Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce a bill that would authorize the implementation of the landmark agreements that settle some of our country's most complex and contentious water allocation and species preservation issues. Water management crises this century have made the Klamath Basin nationally known, with all interests having experienced devastating water years. Overcoming that adversity, the parties in the basin have spent years coming together to hammer out solutions--essentially giving up their right to obstruct in the name of the greater good. With this bill the basin should now be known for the dedicated and enduring collaborative efforts that have honed in on a sustainable and more economically certain future for the basin--an example that other regions can emulate for their watershed challenges. It is time for Congress to place its seal of approval and set about implementing these agreements to restore the basin by passing the Klamath Water Recovery and Economic Restoration Act of 2014.

I am pleased to be joined by three colleagues on this bill. Senator Merkley has tirelessly worked to support the collaborative approach undertaken by two states, four Tribes, multiple Federal agencies, and countless stakeholders. Senators Feinstein and Boxer have answered the call for communities reeling from unprecedented drought, and the Klamath Basin--spanning Oregon and California--is yet another illustration of their efforts to assist communities in need while supporting fish and wildlife. Together, we are committed to working with our colleagues in the Senate and House to advance this bill and get it signed by the President.

The story of the Klamath Basin revolves around water. Congress authorized a federal irrigation project for the basin in 1905. Now the Klamath Project provides water service to roughly 210,000 acres of productive farmland--producing such crops as potatoes, cereal grains, sugar beets, alfalfa and other hay, and irrigated pastures for beef cattle. The Klamath Hydroelectric Project supports power needs in the basin with seven dams, the last of which was built more than 50 years ago. Water needs for irrigation have increasingly come into conflict with the needs of fish and wildlife. In 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt established the nation's first waterfowl refuge, Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. The importance of the basin for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway saw the later creation of the Clear Lake, Tule Lake, Upper Klamath, Bear Valley, and Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuges. The basin is also home to 13 species of anadromous fish. Three of these species are listed under the Endangered Species Act, including the endangered listing of the Lost River and shortnose suckers in 1988, the threatened listing of coho salmon in 1997, and the threatened listing of bull trout in 1999. These fisheries--particularly salmon and suckers--are important to the six federally recognized tribes in the basin. Water demand often far exceeds the amount of water in a given year, setting up a situation ripe for conflict.

That conflict grew to a head in the early 2000s. In 2001, biological opinions about the water necessary for endangered fish resulted in the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior withholding much of the water that would have normally gone to Klamath Project irrigators. Researchers for Oregon State estimated that the water curtailment would have, in the absence of public and private emergency mitigation efforts, reduced agricultural output in the Upper Basin by $82 million, about 20 percent, and regional employment by almost 2,000 jobs. Then in 2002, low water flows and poor water health caused the death of as many as 70,000 fall chinook before they could navigate up the Klamath and spawn, in an event known as the ``2002 fish kill.'' The rancor and legal conflicts only intensified with these events, creating uncertainty in the basin that has impeded overall growth and prosperity.

Instead of accepting a future determined by acrimonious and costly legal battles over the water, stakeholders in the basin came together to chart a different path. They recognized that their respective interests could be better met through cooperative efforts designed to enhance species recovery, the certainty of agricultural operations, and stability in the basin for economic growth and civic relations. Years of complex and challenging work culminated in two historic agreements in 2010--the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, KBRA, and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, KHSA. The KBRA settles water disputes in exchange for greater water certainty for farmers and ranchers, water for fish and wildlife needs, reduced power costs for irrigators, and restoration efforts for fisheries. The KHSA sets out a process whereby four hydroelectric dams may be removed, at no federal cost, should removal be in interest of fish restoration and the public interest considering local community impacts. Together these cooperative efforts can achieve more for the basin than asserting individual interests could. The collective efforts will promote economic stability and growth, while ensure a full suite of restoration efforts are in place for the recovery of listed fish species.

The latest agreement in the basin became final just this year, the Upper Basin Comprehensive Agreement, UBA. I am especially proud of the work that produced the UBA, having helped convene the special task force that worked mightily to find agreement on the key remaining issues in the basin. The task force came about after a June 2013 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on water issues in the basin that I chaired. The Committee heard from 17 diverse witnesses and received roughly 4,000 comments via email prior to the hearing. Most acknowledged the clear impetus for a comprehensive solution given that the Oregon Water Resources Department found in March 2013 that the Klamath Tribes held a time immemorial water right, making them the most senior water right holder in the basin. And after months of arduous work on the task force, members including irrigators, environmentalists, and tribes found common ground on habitat protection and restoration and swallowed hard to reduce the federal expenditures needed as I had called for in the Senate. The UBA lays out specific water management and restoration measures for the Upper Basin, including 30,000 acre feet of increased stream flows into Upper Klamath Lake. The agreement provides crucial economic certainty to small business in the basin who sell equipment to farmers growing the crops, certainty for the cattle ranchers who manage their herds, certainty for the tribes who want to pursue promising opportunities in forestry, like biomass and other economic development.

The Klamath Basin Water Recovery and Economic Restoration Act of 2014 authorizes these historic agreements and paves the way for the restoration work needed to achieve their goals. In so doing, it sets out a new cooperative management plan that the Bureau of Reclamation will administer. For the first time, the Klamath Reclamation Project will include fish, wildlife, and National Wildlife Refuges as authorized purposes for the project. This will allow water managers to increase in-stream flows and lake levels. Private landowners and others will undertake permanent protections for riparian areas and other enhancements that will help restore hundreds of miles of fish habitat. Fish biologists estimate that these efforts will boost annual production of adult Chinook salmon by 80 percent. Additional water and flexible releases for the National Wildlife refuges means greater numbers of migratory waterfowl, non-game water birds, wintering bald eagles, and other sensitive species.

Achieving these benefits for fish and wildlife correspond to economic benefits to the basin. The restoration efforts will also produce jobs. The Department of the Interior calculates that more than 4,000 farming, ranching, commercial and recreational fishing, construction, and other jobs will be created or preserved. The water management plan provides for more predictable water for farmers and ranchers to ensure irrigated agriculture continues in the basin. A drought management plan assists in navigating the challenges created by drought and climate change in the basin. To deal with the escalating electric costs faced by irrigators, the bill lays out a path to

affordable power including renewable energy development. There are also economic benefits to tribes, beyond what a water right alone can achieve. The legislation sets up an economic development fund for the Klamath Tribes so they can create tribal jobs while sustainably managing their natural resources. By modifying some parties' interests for the greater good, the basin can move beyond years of polarizing debate and create a stable future from which to plan and prosper.

These historic agreements didn't happen by osmosis. They represent years of hard work among parties who have stood up to incredible pressures and made very real sacrifices to better their communities and the associations they represent. I have thanked many parties for their dedication over the course of these agreements and want to again express my deepest thanks to the members of the task force and those who went before them to tee up the work for Congress. With this bill, it is now time for Congress to step up and deliver on this package of agreements. The spirit of compromise on these thorny water issues has a message for not just Congress, but provides an example of how other vexing water situations across the Nation can sit down to work out their differences.

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce a bill that would authorize the implementation of the landmark agreements that settle some of our country's most complex and contentious water allocation and species preservation issues. Water management crises this century have made the Klamath Basin nationally known, with all interests having experienced devastating water years. Overcoming that adversity, the parties in the basin have spent years coming together to hammer out solutions--essentially giving up their right to obstruct in the name of the greater good. With this bill the basin should now be known for the dedicated and enduring collaborative efforts that have honed in on a sustainable and more economically certain future for the basin--an example that other regions can emulate for their watershed challenges. It is time for Congress to place its seal of approval and set about implementing these agreements to restore the basin by passing the Klamath Water Recovery and Economic Restoration Act of 2014.

