Floor Statements

Mr. President, today, along with my colleagues Senators Sessions, McCaskill, and Thune, I am introducing a bill to help crime victims and state courts recover the restitution and fees that are owed to them. This bipartisan bill would accomplish this worthy goal by intercepting tax refunds of deadbeat debtors who've failed to pay restitution or court fees. If enacted, this bill would essentially allow state courts to cross-reference outstanding debts with the IRS and use existing procedures to withhold tax refunds in order to satisfy past due debts.

This bill would not only deliver justice to crime victims who are owed restitution, but would also provide much-needed resources to help keep court rooms open and court programs operating. At a time when our State and local governments are struggling to find funding for vital programs--including keeping courthouse doors open--unpaid court fees represent an important source of revenue that should be captured. This bill would help close budget gaps and provide additional revenue without raising taxes or imposing any new costs or burdens. In fact, participation in the program would be optional for states, but I expect most states to participate and to benefit greatly from this bill.

This bill would operate the same way as the very successful child support debt collection system. The bill will allow states to share information on outstanding restitution owed and court debts with the IRS, which would then be required to intercept any Federal tax refunds of debtors and send that money to the victim or court owed that debt.

It has been estimated by the National Center for State Courts that outstanding court debts across the country total approximately $15 billion. In my home State of Oregon alone, the outstanding restitution and court fee debt amount is $987 million. Only a portion of outstanding debts are owed by individuals who will receive Federal tax refunds, so a portion of court debts would not be collected immediately. Nonetheless, the State of Oregon estimates that passage of this bill would allow the state to collect $30 million per year.

Without this straight-forward and efficient mechanism, the collection of victim restitution and court debts is a costly and time-consuming process. Enactment of this bill would reduce the fiscal cost and administrative burden that victims and courts bear in attempting to collect those debts. Again, in the midst of a challenging fiscal crisis, it only makes common sense to collect revenues that are already owed--through an efficient and convenient method.

Because this bill would benefit both the court system, and those who rely upon it, the Court Fee Tax Intercept Act is endorsed by a broad array of court, government, law enforcement, and crime victims organizations. The bill is supported by the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National District Attorneys Association, the American Probation and Parole Association, the Conference of Chief Justices, the Conference of State Court Administrators, the National Association for Court Managers, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, and the Government Finance Officers Association.

I urge all colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation.

Mr. President, consistent with Senate Standing Orders and my policy of publishing in the Record a statement whenever I place a hold on legislation, I am announcing my intention to object to any unanimous consent request to proceed to S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, COICA.

Promoting American innovation, and securing its protection, is vital to creating new, good-paying jobs. But it is important that the government reach an appropriate balance between protecting intellectual property and promoting innovation on the one hand and the freedom to innovate, share expression, and promote ideas over the Internet. I am concerned that the current version of COICA has this balance wrong; it attempts to protect intellectual property in the digital arena in a way that could trample free speech and stifle competition and important new innovations in the digital economy.

Of perhaps greater concern, the sweeping new powers offered to the U.S. Department of Justice under COICA are granted without giving due consideration to the consequences. COICA may not only be ineffective at combating copyright infringement and the distribution of counterfeit goods, it gives license to foreign regimes to further censor and filter online content to serve protectionist commercial motives and repressive political aims. Until these issues are thoroughly considered and properly addressed, I will object to a unanimous consent request to proceed to the legislation.

Madam President, let me commend the Senator from Massachusetts on a very fine statement, which I think highlights exactly what we are seeking to do.

The Senator from Massachusetts has been a real pleasure to work with on this matter. As he says, the whole point of this, as shown by the recent election, is that people want to find some common ground. They are not interested anymore in food fights and bickering back and forth between the political parties. What Senator Brown and I are seeking to do is to show it is possible on a significant issue--I think we all understand health care is about as important as it gets--that we can come together, and the two of us have said we are going to come together to put the focus on innovation. It is pretty clear that what works in Springfield, OR, may not be exactly ideal for Springfield, MA. But what we can do is come up with a way to provide more flexibility and particularly more choice and more competition for our States and other States around the country.

So I am very grateful to the Senator from Massachusetts for his effort. It is early in the lameduck session, and it is my hope this will be a signal in the Chamber that even on these difficult issues-- issues that were so contentious in the political campaign--it is going to be possible to come together and find some common ground.

