you know, 6 months into the year, and they face the fact that they are still over the amount, and now they are going to get a $10,000 tax bill or, on the contrary, they didn't have a job when they got the subsidy, and then they got a job in the middle of the year and they are a dollar over the amount, and they are going to face a $10,000 tax bill. Is that what we want to do, send that type of bill to families?

Finally, I appreciate hearing Senator Hatch say this is a downpayment on total repeal of the health care law. Well, you know, if we are going to do that, if that is what this is really all about, this is not helping small businesses. Helping small businesses means we repeal 1099 and don't increase their costs and don't send their employees a $10,000 or higher tax bill.

So this is about, in my mind, making sure there is a win-win for small businesses because if we want to repeal the health care law, then that is about making sure we go back to preexisting conditions where a husband who had a heart attack on the job can no longer get insurance; where a child born at birth with a defect cannot get insurance; where a woman was facing 150-percent higher premiums than a man simply because she was a woman; where, in fact, you couldn't keep your child, up to age 26, on your insurance as they are going through school; where, in fact, we could close the prescription drug coverage for seniors. If that is what we are talking about, that is a different subject, and we can have that debate. But this debate is about making sure we repeal 1099 and making sure small businesses do not get higher costs and their employees do not get a tax penalty. I think everybody should want to be for that. We can send it straight to the House. The House can pass this version and send it to the President. That is ultimately the opportunity here.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment. That is why the Main Street Alliance, which also supports businesses, says: Our small business owners are very supportive of efforts to remove the imposition of the new 1099 reporting requirements. We cannot, however, accept a pay-for that undermines other important provisions of the law that helps small businesses and contains costs.

My amendment ensures that we do both--repeal 1099 and not put the burden on small businesses in terms of higher health insurance costs, and their employees. I urge passage of my amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am compelled to answer because now I hear about fraud and $25 billion. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say this amendment costs money--what the Joint Committee on Taxation said is it could not determine a revenue score. And it is important to point out that this amendment does not spend an additional dime. And the only reason--the only reason--this amendment would have a revenue effect would be if the offset increases health insurance costs or cuts coverage for small businesses. Otherwise, there is no issue. So you can't have it both ways. Either

there is an admission that it is going to cost small businesses more, cost taxpayers more, or it is not. That is No. 1.

No. 2, this is not about fraud. This is not about someone seeking something they did not have the right to receive. Fraud is individuals who are deliberately underreporting their income or fraudulently trying to get extra support. That is not what we do. Those enforcement provisions in the law to combat fraud and abuse are untouched by my amendment. This is simply about someone who honestly got a subsidy. And we have a provision in the law that deals with how they pay back, but it doesn't throw them over the cliff and send them a surprise $10,000 tax bill. So that is simply not exactly quite the same thing.

Yes, the doc fix--we did use a provision to deal with the SGR with the doc fix, but we did not put small businesses and families at harm, as H.R. 4 does.

So the reality is that this amendment permits repeal to move forward. After the repeal, a study is done. If there is no harm, if it supposedly does not cost small businesses any more money, does not drive up insurance costs, does not cost the taxpayer maybe $10,000 or $12,000, fine. But if it does, then we would ultimately not have that harm come upon small businesses, come upon individual taxpayers with a surprise bill. And we could, of course, if that is the end result, which we don't know--that is why the Joint Tax Committee could not come up with a determination. We will not know until the study is done. Instead of having a risky venture, let's have the actual facts. Repeal will have gone through. We can protect small businesses and those taxpayers, and, if necessary, we can find a different offset. If they are wrong and I am right, that this concern about taxpayers getting a surprise bill and small businesses having greater insurance costs is true, then we will protect them and we can look for a different offset at the time. Repeal will have taken place no matter what.

Why would you not want to protect small businesses and taxpayers from getting a surprise bill? That is all my amendment does, and that is why I urge its passage.