I am pleased to be joined by three colleagues on this bill. Senator Merkley has tirelessly worked to support the collaborative approach undertaken by two states, four Tribes, multiple Federal agencies, and countless stakeholders. Senators Feinstein and Boxer have answered the call for communities reeling from unprecedented drought, and the Klamath Basin--spanning Oregon and California--is yet another illustration of their efforts to assist communities in need while supporting fish and wildlife. Together, we are committed to working with our colleagues in the Senate and House to advance this bill and get it signed by the President.

The story of the Klamath Basin revolves around water. Congress authorized a federal irrigation project for the basin in 1905. Now the Klamath Project provides water service to roughly 210,000 acres of productive farmland--producing such crops as potatoes, cereal grains, sugar beets, alfalfa and other hay, and irrigated pastures for beef cattle. The Klamath Hydroelectric Project supports power needs in the basin with seven dams, the last of which was built more than 50 years ago. Water needs for irrigation have increasingly come into conflict with the needs of fish and wildlife. In 1908, President Teddy Roosevelt established the nation's first waterfowl refuge, Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. The importance of the basin for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway saw the later creation of the Clear Lake, Tule Lake, Upper Klamath, Bear Valley, and Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuges. The basin is also home to 13 species of anadromous fish. Three of these species are listed under the Endangered Species Act, including the endangered listing of the Lost River and shortnose suckers in 1988, the threatened listing of coho salmon in 1997, and the threatened listing of bull trout in 1999. These fisheries--particularly salmon and suckers--are important to the six federally recognized tribes in the basin. Water demand often far exceeds the amount of water in a given year, setting up a situation ripe for conflict.

That conflict grew to a head in the early 2000s. In 2001, biological opinions about the water necessary for endangered fish resulted in the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior withholding much of the water that would have normally gone to Klamath Project irrigators. Researchers for Oregon State estimated that the water curtailment would have, in the absence of public and private emergency mitigation efforts, reduced agricultural output in the Upper Basin by $82 million, about 20 percent, and regional employment by almost 2,000 jobs. Then in 2002, low water flows and poor water health caused the death of as many as 70,000 fall chinook before they could navigate up the Klamath and spawn, in an event known as the ``2002 fish kill.'' The rancor and legal conflicts only intensified with these events, creating uncertainty in the basin that has impeded overall growth and prosperity.

Instead of accepting a future determined by acrimonious and costly legal battles over the water, stakeholders in the basin came together to chart a different path. They recognized that their respective interests could be better met through cooperative efforts designed to enhance species recovery, the certainty of agricultural operations, and stability in the basin for economic growth and civic relations. Years of complex and challenging work culminated in two historic agreements in 2010--the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, KBRA, and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement, KHSA. The KBRA settles water disputes in exchange for greater water certainty for farmers and ranchers, water for fish and wildlife needs, reduced power costs for irrigators, and restoration efforts for fisheries. The KHSA sets out a process whereby four hydroelectric dams may be removed, at no federal cost, should removal be in interest of fish restoration and the public interest considering local community impacts. Together these cooperative efforts can achieve more for the basin than asserting individual interests could. The collective efforts will promote economic stability and growth, while ensure a full suite of restoration efforts are in place for the recovery of listed fish species.

The latest agreement in the basin became final just this year, the Upper Basin Comprehensive Agreement, UBA. I am especially proud of the work that produced the UBA, having helped convene the special task force that worked mightily to find agreement on the key remaining issues in the basin. The task force came about after a June 2013 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on water issues in the basin that I chaired. The Committee heard from 17 diverse witnesses and received roughly 4,000 comments via email prior to the hearing. Most acknowledged the clear impetus for a comprehensive solution given that the Oregon Water Resources Department found in March 2013 that the Klamath Tribes held a time immemorial water right, making them the most senior water right holder in the basin. And after months of arduous work on the task force, members including irrigators, environmentalists, and tribes found common ground on habitat protection and restoration and swallowed hard to reduce the federal expenditures needed as I had called for in the Senate. The UBA lays out specific water management and restoration measures for the Upper Basin, including 30,000 acre feet of increased stream flows into Upper Klamath Lake. The agreement provides crucial economic certainty to small business in the basin who sell equipment to farmers growing the crops, certainty for the cattle ranchers who manage their herds, certainty for the tribes who want to pursue promising opportunities in forestry, like biomass and other economic development.

The Klamath Basin Water Recovery and Economic Restoration Act of 2014 authorizes these historic agreements and paves the way for the restoration work needed to achieve their goals. In so doing, it sets out a new cooperative management plan that the Bureau of Reclamation will administer. For the first time, the Klamath Reclamation Project will include fish, wildlife, and National Wildlife Refuges as authorized purposes for the project. This will allow water managers to increase in-stream flows and lake levels. Private landowners and others will undertake permanent protections for riparian areas and other enhancements that will help restore hundreds of miles of fish habitat. Fish biologists estimate that these efforts will boost annual production of adult Chinook salmon by 80 percent. Additional water and flexible releases for the National Wildlife refuges means greater numbers of migratory waterfowl, non-game water birds, wintering bald eagles, and other sensitive species.

Achieving these benefits for fish and wildlife correspond to economic benefits to the basin. The restoration efforts will also produce jobs. The Department of the Interior calculates that more than 4,000 farming, ranching, commercial and recreational fishing, construction, and other jobs will be created or preserved. The water management plan provides for more predictable water for farmers and ranchers to ensure irrigated agriculture continues in the basin. A drought management plan assists in navigating the challenges created by drought and climate change in the basin. To deal with the escalating electric costs faced by irrigators, the bill lays out a path to

affordable power including renewable energy development. There are also economic benefits to tribes, beyond what a water right alone can achieve. The legislation sets up an economic development fund for the Klamath Tribes so they can create tribal jobs while sustainably managing their natural resources. By modifying some parties' interests for the greater good, the basin can move beyond years of polarizing debate and create a stable future from which to plan and prosper.

These historic agreements didn't happen by osmosis. They represent years of hard work among parties who have stood up to incredible pressures and made very real sacrifices to better their communities and the associations they represent. I have thanked many parties for their dedication over the course of these agreements and want to again express my deepest thanks to the members of the task force and those who went before them to tee up the work for Congress. With this bill, it is now time for Congress to step up and deliver on this package of agreements. The spirit of compromise on these thorny water issues has a message for not just Congress, but provides an example of how other vexing water situations across the Nation can sit down to work out their differences.

Madam President, on April 4 of this year, Oregon, and the Nation, lost a champion of racial equality and environmental justice--

and I lost a good friend. For more than four decades, Charles Jordan was the gold standard for civic participation. He was an inspired public servant, a determined community leader and a stalwart advocate for parks and what they mean to the quality of life in our cities.

As the first African American elected to the Portland City Council and later as the city's parks and recreation director, Charles was a tireless advocate for diversity and inclusion. His work to protect community landmarks and Portland's prized natural areas earned him national recognition, including being appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors and by President Bill Clinton to the American Heritage Rivers Initiative Advisory Committee. Charles also served on the board of The Conservation Fund for 20 years, and became the first African American to lead a national environmental organization when he served as chairman of the organization's board of directors.

Like me, Charles Jordan was a tall guy who went to school on a basketball scholarship but found his calling in public service. His passion for equality, fairness and positive change improved the lives of many. Under Charles' tenure, the Portland Parks and Recreation Department increased the impact that parks had on everyone's lives, particularly children. Thanks to his leadership, the number of parks and natural areas in the City of Portland increased from 184 to 228, creating the opportunity for more and more families of all income levels to enjoy the outdoors. His innovative work led to Portland's award of the National Gold Medal in 2011 as the best parks system in the Nation from the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration and the National Recreation and Park Association, the Nation's leading public park and recreation organizations.

His dedication to providing open spaces for children to play, along with safe community centers for families to gather, were the result of his inherent belief that all people must be treated with respect and dignity. In 2012, one of Portland's most popular community centers was renamed the Charles Jordan Community Center, a fitting tribute to the advice he gave to many kids:

Model the way. You never know who is watching and wanting

to be just like you.