As the Senator suggests, if we can just move away from a Federal cookie-cutter approach and encourage the kind of creative thinking we have seen in Oregon and in Massachusetts and other parts of the country, I think we will be well served and will be in a position to better contain health care costs. I think we all understand that how to rein in these medical costs that are gobbling up everything in sight is first and foremost on the minds of our constituents. Literally, for the amount of money we are spending today in this country, one can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the United States and pay the doctor more than $225,000 a year just for taking care of seven families. I always bring up this as almost a metaphor for health care, but usually after I am done, the physician who was listening in the audience comes up and says: Where can I go to get my seven families? It sounds like a pretty good deal. It just shows that we are spending this enormous sum of money.

What Senator Brown and I are seeking to do is to encourage additional innovative approaches in States, approaches that are tailored to the needs of States' own residents, that will help us, in my view, to promote choice and competition in the American health care system. The States are free to do

whatever they choose. I just offer up my own judgment that right now, at a time when most Americans still don't get much choice in their health care coverage, this is an ideal opportunity that both Democrats and Republicans can support. As States seek to go forward with this approach, they can make their own choices.

I hope, in particular, States will take a look at what you, Madam President, the Senator from New York, and I have in our own health care plan. The Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan provides a lot of choice, a lot of competition. You can go out and fire your insurance company if you don't think they are doing a good job. That is the kind of idea a State could pursue and do so, we hope, more quickly if we act legislatively to speed up the waiver process. But as Senator Brown has correctly noted, this is about giving States the freedom to chart their own course, and I am very hopeful we will be able to get this legislation passed.

In particular, what I have been concerned about, after talking to health policymakers over the last few months, is if, in the State of New York, for example, you go out and set up a process to comply with the legislation for purposes of 2014 and you see that the waiver, as now constituted under 1332, starts in 2017, you say: How am I going to reconcile those two? Am I going to set up one approach for 2014 and then do another approach in 2017? It is going to put us through a lot of bureaucratic water torture to try to figure out how to synchronize those two dates. So it only makes sense to speed it all up and make it possible for everybody to get started in 2014.

One other point because my intentions have been much discussed. When I originally started talking about the State waiver, people questioned whether this was something that was going to be a special opportunity for Oregon and not for other States. For over a decade, I have been promoting the idea that all States--all States--be given the freedom to innovate under health care reform legislation. In fact, to give a sense of how I got into this, going back and looking at the history of the Clinton health care plan, in the early 1990s it was pretty evident that had President Clinton and Republicans thought then about giving States the kind of freedom Senator Brown and I envision, it might well have been possible back in the early 1990s to enact health care reform that would have gotten all Americans quality, affordable coverage. That opportunity was missed. So I decided by the mid 1990s--if I had the opportunity, the honor, of representing Oregon in the Congress, I was going to use every single opportunity to let all States--and I want to underline all States--have the opportunity to innovate in health care.

So in mid 2005 I started putting together a piece of legislation called the Healthy Americans Act. It was a bipartisan bill, that had 14 or 15 Senators as cosponsors, depending on when you look back at the legislative history, that were almost evenly divided between the political parties. In the Healthy Americans Act, there was a specific section called ``Empowering States to Innovate.'' There was a provision in that bill that was first introduced in 2006, and a similar provision was included as section 1332 in the law the President signed.

So I have long been interested in letting all States have the opportunity to innovate. One of the reasons I have been interested--and my good friend, Senator Merkley, is here--is that our State has been one of the leaders in the whole effort to reform American health care. From time to time, folks have said I am the Senator from the State of Waiver rather than the State of Oregon because we have tried so often to pursue innovative approaches in health care waivers. We were, as Senator Merkley knows, one of the first States to say Medicaid dollars that have been authorized for seniors to pay for services in institutions such as nursing homes should be used instead for home health care; thereby giving seniors more of what they want, which is to stay in their homes, at a cheaper price to taxpayers. We began those efforts, as Senator Merkley knows, with waivers from traditional Federal law. So we have a long history of doing this, and I have spent well over a decade trying to establish the principle that all States ought to have the opportunity to bring their creative juices to this issue of health care reform.

