Floor Statements

Could the Presiding Officer tell me how much time remains for the majority side?

Would the Presiding Officer let me know when I have exhausted 2 of my 3 minutes?

Madam President, I rise once again to ask unanimous consent--and I will do so shortly--to hold oil companies accountable for their spills. This is really a sense of who is on your side. Are we going to take the side of big oil or are we going to take

the side of commercial fishermen? Are we going to take the side of big oil or are we going to take the side of shrimp fishermen? Are we going to take the side of big oil or are we going to take the side of preserving the estuaries that are so critical yet that we see increasingly devastated, the wildlife, with consequences to those ecosystems that may very well affect a generation? Are we going to take a side with big oil or are we going to stand up for the tourism industry that is affected? Are we going to stand up for big oil or are we going to stand with the boater who ultimately sees his boat languishing in the waters because he cannot go out because there is no one to take out on a commercial venture? Are we going to stand up for the communities and the coasts along the gulf shore or are we going to stand with big oil?

That is what this effort is all about. It is about setting responsibility where responsibility should lie. I applaud that the President got BP to sign up to $20 billion over the next 4 years or so. But that does not mean we should not be lifting the liability cap, a liability cap that is ridiculously low at $75 million total when BP, for example, makes over $90 million a day. So their liability under the law, regardless of what they say, is less than 1 day's profit.

This is about making sure at the end of the day we stand up to big oil. I know there are those who suggest--my colleague from Louisiana has suggested he has a better way. The problem is his better way is constitutionally infirm. That has been reviewed by the Congressional Research Service which says that trying to enact legislation that effectively declares the guilt or imposes punishment on an identifiable individual or entity is in essence a bill of attainder under the Constitution; therefore, it cannot work. I have heard him say I don't want to come here and make a speech, I want to solve something. That is exactly the problem. That does not solve anything because it is constitutionally infirm, therefore it would not apply, therefore we would not have a success. Besides, if it is good enough for this incident, it is good enough for any other.

Understanding that, I want to ensure we stand on the side with all of those commercial interests, so I ask unanimous consent--I take a final 30 seconds--I ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged of S. 3472, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Unlimited Liability Act of 2010, and that the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, without intervening action or debate.

This is unlimited liability.

Madam President, there is no doubt that the vivid images we see every day of economic and environmental tragedy unfolding in the gulf are unprecedented, if not apocalyptic in nature. They have opened our eyes to the need for a fundamental redirection in our policy and the need for definitive action now to hold big oil accountable. The images are horrific, and they have made Americans realize the dirty fuels of our industrial past and the environmental and human toll they are taking in the gulf as we speak should now give way to a consensus on a real, meaningful investment in clean energy and increased oversight of corporate polluters.

The time has come for change and this Congress needs to stand up for all those families in the gulf, for the rich habitats of marshes and estuaries that are being destroyed. The time has come to make the big polluters pay. But the time has also come to look ahead and plan for a smarter, greener, safer, cleaner future.

No one--no one--can look at what is happening in the gulf and think we should not call big oil to task. No one can look at the images of brown pelicans drowning in a tide of crude oil and not wonder how to stop it and, at the same time, how to move to a comprehensive energy policy that will take us beyond our reliance on fossil fuels and toward clean energy independence. No one can look at Louisiana shrimpers and oystermen, fishing fleets idle, businesses closed, and not feel for those families wondering how they will get their lives back.

This is not the time to shield big oil from full responsibility, as our colleagues on the other side seem to favor. This is not the time for excuses. Two things are clear. Those who are at fault must be held accountable. We need to embrace this tragedy as an opportunity to formulate a new American energy policy that creates American jobs and ultimately invests billions of dollars that we spend on foreign oil at home on clean energy sources. Our friends on the other side of the aisle have said no to that approach. They have said no to energy reforms and favored big oil. They said no to every effort to hold big business accountable for its failures. They said no to Wall Street reform and favored big banks. They said no to environmental oversight and favored corporate polluters. They have said no to even commonsense economic recovery legislation to put people back to work and save the economy from the disaster 8 years of their policies have created. They said no to families denied health coverage and favored big insurance companies. They have also continuously blocked my Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act that would hold BP accountable for damages, lifting the liability cap from the ridiculous $75 million worth of liability--less than 1 day's profit for BP--and lifting it to an unlimited liability since they have created unlimited damages in the gulf. No, they come up with proposals that basically are to protect big oil.

Let's index it to their profits regardless of how much damage they have created. Let's worry about the ``smaller driller'' even if they cause unlimited consequences to our environment. Is there a difference between a $100 billion company and a $10 billion company when both of them create the same environmental damage that has been created in the gulf? I don't think so.

The question is, Whose side do we stand on. Do we stand with the taxpayers to make sure they don't reach into their pockets for big oil's consequences, or are we going to defend big oil? If we were to bring to the floor a bill to invest in a clean energy future and create clean energy American jobs, they would say no to that as well.

It seems to me it is time to say yes to American-made clean energy, yes to the millions of jobs it would create. It is time to also end tax loopholes for big oil companies, such as BP, that are avoiding paying billions of dollars in taxes. They are getting huge tax breaks for drilling activities and revenues, and they are concocting foreign tax schemes, all of which amount to more than $20 billion over the next 10 years.

That is why I have introduced a bill to end tax loopholes for big oil. It seems to me the flow of revenues to the oil companies is like the gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. It is pretty heavy and constant. There is no valid reason for these multibillion-dollar international corporations to shortchange the American taxpayer. They certainly are not using the extra money they get from exploiting tax loopholes to bring down the price of a gallon of gasoline for New Jersey families.

Unlike the gusher in the gulf, we can topfill these loopholes and shut them down quickly and permanently, if we pass this legislation. But my colleagues on the other side continue to say no to commonsense reforms. We could use the billions of dollars and giveaways to big oil for an alternative fuel program. We need to look at the

economic potential for modern, safe, renewable energy rather than to take the risk of another environmental and economic disaster. Instead of doubling down on 19th century fossil fuels, we should be investing the money we have been giving to big oil in the clean, limitless, 21st- century energy that would create thousands of new jobs, significantly reduce the burden of energy costs, and help clear the air we collectively breathe. It is time we close those loopholes and move forward on alternative fuels and embrace the future rather than cling to the ways of the past and pay the oil companies to continue those ways of the past.

Specifically, the legislation I have introduced recoups royalties that oil companies avoided paying for oil and gas production on public lands. It prevents big oil from manipulating the rules on foreign taxes to avoid paying full corporate taxes in the United States. It ends tax deductions and giveaways to big oil such as deductions for classifying oil production as manufacturing, deductions for the depletion of oil and gas through drilling, and the deductions for the cost of preparing to drill. That is right. Big oil actually gets a deduction for preparing to drill.

Among other provisions, it recoups royalty revenue with an excise tax on oil and gas produced on Federal lands and on the Outer Continental Shelf to pay back taxpayers for contract loopholes. That would save an estimated $5.3 billion. It ends big oil's abuse of foreign tax credits, saving another $8 billion.

While the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act stops giving big oil tax breaks, it protects refineries and oil companies with yearly revenues of less than $100 million and lets them retain certain tax credits and deductions. It repeals big oil's expensing of drilling costs. In the President's budget, this saved $10.9 billion, but we are exempting smaller companies that would lower that estimate. It repeals big oil's depletion allowance for oil and gas wells estimated to save $9.6 billion. It is time to close these big tax oil loopholes, time to stem the flow of revenue to the oil companies, and invest in smart, alternative fuels for the future.

The fact is, oil companies make up 4 of the top 10 spots on the Fortune 100 list of the largest corporations. In the first 3 months of this year alone, in the first quarter of 2010, the top 5 oil companies made over $23 billion in profits--not revenue, profits.

They can afford to do business without American taxpayers subsidizing them. It is time for action. Millions of Americans are out of work. Families are hurting. Communities are hurting. People everywhere are feeling the pinch, and big oil companies are raking in the profits.

At the same time, some of them, such as BP, are creating enormous environmental disasters in our country. That is why I am proud of my colleagues in the Senate Democratic caucus who sent a letter to BP saying: Put $20 billion down in an escrow account administered independently so we can make sure those in the gulf begin to have the relief they so desperately need.

To my colleagues on the other side, it is time to stop saying no and do what is right, what makes sense, and what keeps us secure. It is time to stop saying no to commonsense policies that end tax loopholes that benefit big oil. It is time to protect American taxpayers by lifting the liability cap so big oil, which made the spill, messed up, should clean up, be responsible for it, instead of American taxpayers. It is time to use those tax breaks from big oil and close them to invest in clean energy solutions that create greener, better, more secure American jobs for the 21st century. It is time to hold big oil accountable and invest in the future.

Those are the choices. I hope we will make the right ones.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding. I come to the floor in strong opposition to the Murkowski resolution because it means we will needlessly use more oil. That is why the oil industry supports this resolution, because this resolution would increase demand for their products. In turn that is why so many of my Republican friends support this resolution, because whenever big oil wants something, it seems they line up to support it. When the Republicans were in charge of MMS, they stripped the government's ability to regulate oil drilling. Anyone who has turned on the news in the last 52 days can see exactly what the policy of allowing industry to police itself has gotten us. Now they want to go further and strip the government's ability to reduce our oil consumption and regulate pollution. This is simply a wrongheaded approach at the wrong time.

This is not the time to increase oil consumption by more than 450 million barrels, which this resolution would ultimately do. This is not the time to prop up big oil, make ourselves less energy secure, and put our coastlines in further peril.

The events unfolding in the gulf have vividly shown us we should not be doubling down on 19th-century dirty fuels but, instead, moving to clean technologies of the 21st century that will reinvigorate our economy, allow our businesses to compete internationally, improve our energy security, and preserve the environment.

The resolution is regressive on its face. For my home State of New Jersey, it would increase dependence on oil by more than 14 million barrels in 2016 and cost New Jerseyans an additional $39 million at the gas pump in 2016.

The Federal Government gives big oil tax breaks. It gives big oil subsidies. The government even gives big oil, so far, a cap on damages stemming from oilspills. The resolution is just one more windfall for big oil at the expense of American taxpayers.

So the choice is clear: We can keep protecting big oil from regulation or we can do what reason, common sense, and good governance dictate. In light of the facts--in light of the need to reduce pollution; in light of the need to move toward new, smarter, greener energy for the future; in light of what we are seeing happen every day in the gulf--over the last 52 days--in light of the fact that this resolution would cost

consumers as much as $47 billion in additional fuels costs, I hope the Senate soundly defeats the Murkowski resolution.

This is a choice between polluting our environment--and stopping the government from ensuring we do not pollute our environment--and moving toward a cleaner, greener future. This is a choice between a quality of life that ultimately reduces respiratory ailments and cancer versus one that continues to perpetuate it. The choice could not be clearer. I certainly hope my colleagues will ultimately vote for a choice that is greener, that has a future of promise and hope and opportunity, not one that continues to help big oil at the expense of the American taxpayer.

With that, I yield back any time I may have to the chair.

I move to lay that motion upon the table.