In addition to all his hard work I have already mentioned, Charles also served as my go-to person on senior issues. His insight and advice always helped me see the right path forward. For that, and many other reasons, his loss has left a void.

Oregon commemorates his leadership in parks, conservation, providing access to the outdoors for all Americans, civic involvement and civil rights. My thoughts are with his wife Esther, his son Dion, and his daughter Trish. Charles was a true giant of our State, and he will be deeply missed.

Mr. President, in beginning my remarks on these extenders, I want my colleague from Indiana to know that in the Finance Committee we have done everything we could--all 24 of us--to avoid the rancor and polarization that has so often accompanied the big economic debates, and we passed the bill out of the Finance Committee overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis.

Today the Senate is going to have the opportunity to vote against a big

tax increase--actually, a bunch of big tax increases--that would slam our fragile economy hard and would punish innovators, punish our small businesses, punish homeowners who are underwater with their mortgages, punish returning veterans looking for jobs, and punish students and classroom teachers.

Colleagues, who here thinks it makes sense to tax innovation? That is what will happen if the tax extender bill fails to pass today. Who here thinks it makes sense to tax millions of hard-working homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages and were lucky enough to get a break from their lender? That is what will happen if the tax extender bill fails to pass today. Who here thinks it makes sense to make it more difficult for our employers to hire veterans? Colleagues, that is what will happen if the tax extender bill fails to pass today. And who here thinks it makes sense to sock college students already drowning in debt with even higher tuition bills? Once again, colleagues, that is what happens if the tax extender bill fails to pass today.

I am very much aware that this bill is not exactly what every Senator wants. Little secret: It is not my first choice either.

For years I have had the honor to work with my colleague from Indiana on comprehensive tax reform. We were joined by our former colleague Senator Gregg. Senator Begich has done good work. That has long been my first choice. When Chairman Baucus went to China, I realized it wouldn't be possible in the few months that remain in this session to enact comprehensive reform, and the Senate shouldn't hit our economy once again with immediate--I say, immediate--tax hikes as work goes forward on the broader reforms that Senator Coats and I feel so strongly about.

Senator Hatch and all the members of the Finance Committee worked cooperatively and helped produce a bipartisan tax extender bill. This is essentially the first piece of legislation on my watch as chair of the committee. The process was totally open. Every member of the Finance Committee had the opportunity to weigh in and offer proposals.

I want to just briefly describe some of the extraordinary bipartisanship that went into the bill that we will have an opportunity to vote on today. Senators Schumer and Roberts built on the good work of another bipartisan duo, Senator Moran and Senator Coons, and improved the research and development credit to make it available to those startups out there in garages who have a dream. The research and development credit is essentially the premiere part of this legislation because we saw a need for those innovation-driven jobs. We have four Senators--two of them Democrats, two of them Republicans--in effect coming together to improve significantly the research and development credit to ensure that it was available to even more of the startups-- even more of those innovators--the ones just getting out of the gate. We know a lot of our big businesses started that way--the Microsofts, the Intels, and others.

Next Senator Cardin and Senator Portman added important provisions to help the long-term unemployed. We all understand that the nature of those who are unemployed has changed significantly in recent years. We have many more who are long-term unemployed Americans and we had two Senators--by the way, two Senators who started working in a bipartisan way when they were House members. I remember their good work on the Ways and Means Committee. They came up with a very promising approach to help the long-term unemployed. Senators Hatch, Grassley, and Roberts--three Republicans--joined a whole host of Democrats in supporting conservation, which I know the distinguished Senator from Montana knows a great deal about. Senator Baucus had a long interest in it. What this measure does--again on a bipartisan basis--is protect open spaces and outdoor recreation businesses.

On the charity front, I heard my good friend from Indiana speak on this, and he has done wonderful work standing up for our charities. He and I and Senator Thune feel so strongly about making sure charities get a fair shake in tax policy. I would say to my good friend, I am very pleased that there is a provision in what we will vote on today that would allow retirees who choose to use some of their IRA savings and give those IRA savings to charity. This legislation today would give a break to those retirees. In effect, as my friend and I have talked about, it is the IRA rollover concept to help our charities. That too is in this legislation and has long had bipartisan support.

I could go even further, but I will simply wrap up by saying that today the Senate has a chance to push back hard against big tax increases--tax increases that I have indicated punish everyone from innovators to classroom teachers and would hit our small businesses hard when the economy is so fragile. The Senate would have the opportunity today to push back against those immediate--immediate--tax increases, as well as future tax increases and to support the bipartisan work of the 24 members of this body who serve on the Finance Committee.

So I hope that my colleagues will see that even though this bill is not everything each Senator wants--and it is very fitting that my good friend from Indiana is on the floor because he knows that I strongly prefer the idea of comprehensive reform--it became clear to me that it wouldn't be possible to do that in the few short months before the end of the year. So the question was, are we going to stop immediate tax hikes, which I hope the Senate will vote today to do, or are we just going to say we will sit by and watch Americans get hurt and in effect have a lot of Americans say, if the Senate can't do this, how are they possibly going to go on to the comprehensive tax reform that I and others would like to accomplish.

So I hope my colleagues will vote today to advance this bill, vote for cloture, vote to break the gridlock, vote to prevent a massive tax increase, and show that when a committee like the Senate Finance Committee comes together with almost a quarter of the Senate on an overwhelming basis, it can set an example for the Senate. I am so appreciative of Senator Hatch who has consistently met me half way. I, in effect, parachuted into this job as the new chair of the Finance Committee--when certainly I didn't expect it--and was fortunate to be received with the graciousness of Senator Hatch. This is essentially the first bill on my watch. We had an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, and I hope my colleagues later this afternoon will vote to advance it.

With that Mr. President, I yield the floor.

First, I want to be clear on a couple of points. This idea that there really are not any immediate consequences--I know my friend from Indiana spends a lot of time talking to businesses, as I do, and these businesses are up in arms about the fact that the Senate cannot deal with this because it doesn't give them the certainty and predictability they need to go out and make those orders and hire those workers. As my friend knows, so many of those businesses make quarterly payments--April, June, et cetera.

I want my colleagues to understand that the idea that maybe this is going to get worked out at another time is not in anyone's best interest.

When you are home for this recess, walking down Main Street and talking to people who are going to pay those higher taxes and are not able to make those investments and hire those workers and make those decisions now, they are not going to be happy that the Senate said: Oh, we will see if maybe it will work out some other time or retroactive or something like that. They are making quarterly payments and decisions right now.

Second, the Senator from Indiana knows--because of our work--how much I want to do comprehensive reform. One of the reasons that Senator Hatch and I made the judgment together that we were going to focus on extenders is because these are provisions that have essentially already expired. I didn't get a chance to hear all of my friend's presentation, but I know, for example, that he cares a great deal about the medical device tax. I joined him in voting to repeal the medical device tax when we had a vote earlier. I think it has real implications, as I know my friend does, for innovation and for jobs.

It is not an extender. It is not in line with the framework that Senator Hatch and I agreed on a bipartisan basis to do now. We said: We are going to do extenders now. To tell you the truth, if we can get through the extenders, starting with a favorable vote today, it will give us even more time to do what my friend from Indiana is talking about both in terms of comprehensive reform and looking at other issues.

If, however, we can't deal with the extenders, the message is going to go out far and wide: How are they going to address comprehensive tax reform on the Senate floor when they couldn't even pass this legislation which got such overwhelming support in the Senate Finance Committee?

So I renew my pledge to work very closely with my colleague from Indiana and repeat that the idea that somehow everything is going to turn out fine down the road, I just don't buy that. In a fragile economy when businesses can't plan and don't have the certainty of knowing what the rules are going to be and when they are going to kick in, that affects business decisions today in a negative way. When people are making those quarterly payments, you better believe there are going to be small businesses, and others, very unhappy if we see a tax increase, which is what will happen today.