We have outlined the two key changes in the legislation that is law today. The first change is to make the waivers effective in 2014 rather than in 2017 so States only have to change their systems once. The second thing the Empowering States to Innovate Act does is it requires the Department of Health and Human Services to begin to review State waiver applications within 6 months of enactment of the legislation. This would allow States early notification of whether their State waivers have been approved and would give them adequate time to roll out their State-specific plans. I think this, too, will help us create more competition, more choice, and more affordability in American health care because it will give the States adequate time to gear up. That is the philosophy behind the Empowering States to Innovate Act, whether one likes one particular approach or another. Clearly, there will be great diversity of approaches tried at the State level.

At a time when we are looking for ways to bring this country together to deal with the most contentious issues of our time, we ought to be supporting innovation. We ought to be supporting unleashing creative kinds of approaches to deal with domestic issues. That is what Senator Brown and I propose in this legislation. I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, our country strives to provide exceptional support for the sick, elderly and terminally ill in home and hospice settings. These vulnerable individuals, as well as their family caregivers, are indebted to the many professionals and volunteers who have made it their life's work to serve those in greatest need. Nearly 83,000 hospice professionals, 46,000 hospice volunteers and 1 million home health providers, nationally, contribute significantly to our health care system through their compassion and commitment.

Hospice care provides humane and comforting support for over 744,000 terminally ill patients and their families each year. These services include pain control, palliative medical care and social, emotional and spiritual services.

Hospice supports the basic human needs for feeling comfortable, in a familiar environment, surrounded by loving caregivers and family during the later stages of life. Hospice care is an effective model for the interaction of interdisciplinary teams of health professionals, family members and volunteers in providing care for those needing care in our communities.

The movement to provide health care and supportive services in the home environment has evolved rapidly over the past few decades. Home care services typically bring the expertise and compassion of providers in numerous disciplines into the setting where most sick patients prefer to reside--the home. More than 11 million Americans benefit each year from this approach.

We have made great strides in advancing care for all Americans through the recently enacted Affordable Care Act. A key provision in this effort is the establishment of a Medicare hospice concurrent care demonstration program, which would allow patients who are eligible for hospice care to also receive all other Medicare covered services during the same period of time. Following establishment of this program, I am hopeful that this country will move in a direction where individuals and families do not have to make the difficult choice between hospice and curative care in the Medicare Program.

On behalf of Oregon home health and hospice providers celebrating November as home care and hospice month, I thank the thousands of everyday heroes such as home health nurses, therapists, and aides, who work tirelessly to provide professional health and palliative care and support to millions of Americans in need of quality health services. Their efforts allow families to stay together, and provide greater comfort and dignity to those in our communities.

Mr. President, The Senate has come back to a full-throated debate about the comparative benefits of the tax policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. We turn on our cable TV these days and hour after hour there is a great deal of analysis of which approach is better on one factor or another. I want to take a few minutes today to point out that I think that debate misses the point because either of those tax approaches--of George W. Bush or President Obama--in my view would anchor our country to an insanely complicated, job-killing, thoroughly discredited tax system. I think what is important is that the Senate begin work moving toward a tax system that can create, as I put up here and will walk the Senate through, at least 2 million new jobs per year.

The fact is, in this discussion comparing the George W. Bush policies and

the policies of President Obama, one side may end up winning, the other side goes away unhappy, but under either approach the taxpayers of this country will lose, will continue to lose as a consequence of this flawed and discredited tax system. For example, under either approach-- under policy advanced by President Obama or the ideas George W. Bush saw enacted into law--we would still have 3.8 million people working the equivalent of full time, trying to comply with our tax law. Under either of those approaches, that of President Bush or President Obama, we would still have Americans spending 7.6 billion hours complying with tax law at the cost of $200 billion a year. That is why I say the taxpayer loses under either of those approaches.

How can you make the case to the American people, whether they are in Illinois or Oregon or anywhere else, that you want to anchor them to a system that is not doing enough to create jobs, certainly will not give us the opportunity to create 2 million new jobs, and on top of it will force 3.8 million people to work the equivalent of full time to comply, racking up 7.6 billion hours and the expense of $200 billion annually, simply to comply?