The motion to lay upon the table was agreed to.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I ask for regular order with regard to the Reid amendment No. 4174.

Mr. President, I offer a second-degree amendment which is at the desk.

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

Mr. President, the amendment I rise to offer today as a second-degree will do something several of my colleagues and I have been seeking to do on the floor for the last 2 weeks or so; that is, to make absolutely certain that big oil polluters pay for oilspills and not the taxpayers--not fishermen, not small business owners, not coastal communities, not States, not municipalities.

This amendment would eliminate the artificially low liability cap that is currently in place--a cap that is currently set at $75 million--which means companies such as BP are only on the hook legally for less than 1 day's profits. BP made nearly $6 billion in 3 months of this year in profits--not proceeds, profits. That comes out to about $94 million a day. So the present liability cap--the cap that says, yes, you have to be responsible for all the cleanup, all of the efforts, but to the extent you have damaged shrimp fishermen, commercial fishermen, to the extent you have damaged coastal communities--to all of that extent--there is a $75 million limit. Well, if we let that stand, that would be less than 1 day's profit for BP. So we want to make sure they are legally on the hook and their spill, which wreaks complete economic devastation on small business and local communities and our environment that could very well last for years to come, does not allow them to get away with not being fully responsible.

I believe yesterday we had a big day in the Senate in this debate about liability caps for oil companies that spill. First, the administration finally clarified. It had originally said we believe the cap should be lifted, but it had not quantified as to what that should be. Yesterday the administration clarified its position to say it will support unlimited liability for damages caused by future spills in deep waters. Then several of my Republican colleagues came to the floor of the Senate to support unlimited liability for damages caused by this particular spill, not a broader range. I think that is progress.

We certainly embrace the fact that for this and any potential future spill there should be unlimited damages. So from when I started this effort with several of my colleagues, including Senator Nelson, Senator Lautenberg, Senator Murray, and others, we have come from opposition to lifting the cap, to a determined amount, to now having an understanding that unlimited liability certainly in a spill of this nature should, in fact, take place.

However, we cannot depend on BP's good word or BP's statements. There is no consent judgment. There is no written guarantee. We need to make sure those communities within the gulf and that we as a nation and as taxpayers do not have to pay for BP or any other responsible party.

So it is encouraging to see colleagues coming around to see it the way I and 20 Senate cosponsors of my bill are supporting, but we still have a bit of a ways to go. We all should agree all oil companies should pay for all damages caused by spills from offshore facilities, certainly if they are doing deepwater drilling, certainly if they create the risk; and if that risk ultimately ends in damage, we should be able to universally agree they should be responsible for the liability. But we should not depend upon doing that just when an oil company makes statements they promise to pay; not just when the company is so big it can pay with a few weeks' worth of profits. We need to make sure people whose livelihoods are ruined by an oilspill are protected no matter what. We need to ensure big oil companies are held accountable no matter what.

That is why I am offering this amendment to remove the cap on liability completely so we can truly hold oil companies accountable for all of their potential damages.

I have heard some people referring to keeping the oil companies responsible, such as BP, as un-American--un-American--to hold a multibillion-dollar corporation accountable for the very disaster it created. I think it is un-American not to be able to pursue such a corporation for the purposes of holding them accountable for the disaster they have created to the economic well-

being of commercial fishermen, shrimp fishermen, seafood processing plants, coastal communities, wetlands, and a whole host of other consequences that we have.

This is a chance to show if we are going to stand up with big oil or with small businesses, including fisheries and coastal communities, whether we are going to stand up with multibillion-dollar corporations or with the taxpayers of this country so they have no liability whatsoever. I think the choice is pretty clear.

I hope everyone in our Chamber will do the right thing, to hold big oil accountable for the damages they have caused. I hope our colleagues will join us in this effort. I am truly pleased to see there is a movement in this direction. I hope we can make it a bipartisan movement. I think the American people are seeing that regardless of what BP ends up committing to pay or what they don't commit to pay, when they came before the Energy Committee and the executives were there and they were asked what are all the legitimate claims, they equivocated on a series of answers: Well, is this a legitimate claim? Is this a legitimate claim? Is this a legitimate claim? They equivocated on all of that.

When the three different entities--BP, Transocean, and Halliburton, all of whom may be responsible parties--had the opportunity, they all did the finger-pointing at the other one. That does not give me a sense of security or a guarantee that this enormous consequence to our environment and to our economy is going to be taken care of by the words of those who both shift blame and equivocate on their responsibility. I think we have clearly learned there obviously is no such thing as a rig that is too safe to spill, and there should be no legal wiggle room for oil companies that devastate coastal businesses and communities now or in the future.

This spill, if nothing else, tragedy that it is, should serve as a rallying cry for holding big oil responsible for the damage it has caused. That is our choice. That is our opportunity. I urge that is the fierce urgency of now, as we look at that live feed of that oil gushing every day for now well over a month. It is our fiduciary duty to the taxpayers of this country. It is our duty to the next generation of Americans in this country to make sure the company and companies that created this set of circumstances and these enormous damages are fully liable for it. That is the opportunity we have by virtue of this second-degree amendment.

I hope my colleagues will embrace the opportunity and live up to those responsibilities.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak on some of the amendments before the Senate that I understand will be considered and coming up for some votes. To me, they are misguided efforts as it relates to how we ultimately deal with our immigration policy in this country; how we deal with the questions of national security, of our economy, of our well-being.

I have joined in supporting and take a backseat to no one in our efforts to secure the borders of the United States. However, the militarizing of the border is something I clearly do not believe is in our collective interests.

Now, Senators Cornyn, Kyl, and McCain seek to offer border enforcement amendments to the supplemental we are debating, but these amendments are, in my mind, merely an opportunity to grandstand instead of solving the country's real immigration problems.

These amendments would deplete critical stimulus funds that are greatly needed to support a recovering economy. It is an economy that recovers that ultimately generates the revenues to fund some of the very initiatives we would like to see. It is important to realize that many of the remaining stimulus funds--much of the funding is for mandatory programs. These are programs we must pay for under current law, such as unemployment insurance, food stamps, FMAP, to mention a few.

Furthermore, there seems to be a sense of amnesia here. We have already poured billions of dollars into border enforcement this year, more than under the last Republican-controlled Congress. Over the last 3 years alone, the Democratic Congress has increased U.S. Customs and Border Protection funding by over 23 percent, from $8 billion to about $10 billion. We have added an extra $1 billion for border infrastructure and security activities as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Funding for border security in the last 10 years has increased substantially, with a 127-percent increase for Customs and Border Patrol inspections, a 160-percent increase for border control, and a monstrous 1,737-percent increase for construction and technology purposes--1,737 percent for construction and technology purposes.

These investments have fully funded over 20,000 Border Patrol agents--an increase of 6,000 agents or more than 50 percent since 2006. This increase was at a total cost of over $3.5 billion this year. We have doubled the number of Border Patrol agents in a 5-year period, and the Border Patrol is better staffed and funded than at any time in its 85-year history.

We completed the southwest border fence, with over 645 miles now under effective control compared to 241 miles in fiscal year 2005. Over the last 3 years, the Democratic-controlled Congress has invested $1.2 billion to complete the fence--20 percent more than the Republican Congress provided for that effort.

We have financed advanced new border control technologies including cameras, radars, sensors, and command and control systems to help the Border Patrol continuously monitor the border. Democrats in Congress provided $421 million--more than four times what the Republican Congress provided--for these tools and required a high standard of oversight and accountability to ensure these advanced technologies would prove to be robust, reliable, and true force multipliers. We have funded three new Predator-B unmanned aerial vehicles for long-duration aerial surveillance of the areas between official ports of entry.

Customs and Border Patrol air and marine division manages the largest law enforcement air force in the world with 284 aircraft, including six Predator aircraft patrolling the Nation's land and sea borders to stop terrorists and drug smugglers before they enter the United States.

Since 2008, a Democratic-controlled Congress has provided $323 million--more than five times the amount previously provided by Republicans--for the Unique Identity Initiative under the US-VISIT Program. Democrats have also doubled funding--from $15 million in 2008 to $31 million in 2010--for the US-VISIT effort to review biographic, travel, and biometric information of foreign visitors to the United States.

The Border Patrol is not the only Federal agency at the border. In Arizona alone, there are more than 6,000 Federal law enforcement agents--the majority employed by the Border Patrol--representing nearly 10 agents for every mile of international line between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

The legions of Border Patrol agents are supported by thousands of Federal agents from a wide spectrum of agencies, including several thousand Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents; 1,180 DEA agents; 1,212 air and marine officers; 6,235 Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents; 1,419 canine enforcement teams; 280 horse patrols; 208

narcotics detection teams; 32 currency detection teams; 212 narcotics- human smuggling detection teams; and 4 DEA mobile enforcement teams.

The number of Border Patrol agents has increased so rapidly there aren't even enough supervisors to effectively train new agents. The GAO found that the agency's ratio of agents to supervisors went from the normal 5 to 1 to 11 to 1.

In addition to these border enforcement increases, the democratically controlled Congress has increased ICE's budget 37 percent since 2007, the last year of a Republican majority in the Congress, and restructured the agency's budget to target aliens with dangerous criminal convictions and those who pose the greatest threat to America and Americans.

In the last 10 years, funding for immigration, customs, detention, and removal has increased by 170 percent. Over the last 16 months, the administration's comprehensive plan to secure the southwest border has resulted in record seizures of illegal weapons and bulk cash transiting from the United States to Mexico, significant seizures of illegal drugs heading into the United States, lower violent crime rates in southwest border States, and reduced illegal immigration.

Republicans now say we must pour more money into border security before we can address this issue comprehensively--more than everything I have already stated--but that has not always been their position. Let me read you a quote regarding border enforcement:

Despite an increase in border patrol agents from 3,600 to

10,000, despite quintupling the border patrol budget, despite

the employment of new technologies and tactics, all to

enforce current immigration laws, illegal immigration

drastically increased during the 1990s. While strengthening

border security is an essential component of national

security, it must also be accompanied by immigration reforms.

As long as there are jobs available in this country for

people who live in poverty and hopelessness in other

countries, these people will risk their lives to cross our

borders, no matter how formidable the barriers, and most will

be successful.

I ask you, who made the statement against border security policies and in favor of comprehensive immigration reform? It was our colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain, on March 30, 2006.

Here is another quote:

For those who say let's just enforce our laws, I remind

them that some of our laws are unenforceable. My conservative

friends are the first ones to point out that the 1986 law is

not an effective law. It is unenforceable. And until we

change it, we are not going to be able to just enforce the

laws.

That was our colleague from Arizona, John Kyl, in 2007.

I could go on and on about the comments made in the past. I agree in those respects with Senator McCain's and Senator Kyl's past statements that we certainly need comprehensive immigration reform to achieve the goal of reestablishing the rule of law and fixing our broken immigration system.

Even former Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge wrote in a 2006 op-ed that gaining ``operational control of the borders is impossible, unless our efforts are coupled with a robust temporary guest worker program and a means to entice those now working illegally out of the shadows into some type of legal status.''