I have to apologize to my colleague from Indiana because I have to be somewhere else and I am late, but I will just close by saying that I know the sincerity of my colleague. That is why I mentioned that charitable provision that allows for the IRA rollover into charity. No one has done more good work advocating for charities during my time in public service than the distinguished Senator from Indiana. I simply wanted him to know that at least we were making a beginning in this legislation, and I am committed to working with him in the days ahead.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, to use our time, my colleague from Indiana spoke earlier as though the cloture vote on the extenders determines whether the Senate will have any amendments to the extenders bill. That is not the case. A ``yes'' vote today is a vote to move the debate forward.

In that vein I simply want to announce that if cloture is invoked, I would be happy to work with Senator Hatch and the two leaders to develop

an agreed-upon list of amendments, narrowly related to the bill that the Finance Committee did in its consideration of the bill in the committee.

Madam President, I said before that I am willing to debate and have votes on amendments related to tax extenders, and we heard Senator Reid essentially extend the olive branch once more. That is exactly what Senator Hatch and I did on a bipartisan basis in the Finance Committee, and I am ready and willing to do that again in the full Senate. But the Senate can't do that if action on the tax extenders bill is blocked today.

So now the Senate has the opportunity to vote against a big tax increase--actually, a bunch of big tax increases--that would slam our fragile economy hard and would punish innovators, punish our small businesses, punish homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages, punish returning veterans looking for jobs, and punish students and classroom teachers.

Colleagues, who here thinks it makes sense to tax innovation? That is what is going to happen if the tax extenders bill fails to pass today. Who here thinks it makes sense--

Madam President, I urge that we not let students, veterans, homeowners, and innovators be hurt today. Let's vote for cloture this afternoon.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate is now debating the EXPIRE Act.

This is bipartisan legislation. I again thank the distinguished Senator from Utah Mr. Hatch. He has been so constructive in trying to build a bipartisan piece of legislation, a bill that came out of the Senate Finance Committee several weeks ago with very substantial bipartisan support.

It really is designed to deal with a number of tax provisions that are temporary in nature and it, in effect, extends those temporary tax provisions until the end of 2015. In consultation with the distinguished Senator from Utah, I thought it was important to call this bill the EXPIRE Act. It was important because this legislation actually does expire after 2 years.

It, in effect, says--and I said--on my watch as chair of the Senate Finance Committee there will not be another extenders bill. It is not going to happen on my watch. This is it.

In effect, by extending these important provisions now for one last time, the Congress can give itself and the Finance Committee--on a bipartisan basis--the space that is needed to take on the challenge of comprehensive tax reform.

It is not going to be easy, but it is absolutely imperative for the future of the American economy. I know it can be done. I know we can get Senators of both political parties together and build a bipartisan tax reform plan. I know this because I have--and other Senators do as well--a fair amount of sweat equity in this cause.

Our former colleague Senator Gregg of New Hampshire sat next to me on a sofa for more than 2 years to build what still is the only bipartisan Senate comprehensive tax reform bill in the last 30 years. With Senator Gregg's retirement, to their credit, Senator Coats and Senator Begich pitched in.

So we know that there has already been a lot of bipartisan work on comprehensive tax reform and, suffice it to say, again building on this bipartisan lineage. My colleague from Utah, the senior Senator Mr. Hatch, and Ambassador Baucus and Chairman Camp in the other body, have also put in years of work and laid a strong foundation for tax reform.

So once the Senate passes the EXPIRE Act, the job of the Finance Committee will be to focus in a kind of

laser-like fashion on a bipartisan plan that is going to give all Americans the opportunity to get ahead.

I want to emphasize that. If I were to sum up my philosophy about tax reform, I want everybody in America to have the opportunity to get ahead--all our small businesses, all our Americans who are trying to deal with an extraordinarily challenging economy.

Frankly, that would be my first choice, to be out here working on comprehensive tax reform. But it was clear to me, with Chairman Baucus going to China as our Ambassador, that it wasn't going to be possible in a few short months to pass comprehensive tax reform.

I made the judgment--I will share it with the Senate again today, and I brought it up yesterday--that the failure to act on these temporary provisions, which are what the EXPIRE Act is all about, would cause further unnecessary, really gratuitous harm to American workers, to our small businesses, to our ability to compete in tough global markets. The EXPIRE Act is all about preventing a tax increase. We would clearly have a tax increase absent the EXPIRE Act, and it would be in areas of the economy that would be particularly damaging.

For example, it would really be a tax on innovation because right at the center of these temporary provisions--provisions that under this bill will last only until the end of 2015, and then they will expire-- they are not just meant to expire, they actually expire at the end of 2015. But if we don't take action to ensure that innovation has an opportunity to flourish, what will happen is we will, in effect, have a tax on those very jobs that are most important for our middle class--to grow wages, to encourage the kind of economic multiplier that is so good for our economy. So we ought to pass the EXPIRE Act so as not to have a tax increase on innovation.

We ought to pass the EXPIRE Act to not make it tougher for a company to hire a veteran, which I think is also hugely important. I will talk about it in a couple of minutes in further detail.

Another one that I know a lot of Senators are going to hear about this week is what would happen--absent this bill--to millions of Americans who are underwater on their mortgages. These are hardworking middle Americans who now are deeply underwater. Their lenders are willing to work out arrangements to lower their debt in a number of instances. But absent this bill, instead of getting their heads above water, what we will see is a tax increase on those homeowners that really drives them back down and increasingly sinking under all of this debt. Absent this bill, middle class people would be paying a tax on phantom income. I mean, they are not really getting any net income. When their lender works with them to relieve their debt, they surely shouldn't have to pay a hefty new tax. This bill does that.

This is National Small Business Week, and this legislation in particular goes to great lengths to make it attractive for small businesses and particularly for small businesses that would like to hire new workers.

Today we know there are nearly 10 million Americans out of work, and they are looking for jobs. The unemployment rate in my home State is 6.9 percent, which is well above the national average.

I think we would all agree that our highest priority should be to help people find jobs, and the EXPIRE Act is an opportunity to do that, particularly with respect to what it does for our small businesses.

Let me outline a few of those provisions--again, temporary in nature--so that we can do even more on a permanent basis for growing our economy and making it attractive for our small businesses to hire new workers.

In the EXPIRE Act is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which encourages employers to recruit, hire, and retain individuals who often have had trouble finding jobs. The EXPIRE Act extends and expands this legislation in a few key ways so that the credit can help small businesses hire an even greater number of struggling Americans.

First, it would do more to help the long-term unemployed find work. These are those hard-hit Americans who are deeply at risk of falling between the cracks.

Second, the new approach will preserve the credit for veterans returning from overseas whom we have seen packing--literally packing-- job fairs in cities across the country in search of work. Picture that. The veterans who have worn the uniform of the United States and served all of us so admirably come back and can't find work, and they are coming out in throngs to these job fairs around the country. This bill will help them.

Small businesses that employee military reservists also currently get a wage credit when their employees get called to Active Duty. Not only will the EXPIRE Act increase that credit, it will open the credit to employers of all sizes to improve job security for even more reservists.

I mentioned the research and development credit, which of course encourages innovation in firms of all sizes. For many of them, having a strong research and development credit is simply imperative, but the reality is the current credit isn't doing all it might do to help small businesses, and complicated rules that are buried in the Tax Code may erase any benefits they see. The EXPIRE Act will change that in several key ways. To start, it will expand the pool of small businesses that benefit. It will also allow startups to use the research and development credit to help pay their employees' salaries, and it will build a bridge to tax reform so Congress can do more work to improve the credit further and make it permanent.