The question is, is there a better choice? I submit this afternoon that there is a far better choice and it has bipartisan roots. The better choice is to pick up on the work that Democrats and the late President Reagan did in the 1980s when they came together. A Chicagoan, you will recall, was very involved, the late Dan Rostenkowski, and he said the enemy is not the other party. The challenge is to go after the scores and scores of special interest tax breaks that are tax expenditures, really tax earmarks as I would call them, that consume hundreds of billions of dollars and keep us lowering the rates for the middle class and small businesses and those who manufacture in the United States.

I think the relevant comparison is not George W. Bush against Barack Obama. The more relevant measure is what happened when Democrats and Ronald Reagan worked together in the 1980s, as opposed to what happened between 2001 and 2008 when tax policy was partisan. Let me lay out for the Senate those specific numbers.

When Democrats and Ronald Reagan worked together to reform the Tax Code in the 1980s, payrolls expanded by 17.6 percent and the economy grew by 16 million jobs. By contrast, when tax policy was partisan, between 2001 and 2008, there was 2.3 percent payroll expansion, 3 million new jobs, and real median income fell by 5 percent. So why in the world would it make sense to go back to the tax policies where, when you look at the numbers in terms of payroll expansion, new jobs and real median income, growth was not what the people of Illinois and the people of Oregon and the people across our land ought to expect.

I am of the view, now that the people of this country have spoken that they want to see this Senate create more real good-paying jobs and fix problems, the first thing we ought to do is look at what worked. We especially ought to look at it when it has bipartisan roots, as we saw in the 1980s with Democrats and Ronald Reagan. I believe that Congress can now, picking up on what they did during that time--clean the clutter from the Code, broaden the tax base and lower tax rates to give the people of this country a simpler and fairer tax.

Also, in the 1980s, by cutting marginal income tax rates--and again this was Democrats, some of the most stalwart Democrats in the history of our party: Dan Rostenkowski, Dick Gephardt--stalwarts of the Democratic Party worked with Ronald Reagan to cut marginal income tax rates to create more jobs and more investment, rather than handing out tax preferences to special interest groups. A quarter century later we find ourselves, today, with a tax system that you can only describe as a mess, a dysfunctional mess where even specialists in business in and IRS regional offices have trouble sorting out the implications of what one provision or another would mean.

Given the fact that since the last time Congress moved in to drain the tax swamp--given the fact it has been a quarter century, Senator Gregg and I--he, of course, is the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee--spent more than 2 years, and our staffs week after week, seeing if we could come together and put forth a bipartisan tax reform bill. We have done that. I am very pleased to be able to report this afternoon that the two chairs of the Deficit Reduction Commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, said that a version of what we proposed--certainly not all the things we would agree with but a version of our proposal--should be one of the options considered by the commission and considered for the country to debate.

Given that, I want to take a few minutes and outline some of the key provisions we pursued in our bill. It is S. 3018. We all know that anybody having any trouble sleeping at night can wade into a tax bill and you can conk pretty quickly, but S. 3018 is an attempt to pick up on some of the most important policy work done, in my view, by the Senate led by Democrats and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. What Senator Gregg and I do is end scores of preferences so as to be able to give tax breaks to the vast majority of working families instead of handing them out to a small number of narrow special interests who have incredibly talented lobbyists who can spend their day outside the Senate Finance Committee room. We take away those breaks and use that money to give real tax relief to millions of working class families.

We take a special initiative to focus on job creation that will make us more competitive in tough global markets. I want to take a minute to describe exactly how this works. I am sure that when the Presiding Officer of the Senate goes to a supermarket in Illinois, as I have in Oregon, one of the first things somebody will say, when you start visiting about the work of Congress, is take away those tax breaks for the businesses that are going offshore. Go get rid of those. They will say that to the distinguished Senator from Illinois and myself and everybody else. You hear it every single day in any coffee shop, any grocery store, where people are talking about government and politics.

Then of course we go out and visit with our companies and the companies say: We have to have those tax breaks because America has the second highest rate in the world. If we do not have those tax breaks for doing business overseas, we are going to lose out on jobs here in the United States because some of that work our firm does overseas helps create jobs here in America.

We know from those conversations we have had in Illinois and Oregon that our blue collar people don't buy that; they don't buy that for a second. They want to have the tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas wiped out. What Senator Gregg and I did--and this lasted many months-- is we said to the companies: How can we work with you to take away the tax breaks for doing business overseas so you can use those very same dollars to lower the tax rates for small businesses and manufacturers that operate in the United States and have dollars for tax relief for the middle class.