Now, ``border security first'' has been the strategy used by the Congress and the Federal Government for the past 17 years. My understanding of the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, do more of it, and get the same result. That is a recipe for failure.

Several of my colleagues and I have put forward an immigration framework as an invitation to our Republican colleagues to join us in something that is critical to the national security of the United States, critical to the economy of the United States, and critical so that American citizens and legal permanent residents do not face what they are facing. I have over 200 cases of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents of the United States--people who obey the law, follow the rules and the process, are here legally--who have been unlawfully detained in violation of their constitutional rights. In some cases, American citizens have been detained for months before their citizenship was established.

Who among us in this Chamber is willing to accept second-class citizenship simply because of the happenstance of who they are, what they look like, what their accent may be, or the happenstance of where they happen to reside? But that has happened to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. Then we have laws that exacerbate those possibilities of expanding. I do not accept that any citizen of the United States is a second-class citizen of this country.

Our national security, our framework, incorporates many of our Republican colleagues' ideas. It makes for an even more robust border enforcement process, in a way that deals with national security. The framework includes increases in Border Patrol and technology.

At the same time, we can never have national security if we don't know who is here to pursue the American dream versus who might be here to do it damage. Unless we bring millions of people out of the darkness into the light and find out why they are here, what is their purpose, and do a criminal background check on them and make them law-abiding insofar as they will be able to contribute to the national good, pay taxes, go through the background check, and learn English, and after a long set of years have an opportunity to adjust their status in this country, millions will be in the shadows, and we have no idea if they are here to pursue the American dream or to do it harm.

By having people come forth as the law, as we suggest, becomes reality and being able to register in a temporary status, we bring people out of the darkness into the light. We create an opportunity to do criminal background checks to make sure they have been in other respects law-abiding and that they are here to pursue the dreams that millions of immigrants who came to this country and contributed to the vitality of this Nation have enormously.

But we will never know who is here to pursue that dream versus who is here to do it harm if they stay in the shadows. That is not in the interest of the national security of the United States.

The reaction to the Arizona law illustrates that Latinos, Asians, and others do not believe they are second-class citizens in this country. I have nothing in my possession that presents that I am a U.S. citizen, even though I was born in the great city of New York. I have nothing that ultimately says that I am such. I don't carry my birth certificate or my passport around with me. In essence, I was born here, but if I want to travel to another State that says that simple lawful contact with a citizen--well, lawful contact with a citizen is a police officer on foot patrol who comes up to a group of citizens; lawful contact with a citizen is a patrol car that comes up to a group of day laborers on a corner; lawful contact is anywhere a police officer might well be in contact with any citizen. Now the idea that, well, this person gives me reason to suspect that somehow they are here in an undocumented fashion--and that process, even before the Arizona law, has led to U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents being unlawfully detained in the United States. I guess until it happens to one of us, we don't quite feel the same way. But I believe any citizen in this country is not a second-class citizen.

I am also worried when one group of people in our country becomes a suspect class--when one group of people is blamed for all the ills of the Nation. History teaches us when that happens, it has a very sad ending. It has a very sad and dangerous ending. We cannot let that happen in the United States of America. It is not who we are as a people. It is not who we are as a nation.

I believe there is much that hopefully will be in common. We believe jointly that the national security of the United States is about controlling and protecting our borders, but how we do it is going to be very important. It is about the national economy of this country because, I just have to be honest with you, we have to be honest with what elements of our economy--even in this challenging economy, elements of our economy that are done by immigrant workers.

If you had breakfast this morning and you had fruit, it was probably picked by the bent back of an immigrant worker. If you had chicken for

dinner last night, it was probably plucked by the cut-up hands of an immigrant worker. If you slept in one of the hotels or motels of the byways of our cities, it was probably cleaned by the hands of an immigrant worker. If you have a loved one who is infirm, probably their daily needs are being taken care of by the steady hand and warm heart of an immigrant worker.

I could go on and on. I believe this is also about our national economy. For so long as we permit a subclass to be exploited in an economy it hurts the wages of all others in an economy, and only bringing them out of the darkness and into the light will create a better circumstance in which we will not have such exploitation.

I do this all by way of background that says if the amendments that are now going to be proceeded on--the Cornyn amendment and the Kyl second degree--pour billions into perpetuating an inadequate strategy that would not solve the problem, dumping $1.9 billion in additional personnel, technology, and resources along the border, when in fact we have a set of circumstances where that has shown itself time and time again not to have been the successful strategy.

It is interesting that some of the State and local grant programs for border security have led to a misuse of funds and costly litigation. The Arizona Daily Star investigation found that funding for State and local grant programs was used to compensate officer time for issuing traffic citations, crowd control at parades and soccer games, attending a funeral, monitoring gun shows, and responding to calls about loud music. That isn't about border enforcement.

The McCain amendment appropriates $250 million, offset with Recovery Act funds. Deployments would be required to start within 72 hours of passage and last until the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security certify they have operational control of the border. This amendment would place a significant burden on National Guard troops who are already overburdened and interfere with the President's authority to deploy troops. We are already using the National Guard in unprecedented ways in deployments abroad. The President's authority is affected. I know the administration strongly opposes it.

General Jones, the National Security Adviser; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism said in an attached letter to Senator Levin:

There is no modern precedent for Congress to direct the

President to deploy troops in the manner sought by the

amendment. It represents an unwarranted interference with the

Commander-in-Chief's responsibilities to direct the

employment of our Armed Forces.

It would also interfere with the administration's comprehensive border security plan.

For all of these reasons, I am in strong opposition to these amendments. I certainly urge their defeat. We are going to send billions more after billions that have already been sent to accomplish the same negative result, and your own words speak to the very essence of how we get to a solution, which is to pursue a comprehensive nature to this reality.

If you want to ensure a continuing set of circumstances in which law enforcement turns U.S. citizens into second-class citizens, then vote for the amendments. But otherwise, you should oppose them.

I will be happy to yield.

Yes. The Senator is correct. In addition, some of the funding they take is from already mandated programs, programs that are critical to citizens and communities and States, and they would, in essence, detract from those mandated programs for which there is a Federal obligation to move it in this direction, at the same time decreasing the job opportunities at a time in which we are trying to grow this economy, not contract it.

The Senator from Illinois is correct. As a matter of fact, the same letter he read from General Jones, the National Security Adviser, and John Brennan, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said:

There is no modern precedent for Congress to direct the

President to deploy troops in the manner sought by that

amendment.

I appreciate the question and view of the Senator from Illinois. Yes, that is why I said I respect the previous positions Senator McCain had. He understood that you cannot solve this problem by throwing more money, more troops at it. At the end of the day, that has not achieved all the goals, despite enormous increases. And yet there are still challenges.

In view of the fact the President himself--something I personally don't support but nonetheless has gone ahead and made a deployment on his own, it seems to me we should see what works before we advance billions for efforts and directing troops by an amendment when those troops could be needed for a whole host of things.

I have to be honest with you. If we are going to start directing troops, then I wish to see them directed to the gulf so, in fact, we can help out with the oilspill not getting into critical wetlands and estuaries. I think that is a national emergency.

I appreciate the Senator's question. The fact is, as I mentioned earlier in my comments, we have used the National Guard in an unprecedented way. They have been called for deployment abroad, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere in unprecedented numbers. The stress we

have created on the force by virtue of these two continuing engagements, as well as any other national emergency that might occur, is incredibly challenging. It is real challenging to those forces. My view is the Senator is right.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise to talk about the oilspill in the gulf and the continuing challenges it presents to us. I know some of my colleagues are going to be joining me in a few moments to talk about this. I will ask consent for a colloquy. But I am going to make a few comments about it and then, in recognition of Senator Inhofe's need to move to another commitment, I will ask unanimous consent at that time.

I want to make absolutely certain that big oil polluters pay for oilspills and not the taxpayers--not small business owners, not States or the Federal Government, which means the Federal taxpayers.

We have seen things get worse on the spill over the weekend. Unfortunately, things are, frankly, getting much worse than we would have imagined when we first introduced this legislation. Today the United States declared a fishing disaster in three gulf States--in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Louisiana's fishing industry alone is $2.4 billion of seafood and supplies up to 40 percent of all the U.S. seafood in our country. It is, in my mind, a growing and continuing environmental and economic disaster.

Tragically, it seems to me, a $10 billion cap--we originally thought, based upon the Exxon Valdez experience, where there were close to $4 billion in claims 20 years ago, that was a cap that may have been an appropriate one. But in fact it seems to me the only way to ensure that oil companies are held accountable for all of their potential damages, for the proposition that a polluter pays at the end of the day, is to agree with the administration's statement and to raise from a cap of $75 million to an unlimited cap. I will be asking that in my unanimous consent motion in a few minutes.

We heard already the objections to our legislation. We have even heard some claim that it is ``un-American'' to hold a multibillion dollar corporation accountable for the very disaster it caused. It boggles my mind, at least as one Senator, that there are those who believe that holding BP accountable for the disaster they created in the gulf is un-American.

This is a chance to show if we stand with big oil companies or with small businesses, with fisheries, with coastal communities, with tourism, with hotels--with all of those individuals, fellow Americans who are being hurt by this disaster. It is an opportunity to say do we stand with the American taxpayer or with corporate shareholders.

It seems to me the choice is pretty clear. Miles of coastline have already been affected. Environmentally sensitive wetlands are increasingly being under threat. We have seen that, despite the fact that the rig was ``state of the art,'' it obviously was not too safe to fail.

Now the damage to the environment, to the economy of the gulf, to the fishermen, to the small businesses, to the Nation is mounting. I hope my colleagues are ready to act, especially when we have the statements of BP, that have been reiterated, that they are going to subject themselves--even though there is a legal cap of $75 million--not for the cleanup, not for all the efforts that are underway--yes, that clearly is their responsibility--but a legal cap of $75 million for all of the liability, for all of those coastal communities and fishermen and seafood fishermen, shrimp fishermen, and commercial seafood processing plants, tourism, and a whole host of other elements that may be affected, that they be limited to $75 million--less than 1 day of BP's profit. BP was making at the rate of $94 million a day. Seventy- five million dollars would be less than 1 day of BP's profits.

If they say they are going to be responsible--and any companies similarly situated should be fully responsible, accountable and subject to that liability--what is the objection to raising the cap?

I hope everyone in the Chamber will do the right thing to hold big oil accountable for the damages they caused. Damages are mounting. They still have not stopped the leak. While BP says they will pay all ``legitimate claims,'' their word is not legally binding. As a matter of fact, when they were before the Energy Committee, colleagues of mine asked them, clearly, questions and they began to equivocate as to what is a legitimate claim.

Today I asked the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, who was before the Energy Committee, is there a consent agreement between the government and BP, that holds them--legally binding--to the proposition that they will be subject to all the liabilities they have caused? And the answer was no. There is some letter, but even that letter is rather amorphous.

When I hear they are equivocating before the committee, and when I see the experience we already had with Exxon--that made all similar types of statements and then litigated for 20 years--it seems to me this clearly raises concerns that they will try to find a convenient loophole, a convenient way out once the public relations nightmare is over, a way to say no, as many of my colleagues seem to want to say no and stand on the side of big oil companies and stand in the way of legislation that would raise the liability

caps to ensure that big oil polluters pay for the damage they caused.