The research and development credit is critically important to the future of innovation in our country. Apropos again of the bipartisan theme we have taken in the Finance Committee, with the support of the ranking minority member, the distinguished Senator from Utah, there has been some very good work done by the Senator from Kansas, Mr. Roberts, and Senator Schumer. I wish to commend them for their efforts to spotlight the need to do more to reconfigure the research and development credit to help small businesses.

The reality of course is what is the common thread between so many of our most successful companies--Intel and Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, and a host of others. They all started as innovative small businesses with their eyes trained on developing the future. The EXPIRE Act is a step toward a stronger, permanent research and development credit that will help even more entrepreneurs in our country grow their best ideas into successful businesses.

In the meantime, we all know small businesses in my home State of Oregon and across the country still suffer from the recession. They feel the effects of sluggish growth pretty much like everyone else. In a stronger economy, healthy small businesses might have decided to turn higher profits into investments aimed at expansion. The research and development credit--particularly the improved research and development credit--is going to help a lot of Americans, but we do want to place a special focus on our small businesses because helping them to make capital investments in new machinery, vehicles or computers is absolutely critical.

Again, the EXPIRE Act steps in to begin to address that effort in a thoughtful manner. The legislation allows small businesses to expense up to $500,000 of equipment costs right away, and it indexes that dollar amount to inflation so it grows in the future. It is what I think a number of Members know as section 179 expensing. If the Congress were to fail to pass the EXPIRE Act, that limit would fall from one-half million dollars to just $25,000.

The legislation also continues to simplify recordkeeping--all of the redtape we have heard small businesses, concerned about section 179, talk with us about. The legislation continues to simplify those procedures so small businesses can focus on their own growth instead of redtape.

A lot of small businesses have property that has lost value over time. Those small businesses can claim a deduction to compensate for it. The EXPIRE Act extends a key provision that allows small businesses to expense up to half the cost of that property upfront in the first year rather than spreading it out over a longer period.

Both of these tax incentives, section 179 expensing and bonus depreciation,

are powerful tools to encourage investment. They are lifelines for small businesses looking to grow, and the EXPIRE Act protects them also.

Next, I would like to touch on the energy sector, which I know the distinguished presiding officer has a great interest in. Obviously, small energy businesses play a major role in the future of the American economy, building a lower carbon future, and the EXPIRE Act is going to protect the incentives those businesses rely on to grow.

I will start briefly with the production tax credit. The wind energy industry, which benefits from the production tax credit, supports more than 50,000 jobs. Many wind companies are small, and they require lots of capital and planning to bring them to market. Their story illustrates what is important to end the cycle of stop-and-go tax policies that make our Tax Code, again, needlessly--as some would say, almost insanely--complicated and uncertain. Growth in wind energy has leveled off over the last 2 years, largely because of the expiration and late renewal of provisions such as the production tax credit.

The EXPIRE Act also extends provisions to encourage the provision of other alternative renewable fuels--fuels such as biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol, liquefied natural gas, and liquefied hydrogen. There are small businesses across the country that stand to gain if the EXPIRE Act is passed, and there are incentives to create jobs in those areas, but our country is going to lose out if the Senate fails to act.

Our small businesses ought to be able to plan for the future, to chart a course, in effect, from youth through maturity. Stop-and-go tax policies only make that more difficult. Even when well-intentioned, productive tax incentives go into the code, allowing them to expire over and over undermines their effectiveness and the ability of our businesses to have the certainty needed to grow for the long term. Our taxpayers, small businesses included--and we recognize them especially this week--deserve predictability and certainty.

The EXPIRE Act is called the EXPIRE Act for a reason. It is going to end after 2 years. I have heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle over the last day make a number of very thoughtful comments about the need for comprehensive tax reform, and I wish to tell my colleagues, particularly on the other side of the aisle, that with respect to the need for comprehensive tax reform, they pretty much have me at hello. We are going to get this extender bill passed, and then it is my intent to work very closely with Senator Hatch, the distinguished ranking member on the Finance Committee, and all of our colleagues to start putting together a strategy for a comprehensive tax reform plan to pass this Congress.

I will say on the floor that I think there is a real opportunity now to break the gridlock on tax reform. If we look, in effect, from this day, essentially May of 2014, until certainly the middle of 2015, there is an ideal opportunity, an ideal window for Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to build a bipartisan coalition to pass that into law-- comprehensive tax reform--and to work with our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol who have similar interests. I know that because I have talked to a number of them in recent months.

I want colleagues on both sides of the aisle to know we are going to focus on getting these extenders passed now. Speed is important because the longer we wait, the more we damage, for example, our ability to create those innovation jobs because, in effect, we are going to have a tax increase on innovation, making it harder to hire veterans and the tax hike middle-class people would get, in effect, because they are underwater on their mortgages and they got a break from their lender. We have to get that done. It is my intent to use every single day as we go forward with that effort to make sure the extenders pass and pass quickly, then move on to comprehensive bipartisan tax reform. I know we can do it.

He is not here today, but my colleague Mr. Coats, the senior Senator from Indiana, has done very good work--stepped in when Senator Gregg retired--and has more than met me halfway. I particularly want to commend Senator Begich, who has been part of our bipartisan coalition and who has had very thoughtful ideas, particularly on protecting the middle-class small business incentives for savings. He is a small businessperson himself.

I have been out here probably 20 minutes or so, and I haven't said anything that isn't about Democrats and Republicans coming together, coming together first to pass the extender legislation and then to use every single day over essentially the next year and a half--that window until the summer of 2015--to put together a bipartisan plan that can help grow the economy.

I will close with this. After the bipartisan effort in 1986, where a big group of progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans came together, our country created 6.2 million new jobs over the next 2 years. Nobody can claim every one of those jobs was due to tax reform; that simply would be stretching things, but clearly it helped. The business people I talk to now in Oregon and others who come to Washington say they very much want the same certainty and predictability that was seen in 1986, in terms of being able to make those investments to grow their businesses and particularly hire more middle-class Americans at good wages. That is what we are going to be all about. We are going to pursue it in a bipartisan way. Let us pass the EXPIRE Act and move on to address the question of bipartisan comprehensive tax reform.

As I leave the floor--I touched on it while he wasn't here--I am particularly pleased about the Roberts-Schumer addition to help more small businesses be part of those innovation jobs for the future because what Senator Roberts and Senator Schumer did is to take that credit and do more to move it toward an approach that will help those small businesses, the ones starting in garages and all across the country where individuals are betting on the future and taking the risks. It is going to be easier for them because of the good work done by Senator Roberts and Senator Schumer. It is another reason for colleagues to vote for the EXPIRE Act.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wanted to take a couple of minutes now to underscore the importance of the Senate passing the EXPIRE Act now, and in particular to highlight what the cost of inaction would be if the Senate fails to act.

This legislation is critically needed because it is an essential tool to prevent a tax increase and particularly the kind of tax increase that will harm our ability to create more good-paying jobs--high- skilled, high-wage jobs. These are the jobs tied to innovation.

Without this legislation, for example, what we would have is a new tax on innovation because we wouldn't renew for a period of 2 years, as we work on tax reform, the research and development tax credit. This credit is absolutely essential because it is what is used by the employers who are coming up with innovative approaches to create more long-term employment for our country. This credit is used to help pay the wages for those kinds of innovation-oriented jobs. Without this legislation, we would have in this country a tax on innovation. I don't think that is where this country wants to go.

It will be harder without this legislation to have employers hire veterans--veterans who are now coming out in throngs to job fairs in cities across the country. Employers will find it even harder to assist them in terms of finding employment.

Without this legislation, when an underwater homeowner gets hold of a life raft that keeps them in their homes when their lender works with them to try to work out an arrangement to reduce their obligation, reduce their debt, that underwater homeowner would be taxed on phantom income. So right when that underwater homeowner is trying to get their head above

water, without this legislation the Tax Code would shove them back underwater once more. I don't think that is where our country wants to go.

I don't think our country wants to give a back of the hand to millions of students already up to their eyeballs in debt. Without this legislation, they would have to go even deeper into debt.