As a result of that, we arrived at a policy that takes away the tax breaks for doing business overseas but we lower the tax rate dramatically for manufacturers and small businesses that operate in the United States.

Our big businesses are called C corporations. Most businesses of course pay taxes as individuals or partnerships or limited liability firms, but for our biggest companies when they manufacture in Illinois or Oregon or anywhere else in the country, in the United States, we lower their taxes from 35 percent to 24 percent, creating a dramatic new incentive for manufacturing and business in the United States that can let our companies be more competitive in these tough global markets.

We all understand that a firm in Illinois or Oregon is not just competing against another State a few hundred miles away, we are competing against China and India. I think this provision that Senator Gregg and I have laid out in our proposal--a modified version of that has been recommended by Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson--is one that can bring our country together, bring our parties together. Senator Gregg, a Republican; myself, a Democrat, worked for several years on this with business folks, with labor folks.

When I talk to labor folks--and I have at length--about taking away the tax breaks for doing business overseas

and using that so we can have a rebirth of American manufacturing, they say that is the kind of tax cut for business I can be for. We have to bring back manufacturing. Manufacturing is not just a basic industry, it is a national security priority. I think the approach Senator Gregg and I have proposed, a version of which the deficit commission has picked up on, is the path to use.

The Heritage Foundation--and I will confess that I do not quote the Heritage Foundation every single day here on the floor of the Senate, although I have a great deal of respect for their professionalism--said the approach that Senator Gregg and I have produced will create 2 million new jobs per year. In fact, they said it would create 2.3 million new jobs per year, increase disposable income for a family of four by $4,000 per year, and boost the real gross domestic product by an average of $298 billion per year.

So the point is, at a time when we have been through a heated and certainly contentious election, I think there is an opportunity to move forward, and particularly on what has been a central concern of the American people, which is creating more jobs, having an economic system that lets us compete in these tough global markets, and helping our people to get ahead, helping all of our people to get ahead.

If there is one theme in what Democrats and Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s and what Senator Gregg and I seek to do now, it is let us have a tax policy that gives everybody a chance to get ahead. If you are somebody in Illinois and Oregon, and you did not have much in the beginning of your life, we want policies that will give you a chance to get ahead. If you have been fortunate enough through your hard work to be successful, we want policies that will make that possible as well.

That was done when Democrats and Ronald Reagan cooperated in the 1980s. And, boy, what an unlikely group of people, President Reagan, a rancher, a star in the movies, working with Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. He has a lot better jump shot than me, but I also know the value of teamwork. So there is another tall Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who would like to work on bipartisan tax reform.

We have an excellent chairman, Chairman Baucus, and Senator Grassley. They have already had one hearing on this issue. There is a lot to work with on this tax reform issue. By the way, there is another group in addition to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson who have weighed in essentially behind the ideas Senator Gregg and I are talking about.

President Obama had a tax reform commission that recently came in--it was chaired by the distinguished Paul Volcker--that made a very substantial case for simplifying the Tax Code to ease the burden on workers and families and businesses.

Senator Gregg and I looked at the Volcker Commission proposals, ending the alternative minimum tax, increasing the standard deduction, consolidating incentives for savings and retirement, allowing taxpayers to ask the IRS to fill out their tax forms for them. Those were all recommendations by President Obama's commission, the Volcker Commission, that are part of the proposal that Senator Gregg and I have put together, now 318: get rid of loopholes, get rid of the giveaways to special interests, and you can keep down rates and provide tax relief to the vast majority of workers and families and businesses.

In closing, there is a recipe for economic growth that is available to the Senate, a recipe for economic growth that has already been shown to work. What Democrats and Ronald Reagan did in the eighties proved that bipartisanship can create economic growth, help stimulate the creation of badly needed jobs, and rein in the deficit.

So why in the world would we want to pass up the opportunity on a bipartisan basis to drain the tax swamp? Why would we pass up the opportunity to clean the tax house? Do we want to say this--and this is true. This is key to the discussion we are going to have all through this session if we go with either the approach of George W. Bush or Barack Obama. We will continue to see the full-time work of 3.8 million people doing 7.6 billion hours to comply with the tax law at a cost of $200 billion a year.