I see, by example, one company, BP, made nearly $6 billion in profits--not proceeds, profits--in 3 months of this year; when the top 5 oil companies made nearly $25 billion in profits--not proceeds, profits--in 3 months, and that somehow we are worried about them even when they caused the type of potentially enormous consequences that BP has actually caused in this case, and we are not worried about those communities, our taxpayers, and our fragile ecosystem. It is a failure that now threatens the entire gulf coast. It could go all the way to the Florida Keys.

I appreciate the administration earlier today embraced the idea of unlimited liability. I commend them for that. I want to make sure BP ends up committing to pay for this disaster, not by their words but by a legal obligation to do so, and that is what we can create today. There should be no legal wiggle room for oil companies that devastate coastal businesses and communities now or in the future.

In view of that goal, I now ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged of S. 3305, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Unlimited Liability Act of 2010, that the Senate proceed to its consideration, that the only amendment in order be the substitute amendment that is at the desk, that the substitute amendment be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Madam President, first, I am disappointed because I appreciate what the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma said, but the reality is, the administration has been thoughtful. They have thought about it. Today they announced, as well as was verified by the Assistant Attorney General at a hearing, that it is their view that in fact there should be an unlimited cap. So they have not equivocated about an amount. They have now said it should be an unlimited cap; unlimited, just as BP has suggested that they are going to accept unlimited responsibility for the liability they have created as a result of the spill in the gulf.

I have difficulties understanding, when we begin to talk about sizes--that if you are smaller but conduct yourself with the same potential risky consequences that end up polluting the gulf or anyplace else as it is being polluted right now--that simply because you are smaller but you take the same risks that you should have less liability, which means that then all of us as taxpayers--and I know a lot of people here do not want to see the Federal Government more involved. They want to see the Federal Government less involved until they need the Federal Government and then they come clamoring to this Chamber for money.

It seems to me if these companies--and the Senator only mentioned the top five, but there are more that have good profits, but certainly the top five. If they made $25 billion in 3 months, why in God's name should I give them any of the taxpayers' money when they mess up, when they pollute?

What Representative of what State is going to come here and say give us money because, by the way, we were harmed in this way or that way or the other when in fact they are unwilling to hold the oil companies responsible--with record profits? It is not acceptable.

If we say if you are not one of the big 5 but we are worried about the next 10--they may be smaller but some of these entities that get referred to as independents--you know, there is one that actually owns a 25-percent stake in the well that is spilling in the gulf. They are valued at $40 billion. I don't think for the average American that is a mom-or-pop.

The reality is, regardless of the size, the fundamental public policy question, if you take an activity that is risky, shouldn't you be responsible for the consequences of your risky activity or do we shift the responsibility to the general public and the taxpayer?

It is like what we just went through in the Wall Street debate. So when they hit it big on the oil well and everything goes well, they keep the money. But when something goes wrong, the rest of us pay for the consequences. I do not think the American taxpayers want to see that. That is not what they have in mind as being responsive to their interests.

So I know my colleague from New Jersey wanted to enter into a colloquy with me. I would be happy to yield to him now.

Reclaiming my time.

I appreciate my distinguished colleague from New Jersey who has been a stalwart on this issue, as well as in the past, on the whole question of the environment. The Senator is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. I appreciate his comments.

I know the Senator from Florida wanted to join us in a colloquy, as well as the Senator from Illinois. So let me ask unanimous consent to continue the colloquy with first Senator Nelson, then Senator Durbin, and then I will yield the floor.

I still have the floor?

Let me ask the Chair if, as I have the floor, if I yield to a colleague for a question, is that not permissible?

I would be happy to yield to my colleague from Florida for a question.

I not only acknowledge that those statements have been made, but I know the Senator and others, including myself, have raised the fact that BP's credibility in this respect is not credible. In fact, scientists have gone into the gulf and made the determination that at the rate that spill is taking place, it is far beyond what BP told us. As a matter of fact, we have an interest in this regard not only, of course, because of the environmental consequences but also because of the royalties we should be claiming on all of that oil that is being let out.

So the Senator is correct. This is one of the issues we are facing.

Well, I appreciate the Senator's question. The Senator himself has at various times informed this body of something that he has referred to as the loop current, which is, in essence, a natural current that could very well take the oilspill from the region of the gulf and move it along the Senator's State in Florida and beyond.

This is an enormous concern. Already, as I said earlier, the U.S. Government has banned fishing products from three States, and the consequences of that just in one dimension in terms of the seafood that part of the country generates for us domestically, both in terms of the billions of dollars as well as the consumption of seafood is now one that has been barred by the U.S. Government.

So we are increasingly seeing the consequences of this damage. There is real concern this could move in a direction that would be consequential to other States as well.

Well, I appreciate the Senator's question and his concern. I think it is the concern of many. The reality is, I have heard comments that to hold BP accountable is un-American. Well, I think it is un-American to allow BP to go ahead, pollute the natural resources of the United States and not be held accountable in an unlimited fashion, which is the administration's position because they have created enormous consequences which we have yet to fully understand--we have yet to fully understand.

I know the Senator from Illinois was just on a trip to the gulf.

I would be happy to yield for a question.

Yes. British Petroleum made about $5.6 billion in the first 3 months in profits--not proceeds, profits. Right now the liability cap that exists under the law is $75 million, 1 day of BP's profits, based on the first quarter's $94 million. So it is less than 1 day's profit.

Well, the Senator's question is well put. Justice could not be achieved under the present cap. As a matter of fact, as I said earlier, today the United States declared a fishing disaster in three Gulf States: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Louisiana itself has a $2.4 billion seafood industry, and it supplies up to 40 percent of all of the U.S. seafood.

Clearly, just that figure alone gives us a sense that all of those individuals and communities and entities would not receive justice.

Absolutely nothing. The only way to ensure the U.S. taxpayer pays absolutely nothing, not just for the cleanup but in terms of consequences to communities that would exceed the liability cap that exists right now under the law and for which BP has made statements but no commitment, such as a consent agreement, which would be binding upon BP--the taxpayers should pay absolutely nothing--the way to do that is to raise it to an unlimited cap.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I do not believe I will object, if there is a unanimous-consent request pending, any of the Members who are going to speak in the following order, as the Senator from Arizona suggested, it would be appropriate then to be recognized to object, would it not?

The Senator has propounded a series of Members to speak or offer amendments. If one of those Members offers a unanimous-consent request during their presentation, then there would be an opportunity to object notwithstanding the unanimous-consent request before us?

Madam President, reserving the right to object.

Madam President, I appreciate the Senator came up with a proposal. It is 40 pages. I just saw it. I look forward to reading it and seeing whether it truly achieves the goal we mutually have. We are moving the ball forward because both the Senator from Louisiana and the Senator from Alaska, who I understood originally opposed lifting the cap to an unlimited amount, now both believe the cap, at least in this instance, should be lifted to an unlimited amount.

But reading the last 2 pages of the proposal we just got, and listening to the words of the Senator from Louisiana, there is a suggestion here that BP has, in essence, made a commitment or a contract, yet we have nothing before us other than testimony about a supposed willingness to pay all legitimate claims. They have equivocated when they have been asked before the committee, What does ``legitimate'' mean, and several members asked them a series of different elements of ``legitimate,'' and they would not commit to that.

Secondly, the letter the Senator has in his legislation that he wants to propound to pass right now says BP is ``prepared'' to pay above $75 million. It does not say it ``shall'' pay above $75 million. It does not say ``will'' pay. There is no legal obligation for them to do it. So to consume that and say that is the basis under which we are making some contractual relationship is a problem.

Finally, I think there is a problem between having legislation on a specific incident versus raising the cap in general. What happens when, God forbid, the next oilspill comes and a company is not taking the same position? It seems to me what we want to do is raise the cap in an unlimited fashion against any major oil company so we do not simply have to listen to their allegations that they are willing to pay any claims but that, in fact, they have a legal obligation to do so.

So for all these reasons, and the fact that we just got this legislation, and because of the concerns that I do not think it reaches what we need to accomplish, I will have to object.

Reserving the right to object, I have not seen this amendment and I am not familiar with what it would do, so for the moment I would object until I have that opportunity.

Reserving the right to object, I will state the same objection. I have not seen the amendment, and while I appreciate that the bill managers may have agreed to it, the reality is, as I understand it, any Member of the Senate can rise to object.

I hope not to be compelled to object. But at this point, I will object.

Will the Senator yield before he offers the request?

I appreciate that. I look at the Senator's proposed amendment, and am I to understand that the Senator has $3.1 billion of rescissions to cover what he wants to do in his amendment?

If my colleague will further yield, I understand what he just said. There is $3.1 billion in rescission in the amendment; is that fair to say?

I thank my colleague for yielding.

Amendment No. 4202, as Modified

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

Madam President, I rise to speak about an amendment I hope is noncontroversial and one that creates jobs. When one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is present, I will make a unanimous consent request, but I will start off by speaking on the amendment.

Amendment No. 4064 would create more than 40,000 new jobs. It would help revitalize Main Street in some of the economically hardest hit communities all around the country and at no cost to the taxpayer. We have been talking a lot about the financial crisis and how to prevent the next one. That is obviously important. It is essential work. But what we cannot lose sight of is the devastating impact this crisis has had on small businesses and economic development in local neighborhoods and communities.

I, like many in this Chamber, watched in frustration as the ranks of the unemployed rose to 15 million people and the unemployment rate increased to nearly 10 percent. I, like many of you, have watched in frustration as small businesses shut their doors, unable to get the credit they needed to keep the lights on.

The problem is the big banks--the same banks that took billions upon billions of dollars in TARP funds--are not making loans to small businesses. According to a just-released report by the Congressional Oversight Panel, Wall Street's largest banks reduced their small business loan portfolios between

2008 and 2009 by more than double the overall drop in lending.

Let me read you the conclusion of that report. It says:

Small business credit remains severely constricted. Unable

to find credit, many small businesses have had to shut their

doors, and some of the survivors are still struggling to find

adequate financing.

So despite all of our efforts to restore liquidity in banks, they refuse to hold up their end of the bargain and are not lending to small businesses.

We know small businesses are the engines of growth. More than 99 percent of American businesses employ 500 or fewer employees, and together these companies employ half of the private workforce and create 2 of every 3 new jobs. So the question throughout the recession has always been, How can small businesses get the credit they need not only to keep the lights on but to grow and create jobs, to get the economy humming again?

Today, we are showing signs of improvement. We have stopped job losses, from three-quarters of a million jobs, to over 260,000 jobs created last month. The economy is recovering, but there are still millions of people who do not have work--people who expect us to do something to help them.

I believe this bill we are passing is essential to an economic recovery. In making our banking system more secure and stable, we are directing banks to focus on the core business of lending and extending credit, rather than the reckless casino speculation that brought us to this recession.