Producing clean energy will become more expensive, risking the kind of high-tech jobs the Congress wants and is working in a bipartisan way to protect.

So with the EXPIRE Act we can address all these issues, bring greater certainty to our economy, put an expiration date on the broken tax system, and lay the foundation for working on tax reform and moving away from what has been a long run of stop-and-go tax extender policies. We ought to get away from that, and the point of this legislation is, between now and the end of 2015, to work on comprehensive bipartisan tax reform.

A number of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have talked about their interest in this and that they wish we were doing comprehensive reform. I think colleagues have heard me say on the floor of the Senate I'd much prefer to be doing comprehensive tax reform, but when Chairman Baucus went to China, it became clear to me it wasn't going to be possible to get comprehensive tax reform done in this session.

What I sought to do is to make sure we wouldn't do further harm to middle-class families, and small businesses, and those who are creating the innovative jobs. That is why we need this legislation and need to use the legislation when it passes as a bridge to tax reform.

The bill is called the EXPIRE Act. People have often said: What does that mean? It is not just what it means--the bill actually does expire. I have indicated to my colleagues on the Finance Committee that this will be the last extenders bill on my watch. We are not going to have any more of them on my watch. We are going to move to create a stronger, better, more pro-growth, fair tax system, which allows us to be more competitive in a tough global economy and create good-paying jobs. The tax reform process is not going to be a walk in the park, but it is only going to grow harder if the Senate fails to pass the EXPIRE Act first.

We have had bipartisan proposals in the past. Our former colleague Senator Gregg worked with me for 2 years, and we sat together on a sofa almost every week for 2 years to create what is the first bipartisan Federal income tax reform bill in three decades. With his retirement, thankfully Senator Coats and Senator Begich stepped in. So we know it can be done, but that task will simply be harder if the Senate fails to pass the EXPIRE Act.

The first thing people are going to say is: If the Senate couldn't deal with these extenders on a temporary basis, how in the world will the Senate be able to take up comprehensive tax reform?

Fortunately, at a time when many think Washington is utterly broken, the distinguished senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, was willing to work with me and meet me halfway in terms of producing a comprehensive, bipartisan effort to move forward on these extenders. It wasn't easy, but it got done, and it got out of the Finance Committee with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. The bill may not be perfect, but the committee got it done with the kind of bipartisan approach Americans want to see more of. I hope the Senate will want to do the same thing. I was encouraged by the procedural vote we had earlier this week.

So with tonight's developments, I simply underscore the importance of passing the EXPIRE Act. I hope Senators on a bipartisan basis will join me in supporting the legislation. It is going to meet urgent needs of our people now, and if we can get it passed and signed into law quickly, it will allow us to turn our attention exclusively to the kind of tax overhaul that is long overdue. That can bring Democrats and Republicans together, as we saw several decades ago when progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans joined together for tax reform. We can go to that agenda as soon as we address the immediate needs behind the urgent requirement of enacting the extenders bill quickly.

I hope we will see the Senate do that in the next few days ahead.

I thank my colleagues, particularly on the Finance Committee-- Democrats and Republicans--for the good and cooperative bipartisan work.

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

Mr. President, this morning the Senate begins consideration of a tax cut bill. The Finance Committee agreed to call it the EXPIRE Act, and I am going to take a few minutes to talk about why it is so important that this bill be passed--and passed now. Here are a few of the key reasons:

First, if the Senate doesn't act, veterans who are now packing job fairs across this country are going to face an even tougher struggle to get good jobs.

Second, because the jobs most essential to our economy--the good- paying, innovation-driven jobs needed to underpin a growing middle class--will be harder to create.

Third, because just when underwater homeowners get hold of a life raft that keeps them in their homes, a big tax hike could yank it away.

Fourth, because millions of students are already up to their eyeballs in debt, and without this they will go even deeper.

In addition, producing clean energy will grow more expensive, risking the high-tech jobs every Member of Congress wants to protect.

The EXPIRE Act addresses all of these issues and more.

The second question that I think is going to be relevant to this debate is, What are the implications for the cycle of stop-and-go policies that have made the Tax Code in this country so unnecessarily complicated and uncertain? The EXPIRE Act ends that and builds a bridge to comprehensive tax reform. Many of these stop-and-go incentives are good policy, and they ought to be extended permanently. The EXPIRE Act gives the Finance Committee and the Congress the room to work on reform and decide which provisions to keep.

For now, this is about balancing short-term needs and long-term goals. In the coming months, the Finance Committee is going to pursue a tax reform plan on a bipartisan basis that gives all Americans the opportunity to get ahead. But right now, what is needed is to protect jobs and deliver more certainty.

On April 3 the Finance Committee passed the Expiring Provisions Improvement Reform and Efficiency--EXPIRE--Act. There was a strong bipartisan vote in the committee. We called the bill the EXPIRE Act for one reason: It is supposed to expire. I stated this morning that, on my watch, this is going to be the last time--the last time--the Finance Committee considers a tax extenders bill. Once this piece of legislation is enacted and behind us, the committee will move on to the critical next challenge; that is, comprehensive bipartisan tax reform.

I will talk for a minute about how this package is going to help middle-class individuals and families.

We all understand that a prosperous middle class is the key to long- term economic growth for the country. This legislation boosts that cause by extending incentives that help workers get back on their feet, such as the work opportunity tax credit. This provision is a lifeline for our veterans in every State in the country because it encourages employers to hire the vets when they come home from overseas. Veteran unemployment is still at crisis levels. This bill is going to help address that.

Thanks to work by Senators Portman and Cardin--again, on a bipartisan basis--the work opportunity tax credit is now going to be available to businesses that hire the long-term unemployed. They are the Americans who have been hit the hardest by the recession, and, without help, we are going to see them fall between the cracks. This legislation can be an important role in helping those Americans find good jobs.

The EXPIRE Act also extends and expands the credit for research and experimentation. The reason this is so important is this is the lifeblood of innovation that is so important for our economy. Not only does this credit incentivize research and innovation, but thanks to good, bipartisan work--I heard that mentioned a couple times this morning, and we are going to hear it again--in this case, Senator Roberts, Senator Schumer, and others made adjustments to the credit to

make it work better for small businesses and for startup firms. Many of these firms just getting out of the gate can't really use the research credit in its current form, so the EXPIRE Act says to all of those startups that if they want to use the credit, we are going to make it easier to hire and pay workers. We are going to help them do that.

Congress also needs to keep pushing business investments in innovation. That is why the EXPIRE Act extends incentives such as bonus depreciation and expanded business expenses. This makes it easier for companies to invest in new equipment and property and grow their operation and create more jobs.

We know many of our communities are hurting. They have been battered over the past decade by the financial crisis and by an exodus of manufacturing jobs. So it is critical to drive investment to those communities to help promote growth and create good-paying jobs.

The people in those communities hit--and hit hard--by this economy deserve a chance to achieve the American dream just like everybody else. That is why the EXPIRE Act extends provisions such as the new markets tax credit, which drives private investment to these hard-hit areas. The new markets tax credit leverages private funds to create new businesses in economically depressed communities. And thanks to efforts by my colleague from Ohio, Senator Brown, these credits are going to be available to boost manufacturing--areas that have lost some of their good-paying, blue-collar industrial jobs. Through this, we will see more private investment head their way.

With the recent news of the economy's first quarter, the challenge of growing the economy--it is obvious our families and businesses need all the help they can get. That is why the EXPIRE Act allows families to continue to deduct their State and local taxes. Americans can already deduct their State income taxes thanks to a permanent part of the Tax Code. But families in States such as Texas, Florida, Washington, and Alaska don't pay State income taxes; they pay higher sales taxes. This legislation levels the field and lets families deduct their State and local taxes whether they are income or sales.