Would not the people of Illinois--I know they certainly feel this way in Oregon--rather see $200 billion devoted to real progress in this country, improving our roads and bridges and our transportation system, and creating a public education system that is going to let us get those high-value, high-wage jobs and compete in these tough global markets? And you will have money left over to reduce the deficit which, of course, is why all of this was attractive to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson because they head up something called the Deficit Commission. Obviously, there is another big cost to all of this, this tax mess; that is, to the morale of our citizens and their sense of fairness.

Because this tax system is so insanely complicated, ordinary taxpayers make mistakes, they overpay their taxes, they underpay their taxes, they get audited. But they are very much aware that the sophisticated taxpayer can go out and employ a legion of lawyers and accountants, and if that does not work, they will get lobbyists to kind of play around with their loophole and avoid taxes. That is not fair, and the ordinary taxpayer knows it.

Even with their savings and home equity tapped out, we know hard- working middle-income folks will pay their fair share. But they sure resent the tax system that rewards elaborate tricks. I am of the view the message from this election is for Democrats and Republicans to get down to work, and the Tax Code is a good place to start.

I said to folks in Oregon during the campaign, I do not believe either party has a monopoly on good ideas. I am prepared to work with anybody in the Senate with a good idea for moving us forward, especially when we can create 2 million new jobs per year.

One of the reasons I wanted to begin this special postelection session this way is that I think on this tax issue, what is especially striking when we are having this intensely partisan debate about how to go about keeping a discredited tax system, there is something out there that will produce more good-paying jobs and could be bipartisan. So the real work on taxes for this special session seems to me to create a bridge to real tax reform, a bridge to tax reform that works. The Tax Code is so complicated today that the typical person cannot even use the relief that is given to them.

Each Spring the Internal Revenue Service publishes something called the annual ``oops list.'' This is the list of the 10 most common mistakes that taxpayers make when they are filing. That ``oops list'' released in March included President Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit which was created to boost the economy and give working Americans a credit worth up to $400 for individuals and $800 for couples. Yet this year's ``oops list'' reported that many of the people who worked in 2009 could not figure out how to claim the Making Work Pay credit on their 1040 EZ form. That is not easy enough. In fact, if you and I walked the streets of Illinois and Oregon and asked anybody about the stimulus legislation, virtually no one would think that there were hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tax relief in that bill.

They would say to the distinguished President of the Senate, as they have said to me, that was a spending deal. It is called the stimulus. There was not any tax relief in it. The system was so complicated that even with hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of tax relief in it, people could not sign up for it, people could not figure it out, and it makes the ``oops list'' for the Internal Revenue Service.

The Chair has been patient, this afternoon. I close simply by saying, I believe it is time to clean house as the Congress did in the 1980s working with President Reagan, purge this spider's web of tax breaks, kill the special interest goodies, and hold down the rates so that everybody can get ahead.

Let the small businesses, as Senator Gregg and I advocated, expense all of their equipment and inventory costs in a single year, freeing up capital so they can expand and create jobs. Let's limit the dead weight cost of taxes as the Heritage Foundation said in their report, indicating our bill would create 2 million new jobs.

Our 1040 form is 27 lines long--27 lines long. Back when we started this push, one of the financial magazines, one of the best known magazines, had some of their people, for a typical taxpayer, fill out their taxes with a form

that was like ours. It took them 40 minutes.

Think what that is going to do to change Americans' springtime when everybody is filing their returns in April. Talk about family values. We could actually get people a little more time with their families rather than filling out all of these forms and Turbo Tax and everything else.

This is going to be an important session that begins today, and nobody is sure exactly how long it is going to last. But what we know is that there is going to be an extensive discussion about taxes, and I just hope our colleagues will zero in on the fact that under either of these approaches that are being discussed, that of George W. Bush or that of Barack Obama, either of them will anchor this country to a grotesquely complicated, job-killing, discredited tax system.

We can do better. We know we can do better because in the 1980s, with leadership from a Republican President and Democrats in Congress, we did better. It created millions of new jobs. We can do it again.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Russell Sloan, a fellow in the office of Senator Pryor, be granted floor privileges for the week of November 15 through November 19, 2010.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S.J. Res. 40, introduced earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 674, submitted earlier today.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Impeachment Committee be permitted to file their report with respect to the impeachment of Judge Porteus, notwithstanding adjournment of the Senate, on Tuesday, November 16, between the hours of 12 noon to 2 p.m.

Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the injunction of secrecy be removed from the following treaty transmitted to the Senate on November 15, 2010, by the President of the United States: Protocol Amending Tax Convention with Luxembourg, Treaty Document No. 111-8. I further ask that the treaty be considered as having been read the first time; that it be referred, with accompanying papers, to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed; and that the President's message be printed in the Record.

As in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the injunction of secrecy be removed from the following treaty transmitted to the Senate on November 15, 2010, by the President of the United States: Tax Convention with Hungary, Treaty Document No. 111-7. I further ask that the treaty be considered as having been read the first time; that it be referred, with accompanying papers, to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed; and that the President's message be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 17; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that following any leader remarks the Senate proceed to a period of morning business until 11 a.m., with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or

their designees, with Senator Harkin controlling 15 minutes, Senator Dodd controlling 15 minutes, and Senator Mikulski controlling 5 minutes of the majority time; further, that at 11 a.m. the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 3815, the Promoting Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles Act of 2010, and the Senate immediately proceed to vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed.

Mr. President, Senators should expect the first vote of the day to begin at approximately 11 a.m. That will be the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the Promoting Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles legislation. If cloture is not invoked, the Senate would proceed immediately to a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 3772, the paycheck fairness bill. If cloture is again not invoked, there would be a third cloture vote on the motion to proceed to S. 510, the food safety bill. Therefore, Senators should expect up to three rollcall votes to begin around 11 a.m.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Utah, Senator Orrin Hatch, in introducing legislation to renew an existing Federal program to provide tax incentives for the installation of equipment to refuel cars and trucks with alternative fuels including biodiesel, gasohol, electricity, compressed natural gas, propane, liquefied natural gas, and hydrogen.

The United States continues to import far more oil than we produce. Upwards of \2/3\ of the oil we use is imported from other countries, many of whom do not have Americans' best interests at heart, or worse. Similarly, \2/3\ of all of the oil used in the U.S. goes to power our cars, buses, and trucks. If the U.S. is going to reduce our dependence on imported oil, it is going to have to adopt alternative transportation technologies such as plug-in hybrid and all electric vehicles, fuel cells, and natural gas vehicles. Each of these alternative technologies has pluses and minuses in terms of their technical maturity, usefulness in different types of vehicles, cost, and the availability of refueling infrastructure to support them. This legislation only addresses the need for refueling and recharging infrastructure, but without a certainty that there will be places to refuel and recharge their alternative fueled vehicles Americans are not going to buy them. No one wants to run out of fuel while looking for a place to fill up.

This legislation extends an already existing tax credit, Sec. 30C of the Tax Code, which is intended to help defray the cost of installing new alternative refueling and recharging equipment. The current credit expires in a matter of a few months at the end of calendar year 2010. Given the critical need to cut our national appetite for imported oil, it is essential that Congress extend this tax credit. This legislation would extend the existing credit for another 4 years, until the end of 2014.

The legislation also makes several changes in the credit to make it more practical. For example, this bill would make it clear that a fueling station could obtain a separate credit for each type of alternative fuel that it chooses to distribute. Right now, the credit is capped at $50,000 per location regardless of the number of fuels that it may want to sell. The bill would also expand the base credit from $50,000 to $100,000 to bring it more in line with the actual cost of refueling and recharging equipment. Third, the bill would allow the credit to cover additional upgrades to building wiring or natural gas piping or other improvements that are necessary for the installation of the alternative fuel equipment, and expand the kinds of equipment that would be covered to include on-site fuel generation. The bill would also allow an option to obtain a smaller $10,000 credit for the installation of refueling devices, such as chargers for plug-in electric cars or slow-fill natural gas compressors, in lieu of the $100,000 credit per location. Finally, the bill would allow multiple owners of buildings, such as a condominium or a co-op, to share the credit.

Continued dependence on imported oil is an economic and national security danger. Giving Americans options to use alternative fueled vehicles is one major way in which to dramatically reduce this danger. This bill does not tell Americans which kind of car or truck to buy. It does not pick winners and losers from among already recognized alternative fuels. What it would do is make the availability of all alternative motor fuels more likely, and then the market will decide which technologies work best.

I urge other Senators to support this legislation and give Americans a real chance to cut our oil imports.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.