But we can also do something that is more direct and more immediate to help jump-start more job growth. We can invest directly in small businesses and local communities by supporting community development financial institutions or, as they are called, CDFIs. Based on what we know about this community from its historic performance, the amendment I am proposing will create approximately 40,000 new jobs by authorizing the government to guarantee bonds issued by qualified CDFIs for community and economic development loans. And best of all, there are no pay-go implications.

As their name implies, the primary mission of community development financial institutions is to foster economic and community development in underserved areas. They have a proven track record of job creation and are arguably the most effective way to infuse capital in underserved areas for community and economic development.

CDFIs leverage public and private dollars to support economic development projects, such as job-training clinics and startup loans for small businesses in areas full of potential but desperate for development. CDFIs have been hit hard by the recession because they have had to rely on big banks for capital. As we have seen, that capital is neither affordable nor accessible.

I am proud to have bipartisan support on this amendment. Senator Snowe is a cosponsor, as are Senators Johnson, Leahy, and Schumer, and I want to say to all of our cosponsors, we thank you for your support.

The idea is simple: If big banks do not care about lending to small businesses and communities in need of capital, then we should empower the very organizations that do care, that make it their mission every day to rebuild Main Streets across this country, and that are ready and willing to do even more if they only had the resources and tools to meet the growing demand.

So I ask all of us in this Chamber, do we want to go home to our States and tell the folks on Main Street that, no, we did not think they deserved the loan guarantees--that would not cost taxpayers a dollar but would create more than 40,000 new jobs? I certainly do not think so.

We have talked a lot about protecting Main Street from Wall Street here in the last few weeks, but we have not talked about doing anything directly to benefit Main Street. Here is our chance. Again, we know the big banks have dried up their lending to small businesses. We know small businesses are the engine of economic growth.

I am proposing an amendment that would not wait around for the big banks to start lending again while Main Street businesses continue to struggle to meet payroll. I am proposing an amendment that would give our communities the guarantees they need to get lending started again to put money into our engines of job growth--and all without any pay-go implications, without any cost to the Federal taxpayers.

I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting this important amendment and to help small businesses create jobs on Main Street. I appreciate that Senator Snowe, Senator Johnson, and others--Senator Schumer--have joined us on this effort.

Madam President, seeing the distinguished ranking member of the Banking Committee is now on the floor, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 4064, which is the CDFI amendment, and ask unanimous consent for a vote on this amendment prior to the cloture vote.

Madam President, I regret that my dear friend and colleague from Alabama has the need to object. This is an opportunity, with a bipartisan amendment, to help Main Street and small businesses; an opportunity to create 40,000 jobs; an opportunity to do it without cost to the taxpayers; an opportunity to do it with organizations, CDFIs, that have a proven track record; an opportunity to lend to Main Street because big banks are not doing it.

We all lament the lack of job growth. We all lament the lack of access to capital. This would be a tremendous opportunity to do that. So I do hope I can work with Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby to get this in order prior to the cloture vote or hopefully, if we do not achieve that, to be able to get this in any managers' amendment. It is bipartisan. It creates jobs. It does not cost the taxpayers any money. I do not know how much more you can come to the floor and offer an amendment that should have bipartisan support than an effort like that.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I wish to thank my distinguished colleague from Washington State. I appreciate it.

I rise because the Senate has three choices on how it is going to protect coastal communities from the economic ravages of the oilspills we are seeing in the gulf. We can have fishermen, coastal residents, and tourism-based small businesses endure the suffering of lost revenue caused by a manmade disaster that was no fault of their own, which clearly in my mind isn't fair, we can have taxpayers provide them with a safety net, which I oppose, or we can make polluters pay all the damages they caused from a spill, which is the appropriate course.

It is not a hard choice. When I was a kid, my mother taught me all I think we need to know here, and I am sure everybody was taught the same way: You clean up your own mess and you are responsible for it. That is all we are asking BP or any other company to do: Clean up the mess, pay for whatever mess you can't clean up yourself and the damages that flow from what you did.

The current law sets a $75 million cap on how much an oil company has to pay for damages. That means BP doesn't have to pay more than $75 million for lost business revenue from fishing or tourism, damage to the environment, the coastline or the lost tax revenues of State and local governments. So I have introduced a bill, along with a number of my colleagues, raising that liability cap for offshore oil well spills from $75 million to $10 billion.

Some of my colleagues have objected to this proposal because they are worried it will drive oil drilling companies in the gulf out of business. Well, in the case of BP, that is a little hard to understand. It is a rather strange argument. After all, BP's profits amounted to $5.6 billion for the first 3 months of this year--profits, not proceeds, profits. That breaks down to $94 million in profits each and every day. That means their current damages liability under the law of $75 million is less than one day's profits--less than one day's profits.

Not every company drilling in the gulf is as big as BP, but why, I say to my colleagues who raise that issue, should an oil company get such a low liability cap when any average person driving down the street has unlimited liability? Why should a company doing an inherently dangerous and potentially polluting activity such as oil drilling enjoy such a low cap on liability, when the guy installing a solar panel on your roof has unlimited liability? It simply doesn't make sense.

The oil companies want it both ways. They want to keep the profits when everything works out well and times are good, but they want taxpayers to bail them out when they spill. It is fundamentally wrong.

Our bill is as simple as it gets. It says no bailout for BP. It says BP pays for its own mess, not the Nation's taxpayers. It says either you want to fully protect the small businesses and communities devastated by the spill or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable.

BP says they are going to be liable for all legitimate claims, but they would not define what ``legitimate'' is. So if they are saying that, why are we hesitant to raise the liability cap to make sure that what they are saying is kept true and that anyone else in the future will have the same responsibility? Does anyone who has been watching the images coming in from the gulf believe we should be protecting multibillion-dollar oil companies instead of the small businesses, fisheries, and coastal residents who are losing their livelihoods?

It seems to me it is time this Senate stand up to big oil and make them pay for their own mess, not taxpayers, small business owners, States or the Federal Government.

I know a number of my colleagues who have cosponsored this legislation with me wish to speak. At the end of that process, I intend to make a unanimous consent request so we can move forward and make sure now--not years later, now--that all those who are damaged as a result of the spill in the gulf are protected and that taxpayers don't pay one penny toward this liability that BP and others may have.

With that, for the moment, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of the leadership, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Nelson be next for 5 minutes, and then Senator Cardin for 4 minutes, and then Senator Lautenberg for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, to summarize, this is very simple: Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the taxpayers or multibillion- dollar oil companies? Are you on the side of fishermen, working hard to make a living, or on the side of multibillion-dollar oil companies? Are you on the side of the small inns that benefit from the tourism in the gulf region or on the side of multibillion-dollar oil companies? Are you on the side of the coastal communities that are going to be affected by virtue of the spill or on the side of multibillion-dollar oil companies?

Because of the fierce urgency now, we believe it is necessary to ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3305, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act of 2010, and that the Senate then proceed to its consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Is there still a minute remaining?

Look, I regret that my distinguished colleague from Oklahoma has decided to object. I would simply say that if you are an ``independent,''--and some of these independent companies are valued at $40 billion--does that mean that because you are not the BPs of the world, you should have less liability? If this spill in the gulf was done not by a BP or an ExxonMobil or any of those but by some other entity, should there be less liability for them; therefore, they can take the risk and go ahead and drill, and if it works out, they get all the profits, but if they spill, their liability would be limited under the guise they were going to create a monopoly for the big five? I am for creating that liability across the entire range. If you are involved in a dangerous activity, one that can create enormous environmental and economic damage, then you should face the liability for such whether you are BP or you are some intermediate entity.

So I don't quite understand the nature of suggesting that we are going to try to give the big companies some form of monopoly. Actually, it seems to me what we are doing is using that argument--and I have heard this argument several times--to not create the liability that is necessary for everybody, so that regardless of who creates this set of circumstances and has a spill and therefore fishermen, shrimp fishermen, seafood processing companies, tourism, coastal communities, and our environment are damaged, they should be let off the hook because they are not as big as BP.

I would be happy to yield to my colleague from Florida.

I am happy to yield to my colleague from Minnesota.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Senator for yielding.

So is it my understanding that because of your concern about these other independents, let's call them, you would allow them--if they were the cause of this incident--to limit their liability just because they are small?

Will the Senator yield for one more question?

If, in fact, it is--I think everybody clearly believes this consequence in damages is at least $10 billion--some have suggested it should be an unlimited cap. If that is the figure, your concern wouldn't stop you from putting it at that figure and making sure all the independents----

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

Madam President, I rise to speak on the pending amendment, the amendment by Senator Grassley. I have a great deal of respect for the Senator from Iowa. Actually, there is a series of things I propose that are in the underlying bill that go to the heart of much of what that amendment is going to do.

I would start off by saying I agree with most of what my colleagues are proposing. I agree we need to make sure we have a strong regulatory agency to act as cops on the beat. We need to make sure those cops on the beat are doing their job.

I agree we should require financial regulators to respond when inspectors general identify deficiencies in their agencies--either by taking corrective action or explaining to Congress why they are not taking those actions.

I agree we should require inspectors general to report to the board of the organization rather than the head of the organization.

I agree we should require publication of any negative recommendations from the inspector general's peer review of the work of other inspectors general.

I also agree inspectors general should not suffer any reduction in pay and that current inspectors general should keep their jobs until the new Presidential appointment system I included in the legislation kicks in.

I think those are great ideas and I proposed them myself. But here is where we have a disagreement. That is that this amendment takes away something I think is incredibly important in the underlying bill. It takes away making these inspectors general at these financial institutions Presidential appointments with Senate confirmation of inspectors general at financial regulatory agencies. In its place, it wants to let the heads of the agencies appoint their own inspectors general.

I think that inures to the possibility of conflicts of interest. Look, if I am the head of an agency and I am going to put in the cop on the beat who is going to supervise me, the inclination is to pick someone who is going to give me a lot of flexibility at the end of the day.

I want a robust cop on the beat. The way I ensure there is a robust cop on the beat, in terms of the inspector general, is having a Presidentially appointed one, one confirmed by the Senate, to know that in fact this person is worthy of pursuing all of the actions of that particular agency in a robust way so they are independent of the agency, not appointed by the very head of the agency they are now going to supervise and review.

I think that is a fundamental weakness, which is why the Banking Committee agreed with me and put the Presidential appointment there and Senate confirmation of inspectors general at financial regulatory agencies.

It seems to me what we want an inspector general to do is make sure the agency is doing its job. Being appointed by the head of the very agency I have to criticize, that I have to critique, that I may raise actions about, means it is a lot less likely the inspector general is truly independent. It is like going to court and saying let me pick the judge who is going to decide on my case. We wouldn't tolerate that in a courtroom and I do not see this as being any different.

I have so much with which I am in agreement with my distinguished colleague, as I mentioned at the beginning--all of those elements. I think we need to make sure when an inspector general identifies efficiencies, either by taking corrective action or explaining to Congress why they are not, that needs to be responded to by the regulators. I agree we should require inspectors general to report to the boards of organizations rather than the head of the organization. I agree we should require publication of any negative recommendation from the IG peer review of any other inspector general's work. I agree the inspectors general should not suffer any reduction in pay and that those who are there should be able to keep their job until the new Presidential appointment system kicks in.