As the housing market continues to come back from the great recession, we know millions of Americans are still struggling to stay in their homes. Many of our homeowners found themselves underwater, owing more in mortgage debt than their houses were worth. To make matters worse, just when they caught a break and had their mortgage payments lowered or their debt forgiven, they got hit by a giant tax liability. Imagine that. Once you get your head above water, a huge tax bill pushes you right back underwater.

This legislation contains a provision to prevent exactly that situation from happening and to help keep American families in their homes by exempting their forgiven mortgage debt from taxation. And I feel particularly strongly about this because that is really phantom income, and middle-class Americans shouldn't get hit that way.

Over the past several years, States throughout the country have been forced to make a lot of painful fiscal choices. Over the past several years, States throughout the country have been forced to make a lot of painful fiscal choices in many communities. The budget ax has fallen on education. Teachers routinely face classrooms of 30 to 40 students, often even more. Too often those teachers run short on supplies and then they reach into their own pockets--into their own pockets--to make up the difference. These are hard-working, middle-class professionals. What this legislation does is help those teachers just a little bit by letting them deduct up to $250 of those out-of-pocket expenses from their taxes. Oregon teachers deduct more than $9 million in classroom expenses each year.

A college education is absolutely vital in our competitive, modern economy. For families and students paying for college, trying to deal with those skyrocketing costs and the mountains of debt they incur, this legislation extends the $4,000 deduction for tuition expenses. Oregon families use it to deduct more than $61 million in tuition and fees annually. It gets harder each year to maintain a middle-class life without a college degree. That is why this deduction is so important and why it is in this legislation.

There is one last part of the bill I would like to touch on; that is, the incentive for clean energy. Previously I chaired the energy committee, and I saw how essential it was to generate investment in clean energy. It is an area of our economy that has been plagued by the stop-and-go nature of tax policy. Now is the time our country should be investing in low-carbon and energy-diverse alternatives. Some of the provisions in the EXPIRE Act have been extraordinarily successful in doing just that. The production tax credit for renewable energy that includes wind, geothermal, hydropower, and biomass has helped drive major growth in renewable clean energy. Wind in particular has boomed over the past 5 years. It now accounts for more than 60,000 megawatts of wind generation across the country. Wind energy production has more than doubled since 2008. That is enough to power more than 15 million homes and the energy supports more than 50,000 jobs. The growth of this industry has been a boon to manufacturing, supporting more than 500 manufacturing facilities.

Still, the wind industry is not immune to the stop-and-go nature of tax extenders. Growth has leveled off over the past 2 years, mostly due to the expiration and late retroactive renewal of provisions such as the production tax credit. It is critical, in my view, to provide certainty to these businesses. In the energy sector, electricity generating stations and refineries are major investments that can take years to plan and to finance and construct. That is why tax reform is so vital. Our country needs a long-term, stable energy policy.

There are a lot of fresh ideas on how to improve energy policy in the Tax Code. As chairman of the Finance Committee, now-Ambassador Baucus put out a number of innovative, technology-neutral ideas that in my view deserve a significant amount of attention, but while working out those ideas in a transparent, bipartisan way, it is important Congress not let our domestic clean energy industry fall off the cliff, which is the reason this bill extends provisions such as the production tax credit through 2015.

Clean energy is not just about generating more low-carbon electricity; it is also about using energy more efficiently in reducing our overall consumption. That is why the EXPIRE Act extends and updates the credit that helps out homeowners who want to improve their houses and make them more energy efficient. Whether it is through better windows, installing insulation, perhaps replacing a water heater or a furnace, this provision helps those homeowners. These improvements can dramatically reduce the amount of energy used to heat and cool American homes, resulting in lower electricity bills.

The legislation improves this provision by cleaning up what has been current law and updating its standards. It will be easier to use and help push the boundaries on energy efficiency by allowing only the most energy-efficient improvements to qualify. Even in pushing for efficiency in how we use energy, it is important to make smart use of taxpayer dollars.

Commercial buildings use a tremendous amount of energy--20 percent of all electricity consumed in the United States powers the places we work. By reducing this consumption, the United States can drastically cut emissions and lower costs for businesses. It is obvious the areas I have outlined make sense for our economy and they have bipartisan support. They are going to help spur investment and innovation, boost our communities, help disadvantaged workers, and continue to drive investments in clean energy and energy efficiency.

A number of these provisions I have indicated should be made permanent, and it would be a mistake to simply let them disappear. In wrapping up, I wish to address the question: Why not make these provisions permanent now? Why not pass tax reform today? That would be my first choice.

Everybody knows our Tax Code is in bad shape. It is complicated. I think calling it opaque would be a compliment. It desperately needs fixing.

We want a code that promotes economic growth and treats everyone fairly. A lot of Members have worked hard to develop ideas, but the reality is tax reform is not happening tomorrow. Reaching a comprehensive, bipartisan plan is going to take time, focus, and hard work.

I know something about that because I have put as much sweat equity into bipartisan tax reform as any Member of this body, starting with our former colleague Senator Gregg. We sat next to each other on a sofa every week for 2 years to write the first bipartisan Federal income tax reform plan in 30 years. Senator Coats has joined Senator Begich and I in this effort and we are not alone. Chairman Camp has put forward an ambitious tax reform draft that lays out several ideas as well on how to make the Tax Code simpler. All of these proposals contain the kinds of ideas we ought to examine as we look to reform our Tax Code. Once the issue of these extenders is settled, I look forward to working with Senator Hatch and all our colleagues on a broad-based tax reform plan that will grow our entire economy.

In the meantime, it would be a mistake to leave American families and American businesses out in the cold. Temporary provisions of the Tax Code continue to expire, leaving jobs, innovation, investment, and people's homes in limbo. By providing certainty to businesses and families for the next 2 years, the EXPIRE Act creates the space needed for true tax reform. I don't want us to lose sight of that during this debate. These extenders are important, but we are also going to talk on the floor about building a bridge to reform that this country desperately needs. We know there are inequities in the Tax Code. The inability to have the certainty and predictability we need is holding us back.

We need to make sure we have a Tax Code that gives everybody in America the opportunity to get ahead, especially our hard-working, middle-class citizens, our entrepreneurs and businesses. Our people work hard for the money they earn each and every day. They want to pay their fair share, but when they are asked to contribute part of their paycheck each month, they deserve a tax system that is transparent and equitable. We need to simplify the code. We need to level the playing field. We need to get rid of the disparities between different types of income that elevates some workers over others.

I encourage all of my colleagues today to, first, back this legislation so we don't see, for example, innovation and our veterans and teachers suffer as we work toward bipartisan tax reform; second, to be open about sharing their ideas with the Finance Committee and all Members about innovative bipartisan reforms that can improve our entire Tax Code. Voters send us to work. They are looking for results. They don't want to hear excuses about why families pay more for college or why homeowners face a huge tax bill after getting out from under a mountain of debt. Simply dropping those tax incentives sacrifices valuable priorities without getting the real job of comprehensive reform done. Let us pass the EXPIRE Act and let us move on to urgently needed bipartisan comprehensive tax reform.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support S. 2262, the Shaheen-Portman Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2014. The reason I do so is because I have long felt we can't be for an all-of-the-above energy policy if we aren't promoting state-of-the-art approaches in terms of energy efficiency.

I think the Presiding Officer and I both know it isn't even a speech here in the Senate on energy policy unless the Senator says they are for an all-of-the-above at least three times every 15, 20 minutes. So I think what Senator

Shaheen and Senator Portman are doing is making it clear right at the start that an all-of-the-above energy policy is their approach and their effort to pull as many as possible colleagues into innovative approaches in terms of promoting energy efficiency.

Senators Shaheen and Portman have been tirelessly pursuing this legislation for 3 years now. I had a chance as the former Chair of the Energy Committee to watch what they have been doing. I will walk back a bit to make sure colleagues understand how constructive their efforts have been, both substantively and in terms of promoting collaboration here in the Senate, in hopes that these commonsense energy proposals for creating good jobs and a cleaner and healthier environment will prevail on a bipartisan basis here in the Senate.