But at the end of the day, if we want a true cop on the beat who is independent of the very agency he or she has to review, I would not want them appointed by the head of the agency and say to themselves, who am I appointing? Am I appointing a robust cop on the beat or am I appointing someone who is far less than robust?

We have forum shopping in the court. Trial lawyers try to pick the best judge from their perspective as to who can best look at their case. I want to be honest. I don't think we should be having the agency heads picking the IG and looking at who is going to treat them most lightly.

I think that is what is at stake. The underlying bill permits the Presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed. I think we should have that right. I think we need a robust cop on the beat and that is why in that one respect I oppose the Grassley amendment.

I hope we can work something out so we can keep the Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation and have all of the other safeguards, many of which I already offered in the bill to be included, and we would have a harmony of view and a robust inspector general regime.

If we are going to have an up-or-down vote on the existing amendment without any changes, then I urge a ``no'' vote. But I do hope we can make a change that permits the inspector general to be Presidentially appointed, confirmed by the Senate. That confers the ultimate independence, the ultimate vigilance, the ultimate vigor in pursuing the very same things my colleague from Iowa and I want to see happen.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate the statement of my colleague from Iowa. I will just make one or two observations. First, if we are talking about someone being beholden to one person, well, under the Senator's view that person is going to be beholden to the department authority that appoints him, the very same department authority that person is going to supervise and review. So it seems to me to the extent that there is always going to be an appointing authority, I would rather have the President of the United States, with the interests of the American people, whatever President that might be, be the appointing authority over an agency where the IG is not going to be beholden to the agency that appointed them.

I think that is a much more compelling issue. As it relates to the time, the lapse of time, I would just simply say, well, first of all, if we do not have filibusters and have up-or-down votes on people, then we will not have much of a lapse in time in terms of having an IG come before the Senate for confirmation.

I do not know why Senators would want to give up the right they would have under the bill to confirm inspectors general and make sure that person has a robust quality to them, the integrity and the background and the history to make sure they are going to go after this agency when it is appropriate to do so.

I would say, to the extent that any lapse of time versus the robust nature of how this person gets appointed is worthy of consideration. So I do not find, while I agree with my colleague on so many of the other points I have already mentioned, this one fundamental issue is one that I find difficult to understand how, when it is like--sort of like having the fox be appointed to watch the chicken coop. If I appoint someone to watch over me, I would like to believe I am going to have the most robust, tough cop on the beat do it. But human nature being what it is, I am not so sure that agency heads are going to do that. I am not so sure they are going to pick the toughest cop on the beat versus actually someone who might have a less vigilant view. I think maybe we can agree that inspectors general have to come for an immediate vote on the Senate floor and not be subject to being filibustered, and this way we could have an up-or-down vote on them and the issue of lapsing time would be taken care of.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss legislation I have offered with some of my colleagues here: The Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act. It is legislation that would make absolutely certain big oil polluters pay for oilspills and the consequences of those spills, and not the American taxpayer, not small business owners, not States or the Federal Government.

For some time now we have been told by big oil companies that what is happening in the gulf simply couldn't happen; that it was impossible; that multiple redundant safety systems were in place to prevent it. Well, we have learned there is no such thing as too safe not to spill. Supposedly, the unthinkable has happened, and not only that, but it has happened before.

Last year in Australia, the Montara oilspill began on August 21. By some estimates, the spill sent over 80,000 gallons of oil a day into the waters off the coast of Australia. It was months before they could staunch the flow of oil, and it resulted in one of the largest environmental disasters in Australian history. We should have learned from that experience. But, no; we now have the challenge before the Nation today. In comparison, the deepwater well that is leaking in the gulf is sending nearly 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf; over twice the flow from the Australian spill; several million gallons already; and just like the Australian spill, it could take months to drill the relief well. Two disasters in 1 year, yet big oil companies say over and over again that the technology was simply so safe, a spill such as this could never happen.

The reality is much different than industry claims. There simply is no safety system too safe to fail and no rig that is too safe not to spill. There is no doubt the damages that will be caused by this spill will be enormous. Unfortunately, Federal law sets a $75 million limit on how much an oil company has to pay for damages--not the cleanup; that, they are clearly going to have to pay--but for the damages. So BP would not have to pay more than a total of $75 million to small businesses from lost revenues for fishing, tourism, damage to the environment, the coastline, or the lost tax revenues of State and local governments.

That is why, along with Senators Nelson and Lautenberg, I have introduced the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act to raise the liability cap for offshore oil well spills from $75 million to $10 billion. That will make sure that taxpayers, small business owners, States, and local and Federal governments will not bail out big oil polluters for this spill or any other.

This spill should serve as a rallying cry for holding big oil accountable for the damages of this disaster and any future one, but it should also be a rallying cry to rethink expanding offshore drilling in places that are not already open to offshore drilling, such as my home State of New Jersey. Instead of expanding drilling and 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 help protect our oil and water from pollution.

We will revisit that debate soon enough, but for now I think we all should be able to agree that when an oil company causes damage by spilling oil into American waters, the oil company bears the responsibility to pay for the damage it caused. My mom taught me growing up that when you mess up, you clean up, and you are responsible for it. Oil companies should get that message as well. This will help make gulf communities whole and it will provide a stronger safety net for our communities along places such as the New Jersey shore who are looking warily at future plans for drilling along the east coast.

With that, Mr. President, I plan to ask unanimous consent on this issue, but first I wish to yield to my other colleagues who wish to speak on this issue as well. I yield 5 minutes to Senator Lautenberg and then 5 minutes to Senator Nelson.

Mr. President, in view of the fierce urgency of now, there is harm already being levied upon these communities, commercial fishermen, tourism, and others, and because $75 million is less than 1 day of BP profits, I ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3305, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act of 2010, and that the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?

Is that by order?

Is debate on the Sessions amendment now available?

Reserving the right to object, and I am not inclined to object, what is the request? Thirty minutes instead of five minutes?

Mr. President, if the distinguished Senator from Alabama will yield for a moment, since I chose not to object, would he allow me to take 2 minutes of our time just to follow the sequence of the previous discussion so I will not interrupt the essence of his amendment?

I thank my distinguished colleague. I appreciate what my colleague from Alaska had to say. Here are a couple of problems with it. First of all, when we call these companies ``independent drillers,'' some of these independent drillers who are portrayed as small mom-and-pop, some of them are like $20 billion companies. So they are not quite the mom-and-pop view we have of small mom-and-pop businesses, No. 1.

If you drill, you need to be able to pay for the damages because otherwise, imagine if this particular spill had been done by a ``small company.'' Then who would be responsible just because they were too small? The risk is what has to be calculated.

Also I simply say, I have a problem saying the administration did not say $10 billion is not the right figure by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the contrary. They said they are for lifting the liability cap. When BP makes $5.6 billion in 3 months, when the top five companies make $25 billion in 3 months, $10 billion is a drop in the bucket.

Finally, the suggestion that those who are harmed--the fishermen, the commercial fishermen, the tourism companies, and others--ultimately will be in a position to make claims in State court, I know my distinguished colleague from Alaska knows what happened in the Exxon Valdez case. That took 20 years for claimants to try to get their just response. Some of them fell off the way because they just could not keep hanging in there, and they lost everything.

I do not want Americans to have to wait 20 years to get their response to what an oil company did. Lifting the liability caps takes care of that circumstance so you do not have to litigate in State courts and then go all the way to the Supreme Court and get turned down at the end of the day.

Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor to talk about the Shelby amendment. I think we need to be 100 percent clear about one thing; that is, we need to pass a consumer protection bill-- not a Wall Street protection bill--with a strong independent agency that can aggressively defend families in all sectors of the financial industry. That is consumer protection.

A weak agency that cannot defend families against commercial banks, investment banks, credit card companies, car dealers, payday lenders, and entities such as AIG, that is Wall Street protection. That is, in essence, what this amendment does. The fact is, the Republicans' proposal on this issue seems to symbolize America's worst fears about how the powerful operate--the powerful protecting the powerful. The problem isn't that families have too much protection on Wall Street; the problem is they have not been protected enough.

The Shelby substitute is just the status quo. It is a cynical attempt to pretend they are doing consumer protection. In reality, it is meant to make sure there is no meaningful consumer protection at the end of the day. It willfully ignores the lessons we should have learned: that left to their own devices, there are lenders who can and will take advantage of consumers. That is what the marketplace--as it is right now--has taught us.

We absolutely need a muscular, independent agency--however it is configured, wherever it is housed--one that will have full and comprehensive authority to develop and implement real, honest, proconsumer rules so they will no longer be fooled by 30 pages of fine print that no one except bank lawyers could possibly understand; one that has independent rule-writing authority and authority over banks and nonbanks, while maintaining strong State consumer protection laws; one that will stop the ongoing attempts by credit card companies to circumvent the rules this Senate and Congress have already enacted. They are already working at it.

As Harvard Law Prof. Elizabeth Warren has noted: Thanks to product safety rules, you can't buy a toaster that would burn down your house. But you can buy a faulty mortgage that could take your house away.

The bank regulators have been of no great help because they are looking out for the banks--not for us, not for you, not for unsuspecting families who need the full force protections of robust regulations implemented by a muscular agency that is on your side.

In my view, a new independent agency would provide not only the comfort they need but the protection they deserve. We can argue about details, but I doubt there is much disagreement after what we have been through that Wall Street needs a watchdog, one that has jurisdiction over all financial products no matter who offers them, not just the products offered by big banks.

Chairman Dodd has worked very hard over many months to craft the details of an agency that strikes the right balance. I was happy to see that finally our Republican colleagues were saying: We are on the Wall Street reform train. But now I begin to wonder--when I see amendments such as this--that they jumped on the train to strike the emergency brake on consumer protection enforcement.

The Shelby amendment offers nothing in the way of consumer protection. There is no independence. The CFPB would simply be a division within the FDIC with no autonomy of its own. It could not even finalize a rule without FDIC approval. It will not have any resources. And that is how Republicans want it: no resources, no supervisory authority, no enforcement power. Guess who wins in that scenario.

Nonmortgage companies will never be subject to supervision unless they have a pattern or practice of breaking the law within the past 3 years. So what does that mean? ``Let's have a lot of people get hurt before we actually would say we should now give them protection.'' It is not my sense of how the law should operate.

The Shelby amendment would establish the Division of Consumer Protection at the FDIC. It maintains, in essence, the status quo. Consumer protection rule writing will still be under the same authority, the same regulators who routinely ignored or opposed the needs of consumers. The amendment provides no safeguards to prevent the FDIC Chair or board from overriding decisions by the division director.

The amendment would actually prohibit--prohibit--the proposed consumer division from doing any rule writing

under the Federal Trade Commission Act for payday lenders, debt collectors, foreclosure scam operators, mortgage brokers, and other nonbank consumer finance companies. It could only do examinations of nonbank consumer finance companies if they ``demonstrate a pattern or practice of violations'' of consumer law. So only after the consumer has been harmed repeatedly--after they have been harmed repeatedly-- could the consumer division do any examination of the business.

This is simply saying: I am going to tell you that I am going to put a cop on the beat. He has no uniform, he has no equipment, and he cannot stop the bad guys. What a falsehood. We need to defeat this amendment, and we need to have a bill that ultimately gives strong consumer protections for millions of families in this country who have already faced the consequences of the system that is going on unregulated in a way that it allows greed and excesses to take place and that puts protections, yes, for Wall Street but not for Main Street.

Senator Dodd has struck the right balance. We need to preserve it. I look forward to supporting him and opposing this amendment.

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

Mr. President, if I may ask my distinguished chairman to yield for a moment, the Chairman is absolutely right. As a matter of fact, when I made that comment that we were going to have a tsunami of foreclosures, the administration witnesses at the time--the previous administration, of course--said, with all due respect, that is an exaggeration.

I wish they had been right and we had been wrong. But I think the chairman hits it right on point. In the context of the rating agencies, they were playing coach and referee. When you are playing coach and referee, somehow the game does not work out quite all that well.

I appreciate what the Senator done in that respect here as well.

I think the chairman makes the case very clearly that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing time and time again and expecting a different result. If we want to see what has happened to the American consumer in this country continue--facing the same consequences they have had to face over the last couple years--then we adopt this amendment. But if we want to change that, then we would support the underlying provisions in his bill.

I thank the Senator for his leadership.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk about the bill before us. I commend my colleague, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Dodd, for his leadership on this crucial reform.

I want to start off by reiterating what I know many of my colleagues

have said, that this is a strong bill and it is a necessary bill. There is no doubt that we need Wall Street reform and we need it now. When tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, and savings, Americans cannot wait any longer to end the reckless Wall Street practices that caused those problems.

I certainly never want to see us again be in a position where we had the Chairman of the Federal Reserve come to us, about a year and a half ago, and say to members of the Senate Banking Committee, you need to act because financial institutions are on the verge of collapse and their collapse would create a consequence to the national economy of enormous proportions.

I will never forget the dialog that took place there, in essence when Chairman Bernanke was asked, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, what happened? Don't you have enough time, some tools at the Federal Reserve to get us through this period of time? He basically said, if you don't act you will have a global meltdown which basically means a new depression in the 21st century. Certainly a depression in the 21st century is much different than the depression this country lived through under President Roosevelt.

Since he is someone whose expertise is in Depression era economics, how we got into the Depression, what made it worse, how we got out of it, it was a pretty compelling set of arguments.

So here we are. What we want to do is make sure we are never put at that risk again; that there is not anything that is too big to fail because, in doing so, you can make all the wrong decisions knowing that even when you make the wrong decisions, and they are risky, the taxpayers will have to bail you out because we cannot have the country's whole economy go under. At the same time, we want to try to strengthen our regulatory process so we not only not face that reality but we create clear rules of the road.

I am for a free market. I believe in a free market. But there is a difference between a free market and a free-for-all market. There is a difference between when someone takes their own capital, whether as a company or as an individual, and makes an investment and when the investment does good, good for them; but when the investment goes bad we all have to pay for it. We cannot have a system where profits are privatized but losses become the general public's responsibility. That is, in essence, the core of what we are trying to do here--to make sure that such a system, which is what we have had, not a free market but a free-for-all market, gets changed so we never face that again.

As I said, I think this is an incredibly strong bill. But even a strong bill can have suggestions to make a good bill even stronger. I commend Chairman Dodd for being open to ideas to make this bill even stronger, regardless of which side of the aisle they come from. Now that we have broken the Republican logjam that has been holding this bill up for over a week, I hope we can get to the business of fully legislating in a full and open debate. I know that is what the American people want and expect, that the Senators they sent to Washington actually get to work on the business of fixing these problems; not that they sit on their hands while one party holds up debate because the bill didn't do everything they wanted it to or because we had conversations--some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle had conversations with Wall Street and basically they don't like a lot of what we are doing here. But, in fact, it is critical to the Nation's economic security.

I am glad to see that we have colleagues now on the train. I hope people do not try to pull the emergency brake switch to try to stop us from going to where we need to go.

I think this is a great bill but there are some amendments I plan to offer to the bill. I think they make the bill even stronger. I have filed an open books amendment, to require companies to be more transparent in their financial reporting. Many experts believe one of the reasons we got into this mess in the first place was because no one--not investors, not regulators, not counterparties, not even the people running the companies--could actually figure out the true value of these big Wall Street banks. That is because banks hid a significant percentage of their liabilities, their risks, off their balance sheets. For example, Lehman Brothers treated $50 billion in repurchase agreement transactions as sales instead of financing transactions on their balance sheets, misleading everyone about the state of Lehman's finances.

The bottom line, you know, may sound very technical but if I can take my liabilities off of my personal balance sheet and put them somewhere else and look as though I am better off than I am, that is fundamentally wrong. Clearly, had there been more transparency we might have dealt with the Lehman situation sooner, thus reducing the repercussions of a catastrophic bankruptcy.

The amendment I am proposing is simple. It requires companies that are designated as systemically risky to disclose all their off-balance sheet activities in their annual 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and provide detailed justifications for why they are keeping those liabilities off their balance sheets.

It also requires disclosure of daily average leverage ratios in quarterly reports. This will prevent companies from moving liabilities off their balance sheets only days before when they are reporting earnings, as Lehman and others allegedly did.

It is a step toward transparency. We know capital markets work best when they are transparent. That is the thrust of what this bill is trying to do. Put simply, the largest banks should not be able to deceive regulators, investors, counterparties, and the public, by hiding their liabilities in off-balance vehicles. We need transparency and clarity, not trickery and deception.

I also am happy to join with Senator Akaka, who is leading on this particular amendment but I am his prime cosponsor, to require stockbrokers to act in the best interests of their clients. What a revolutionary concept, that stockbrokers act in the best interests of their clients. Brokers are not required to act in the best interests of their clients and can sell clients worse investments because they make more money on them, without the client ever knowing it. Brokers are only required to have reasonable grounds to believe that a property they are recommending is suitable for the customer, even if it is not the best product for the customer. Typically, brokers do not have to make disclosures about conflicts of interest or past infractions. In contrast, investment advisers are legally and ethically bound to put a client's interest ahead of their own--in essence to have a fiduciary duty; and to fully disclose those conflicts they may have.

All brokers currently have exactly the same conflict of interest that Goldman Sachs had in its civil fraud case by the Securities and Exchange Commission: financial incentives to steer clients toward bad investment products that brokers made more money on.

But retail investors are confused. They commonly think the services that investment advisers and brokers provide are nearly identical. An SEC Commission study in 2008 by the RAND Corporation found that investors were confused about the differences. So I don't think we need further studies. Senator Akaka's amendment and mine would end the confusion. It would require brokers to act in the best interests of their clients, just as investment advisers already do. It requires brokers to disclose conflicts of interest, so brokers would have to tell retail clients if they get more fees for selling a particular mutual fund or annuity product.

It gives the FTC discretion to apply a fiduciary duty standard for all types of investors which would include institutional investors who are victimized by the allegations in the Goldman Sachs case. Investment advice should be transparent. If there are conflicts of interest or higher fees for a particular product, investors should know about it. Investors need to know that brokers have a duty to act in their best interest.

I also have an amendment to expand the opportunities for women and minorities in banking. Currently, the staff of financial regulatory agencies lags in diversity. According to the Office of Personnel Management, minorities comprise only 18.7 percent of financial institution examiners; women comprise 34 percent.

A recent GAO report found that among minority banks, only about one- third thought their regulators were doing a good or very good job of making an effort to protect or promote their interests and less than a third of minority-owned institutions have utilized services offered by the regulators in the last 3 years.

Only 5.7 percent of African-American firms and 5.6 percent of Hispanic firms obtained bank loans to start their businesses, compared to 12 percent of nonminority firms.

The amendment I am proposing would rectify this by creating the Offices of Minority and Women Advancement at all the major financial regulatory agencies. Those offices would be responsible for all matters of diversity, including diversity in agency employment and contracts. Office directors would provide annual reports to Congress on diversity issues, with recommendations for improvements.

The amendment would also require publicly traded companies to provide in annual SEC filings ``diversity report cards'' which would break down by gender and race the percentages of officers and employees who are minorities and women and the percentage of total compensation they receive.

Finally, it extends the minority banking requirements under section 308 of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act to the Federal Reserve and the OCC. A similar amendment has already passed the House of Representatives unanimously. I would certainly hope we could do the same here.

Diversity within the Federal banking agencies will help ensure different perspectives are being brought to bear on issues and enhances the likelihood these solutions will be comprehensive and inclusive of a broad range of views. It will make our banking system fairer, more stable, and more just.

I also have an amendment with Senator Merkley, to prohibit corporate executives and highly paid employees from hedging against any decrease in the market value of their employer's stock. This amendment is one that I think is very important because I am concerned there are a lot of bad incentives undermining the goals of executive compensation.

A recent study found that at least 2,000 cases at 911 firms over an 11-year period in which executives tried to profit by betting against their own company--by betting against their own company. Hedging undermines, in my mind, the whole point of incentive compensation to make sure that executives only benefit when the company does well.

If they can hedge their stock, then it does not matter how well the company does, because either way the executive makes money. Tails they win, heads they win. That simply is fundamentally wrong. Worse, it may, in some cases, give executives an incentive to sort of ``throw the game,'' to use their privileged position to take a position that may very well not be in the company and its employees' best interests and then make a killing by selling the company stock short. Not good for the company, not good for the employee, not good for investors. My amendment would place a ban on stock hedging by executives and highly paid company employees, namely those making more than $1 million per year, preventing them from betting against their own company.

Put simply: Executives and highly compensated employees should never have financial incentives to act against the best interests of their very own company.

I am hoping some of these may very well be able to see their way into a managers' package. I hope we do not have to come to the floor to offer all of them.

The recession has hit everyone. Community Development Financial Institutions have been hit hard, especially hard. They are in a tough position because they have got to rely on the big banks for capital, which is neither affordable nor easily accessible.

My amendment would authorize the Treasury Department to guarantee bonds issued by qualified Community Development Financial Institutions for the purpose of community and economic development loans. There is also no cost to the taxpayers to do this. CDFIs have a track record of job creation and community development. They are the most effective way to infuse capital in low-income communities because the capital goes directly into those communities and economic development efforts.

In focusing on the finances of Wall Street, I think this is an opportunity not to forget about the finances of Main Street, where most of the jobs are and the devastating impact that Wall Street's actions have had on Main Street.

Lastly, I wish to talk about whistleblower protections. They are the first and most effective line of defense against corporate fraud and other misconduct, yet because of inadequate protections against retaliation, would-be corporate whistleblowers often keep quiet when they could be protecting the public from illegal activity.

As we have seen in the emerging Lehman Brothers scandal, a whistleblower who tried to alert management to illegal accounting tricks was fired. Though the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 did much to expand protection of corporate whistleblowers from retaliation, it lacks several modern whistleblower protections that have been standard in every piece of legislation since 2006.

My amendment updates Sarbanes-Oxley protections against retaliation by giving whistleblowers 180 days to file a claim instead of the 90 that exists right now; giving whistleblowers their day in court with a clearer right to a jury trial; clarifying that whistleblowers are entitled to compensatory damages; strengthening due process rights for whistleblowers by eliminating inconsistencies in current law; preventing employers from gagging whistleblowers by holding them to contractual obligations; ensuring that whistleblowers will be protected for all disclosures of material misconduct.

We think those opportunities strengthen a citizen to be able to engage and to come forth in a way that protects the company, that protects the investors, that protects all of us in the economy at large. So, again, I want to commend Chairman Dodd for his leadership in this effort. It has been a pleasure, as a member of the Banking Committee, working with him on some of the underlying provisions that he has already included in the bill that makes it so strong.

I stand ready to work together to address these remaining issues, some of which I hope we can work through and get accepted, others which, if necessary, I am ready to come to the floor and seek to offer.

At the end of the day, I want a bill that puts New Jerseyans in a position, and all Americans, in which they will never be asked to reach into their pockets to take care of the excessive decisions of companies that privatized the profit but then said, when it went bad and the gamble did not go well, that all of us should pay. We cannot have that. That is what the core of this bill does. That is why I have been proud to work with the chairman.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I rise today, as I am pleased we are finally moving to Wall Street reform--something I have come to speak about several times on the floor. That is critically important to our country, critically important to our economy, critically important to investors and consumers to have confidence, and I am glad we are moving to that, as a member of the Banking Committee. But at the same time, there is an enormous environmental challenge taking place in our country, one that I think portends the consequences of offshore drilling.

I rise today to discuss the tragedy in the gulf and looming environmental disaster that threatens the gulf.

First, I want to remember those who lost their lives in the tragic fire and explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico last week. Our thoughts and prayers are with the workers and their families.

The loss of life and the injuries are truly horrific, but this is also an environmental tragedy, one that threatens to reach historic proportions. Over 1 million gallons of oil have already leaked into the gulf. Each hour that passes without a solution, without a way to stop it, leads us to wonder what the extent of the damage will be. It is a wake-up call to all who are trying to weigh the benefits against the risks of offshore drilling as part of our energy mix. It certainly leads this Senator to wonder about the wisdom and the necessity of drilling off the coast of my State of New Jersey and, I would argue, off the coast of any Senator's coastal State.

As I stand on this floor today--and I show you this picture I have in the Chamber of the fire the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was engulfed in before it sunk--before it sunk--and then had all of the oil spilling into the gulf. As I stand here on this floor today, an oil slick bigger than the State of Delaware--over 4,000 square miles--is drifting toward shore--drifting toward shore. To give you some perspective of what that means, as shown in this other picture, this is how big this oil sheen is when compared to my home State of New Jersey--all of the yellow. If this spill in the gulf were happening, for example, in Virginia waters right now, my whole State would be holding its breath because NOAA has shown my office how a spill in Virginia waters could easily wash up on the New Jersey shore.

I say to the Presiding Officer, I do not know if you have visited New Jersey, but we have magnificent, pristine beaches. The dunes along the coast are breathtaking. Wildlife is abundant. Tourism depends on it. It would all--it would all--be in jeopardy.

The next photograph I want to show is what happens to wildlife in these oil slicks. This is a photograph in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill. We hope and pray the spill in the gulf stays offshore, but the reality is, it could make landfall any day now and this photograph could be repeated a thousand times.

Now we learn the spill from the Deepwater Horizon is worse than it was originally reported--far worse, at least five times worse. The Coast Guard and NOAA have revised their estimate of the leak. They now say it is not 42,000 gallons per day but 210,000 gallons a day. Imagine if the leak continues for 2 months, which seems like a real possibility at this point. In 2 months, it will have exceeded the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster. Let's keep something in mind: The Exxon Valdez was a tanker with a finite amount of oil aboard. This is virtually a bottomless pit of oil.

When asked to compare this spill to previous spills, the Coast Guard compared it to the IXTOC I spill. On June 3, 1979, an exploratory well called the IXTOC I blew out in the Gulf of Mexico. It took 9 months--9 months--to cap, to seal, and the resulting spill was the second largest in world history, over 10 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. As my colleagues can see from this map which has Texas, Louisiana, and the gulf, the spill traveled 600 miles from its center--600 miles-- blanketing the coasts of Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, causing extraordinary damage.

Now we are debating the wisdom of expanding oil production on the Outer Continental Shelf; in essence, all along the coastlines of our country. Some think the way to expand offshore drilling reasonably is simply to create some type of a buffer zone off the coast as if a little more room can protect our shores; as if the ocean is in neat, little boxes that could somehow be confined. Frankly, I think this graphic of the IXTOC spill shows that oilspills don't respect State borders or buffer zones.

In the wake of what we are seeing in the gulf, I am deeply concerned that the current 5-year plan recently announced by the administration would allow oil drilling less than 100 miles from Cape May, NJ. Cape May is a great historical place in New Jersey with beautiful beaches-- some of the greatest beaches in the Nation. Cape May, where Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic, is the epicenter of bird migration on the entire East Coast and

one of New Jersey's most significant seaside resort communities; the fourth most lucrative fishing port in the entire Nation, rich with scallop beds. It is less than 10 miles from Delaware waters--waters that the administration announced they are studying for possible future drilling.

So I am concerned that if the lease sales go forward, the coastlines of Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey will be under threat--not just an environmental threat but an economic one as well. Approximately 60 percent--60 percent--of New Jersey's $38 billion tourism industry comes from the Jersey shore, and the State's multibillion-dollar fishing industry would also be threatened by the specter of a potential oilspill.

We had an unfortunate incident in New Jersey's history. Years ago, in 1987, when the shore was polluted with medical waste in that year and medical waste that ended up on the beaches of New Jersey--syringes on the beach of New Jersey and other medical waste on the beaches of New Jersey--tourism revenue dropped 22 percent the very next year, and it took some time to recover. If a serious oilspill were ever to hit our coast, the damage would be enormously costly, and if the Exxon Valdez spill is any guide, much of the damage would be permanent.

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 potential drilling assets that could never generate even one- tenth of that, and this is only in one State. Magnify that by so many other States that have similar coastal economies.

This tragedy in the gulf is a wakeup call. It demands that whatever we do in terms of drilling, we do carefully, thoughtfully, and with the very real images of this tragedy in mind. It is obvious--now more than ever--that we cannot ignore the risks of oil exploration, that we cannot take the safety of these rigs for granted or the reliability of redundant shutoff systems that were supposed to prevent such a spill.

It is time to weigh the risks against the payback. And what is the payback? Well, the Energy Information Administration, the entity our Federal Government has to give us information about our energy sources, estimates that opening all the shores--all shores to drilling--would amount to no more than a few hundred thousand barrels per day, which translates to a few tablespoons of gasoline per American vehicle. We don't keep oil in a domestic market. Oil is part of a world market, so there is no guarantee that American-produced oil comes to America for the purposes we need. It is hardly a drop in the bucket, with no measurable impact on gas prices. I don't want to gamble with the coastline of New Jersey or any of these other States for a few tablespoons of gasoline.

This image of a burning rig in the gulf that ultimately sunk and for which we have all this disaster taking place is a wakeup call to all of us who are committed to finding the best energy options for the future--options that will not put hundreds of miles of our coastline at risk. I don't quite understand why it is that when we are talking about global climate change legislation, we are also in desperate pursuit of oil, which is a contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions we are trying to avoid and, in essence, change from, so we don't have the climactic changes that can threaten our way of life. However, that is exactly what we are doing by going after this.

So I am respectfully requesting that the administration reconsider its proposal to expand offshore drilling until we are absolutely certain we can protect the New Jersey shore and the entire Atlantic seaboard from the potential environmental and economic disaster that could come from coastal drilling. I don't know why the Atlantic coast has to be under siege, but it seems to be. The other coastline was largely kept unexplored.

Instead of doubling down on 19th century fuels such as oil, we should be investing in a 21st century green economy that will create thousands of new jobs, billions in new wealth, and help protect our air and water from pollution. It is time for this country to move forward and embrace the future rather than clutch to the ways of the past that have not only given us this addiction but at the same time given us the consequences in our environment of polluting it in a way that ultimately creates risks to our crops, our farmers, our shorelines, as well as our health. My home State of New Jersey still has far too much incidence of respiratory ailments, including cancers.

We can do much better than this. We should do much better than this. We should stop feeding an addiction that ultimately would only add but a few tablespoons of gas and not do anything about the price but put an enormous risk to the economy of these coastlines, to our natural habitats, and to the quality of air we breathe. I hope the President will understand this disaster is a wakeup call that needs to be thought of seriously before we move forward on something that can be so risky to our economy, to our environment, and to our way of life.

With that, I yield the floor and observe the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to recognize the life of women and civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height, a woman who helped pave the way for an African American to be elected President of the Unites States, a Latino son of immigrants to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, and brilliant Jewish and Latina women to preside in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dorothy Height first immersed herself in the civil rights movement in 1933 when she became a leader of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. It was her dedication to ending the horror of lynching, reforming the criminal justice system, and securing free access to public accommodations that made her an American hero and the obvious choice to serve as a representative of the YWCA to the World Conference of Christian Youth.

While serving as the assistant executive director of the Harlem YWCA, Ms. Height met Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women. Recognizing the promise and potential in Ms. Height, Bethune invited her to join the NCNW in her mission to secure equal rights for women.

Throughout her countless years of leadership with the YWCA, the National Council of Negro Women, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, Ms. Height inspired a generation of future leaders. During those days of racism, intolerance, and hatred, it was extremely difficult for a woman, an African-American woman, to advocate for civil rights. Imagine how frightening it must have been to stand up to oppression, intolerance, and injustice that often ended in violence against those who simply came in peace seeking to be treated equally and fairly. A fearless leader, Ms. Height took the chance she knew she had to take because as she plainly stated, ``we all have to do whatever we can.''

It was that simple philosophy that motivated her to accomplish many achievements through her leadership with the YWCA, NCNW, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. Her contributions are endless, and as a testament to her accomplishments, Ms. Height was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Dorothy Height's commitment to ensuring equality for all is her legacy and our hope.

Heralded as a civil rights leader, Ms. Height was the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement to march alongside revered leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney H. Young, A. Phillip Randolph, and John Lewis, just to name a few. During the height of the civil rights era, she organized the ``Wednesdays in Mississippi'' event, which brought together African-American and Caucasian women from different walks of life to create a discourse of understanding. Respected as a national leader, Ms. Height played a pivotal role in several Presidential committees, including the President's Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped and the President's Committee on the Status of Women.

Her life's work helped to bring our Nation out from the shadow of segregation to a place where we are moving closer to true racial, ethnic, and gender equality. While we have made great strides toward obtaining equality, there is still much work left to be done. At the age of 98, Dorothy Height continued to play a role in addressing the social inequities some Americans face, as evidenced by her position of chairperson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. She once stated, ``I want to be remembered as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom . . . I want to be remembered as one who tried.'' Ms. Height will not only be remembered as one who tried but also as one who achieved, one who inspired, and one who has left a footprint in this world. We can honor her legacy by doing our part and trying to make this society better than the one she lived in by finally achieving equality for all.