With our colleague from Alaska, Senator Murkowski, I have had a front-row seat over the last couple years to watch Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman in action and support their efforts. I think we should all be very appreciative of the job our new Chair, Senator Landrieu, is doing--again, in concert with Senator Murkowski--because the two of them continue the committee's tradition, No. 1, of working in a bipartisan way but, No. 2, trying again to promote collaboration here within the Senate to promote an energy approach, which I think is not only common sense but it is absolutely essential in order to be able to go on to the other energy policy issues that surely are likely to be more contentious than energy efficiency.

To walk back a bit through what has happened, I think our colleagues know an earlier version of this legislation passed our Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. It was then considered on the floor this past September, but it was blocked by demands for a vote on a health care amendment which had nothing to do with the premise of the underlying bill. I happen to oppose that amendment, but however a Senator feels, it has nothing to do with energy efficiency and productivity.

When the bill stalled on the Senate floor last fall, it looked pretty grim for the cause of energy efficiency, and essentially people were questioning the Senate's ability to consider an act on a range of energy issues which confront our country. I think a lot of people would have thrown in the towel at that point. They would have said: We put in all of this work and effort to win such a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate; then we were ready to go to the floor and faced unrelated issues. And I could see why the sponsors would give up. But Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman are not throw-in-the-towel type of Senators, and in effect they doubled down and went back to work on some of the most challenging issues.

So at that point, after the unfortunate setback of last September, they in effect doubled down and worked to bring an even broader range of Members and stakeholders together here in the Senate to form a consensus and make this bill even better, improve the array of commonsense approaches taken to promote energy efficiency, and increase the chance of the best possible energy efficiency bill becoming law.

I wish to highlight at this point how challenging this work was and how pleased I was the Senate was able to get together.

At that point one of the most challenging issues dealt with the question of the then-existing requirements that new Federal buildings be designed to phase out their use of fossil-fuel-generated energy by 2030. This is important for a variety of reasons. Of course, the Federal Government is a major property owner in our country, No. 1. And No. 2, I think we all look to the Federal Government at a minimum to try to set some examples in terms of trying to deal with these issues.

In other words, it is fine for Washington, DC, to say: Everybody else would do X, Y, and Z. But if they come back and say the Federal Government is not willing to set an example, it is pretty hard to have any credibility in terms of that particular field of public policy. The reality was that while well meaning, the existing requirement that new Federal Government buildings be designed to phase out their use of fossil-fuel-generated energy by 2030 was not working particularly well by anyone's calculus.

We had folks in the natural gas industry raising questions about whether they would be able to participate. They made the point--one that I think certainly has validity--that natural gas is 50 percent cleaner than the other fossil fuels. They were saying: Well, how are we going to be able to play a role with heating in Federal buildings, which, of course, as I indicated, is very significant both because the Federal Government owns so much property and because of the example the Federal Government sets.

So reaching an agreement on how to balance repeal of this provision in existing law--well meaning, but not working very well--with the addition of provisions to enhance efficiency in Federal buildings involved innumerable meetings--meetings that I participated in personally and others were involved in that went on literally for months with all of the stakeholders--the electric and gas utility industries, the environmental advocacy organizations, the energy efficiency groups--all of them in discussions that took place over conference calls and in-person meeting after meeting.

I would submit that had those groups not been able to come together-- and I believe they deserve great credit because they did--I think it may have been right at that point very difficult to advance this bill because we would have generated, for the first time, significant opposition around the core issue. Whether it be environmental groups or electric and gas groups, we would have had significant friction over an important public policy issue, which is how to promote renewable energy to the greatest extent possible in new Federal Government buildings.

I will say to colleagues who may be following this, a number of times in these discussions I thought things were going to blow up. I thought one or more of these groups would walk out and say: We will take our chances on the floor; we believe we are going to win, and if it takes this bill down, so be it. But they stayed at the table and they worked out an agreement.

As a result of their agreement--environmental organizations, those in the advocacy of energy efficiency and a variety of industry groups--the effort produced a significantly better bill, and a bill that now includes some very important and powerful additions.

For example, as a result of rewriting the provision that new Federal Government buildings be designed to phase out the use of fossil-fuel- generated energy, very substantial financial savings were generated so as to be able to include some very sensible and potentially far- reaching changes in the energy efficiency field. For example, as a result of that agreement it is possible to take some of the financial savings generated in that redo of the requirements for renewable fuels in Federal energy building and include in the legislation that is now before the Senate, the SAVE Act, a bipartisan proposal championed by our colleagues Senator Isakson and Senator Bennet. This provision would for the first time facilitate the accounting of energy efficiency in residential mortgages. A report by the American Council for an Energy- Efficient Economy and the Institute for Market Transformation estimates that this proposal alone would create 83,000 new jobs in home construction, renovation, and manufacturing by 2020. These are jobs for American workers that cannot be outsourced. The agreement on Federal building efficiency would also extend the 3 percent-per-year Federal building efficiency target through 2017 and expand the coverage of this efficiency target from new buildings to include major renovations as well.

So what we have is a good bill that got out of committee. It was a good bill last September that I would have liked to have seen pass this body at that time. After it was not possible to move it forward, we had the chief sponsors, Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman, work continually to try to advance this legislation and broaden its appeal. When they bumped up against a really serious problem, which was to fix this policy with respect to the requirements for renewable energy in Federal buildings, they worked with a variety of groups and organizations and were able to make the bill better.

I wish to thank a number of Senators who were behind this effort to redo the

requirements for new Federal buildings--in particular, our colleagues on this side of the aisle, Senator Manchin and Senator Whitehouse, and on the other side of the aisle I wish to thank Senator Hoeven. They were very involved in the nuts and bolts of redoing this legislation. Suffice it to say that the three of them would be the first to say they don't agree on every possible energy policy subject matter. Yet the three of them came together, worked with this coalition of groups I have described, and made significant improvements in the already good bill after September. As a result of their work, we have generated financial savings that made it possible to include the Isakson-Bennet legislation on residential mortgages, which is a very significant and positive development in the energy efficiency field.

This is not a small matter, taking bold steps to improve energy efficiency in residential mortgages the way our colleagues Senator Isakson and Senator Bennet have done in a bipartisan fashion. The reason this efficiency legislation is back is because it is sensible and has bipartisan appeal. It is about cutting waste and creating jobs. Passing this legislation would be the biggest step in years toward tapping the enormous potential of energy efficiency, which is the most sensible and cheapest energy source America has.

Here are the most relevant figures with respect to the benefits of this bill. The bill will save about 2.8 billion megawatt hours of electricity by 2030, according to the American Council for an Energy- Efficient Economy. To translate this into something people can put their arms around, if we are going to generate 2.8 billion megawatt hours--and that is the projection for this bill--our country would have to build 10 new nuclear powerplants, at a cost of billions of dollars each, and run them for more than 20 years. An additional provision of the bill updates and promotes voluntary model building codes, making residential and commercial buildings more efficient through the installation of new equipment, insulation, and other efficiency technologies. There is money to be saved and there is energy to be saved. That is the kind of work this legislation accomplishes.

What I have described is possibly not the most flashy of stories we might be contemplating here in Washington. It might not be at the top of every single account on the nightly news, but businesses understand how valuable this is. Businesses understand that there is money to be made here. That is why more than 250 companies and associations endorse the bill, including the chamber of commerce, which I think would be the first to state that they don't see themselves as a bleeding heart environmental organization. I was struck by a headline in forbes.com not long ago that read ``The Shaheen-Portman Energy Savings Act: It's the economy, stupid.'' Forbes, a prominent business publication, got it right.

If Congress can pass this bill, it would immediately become one of the largest job-creating efforts the Senate will enact this year, creating an estimated 192,000 new jobs by 2030. It can also make a tremendous difference in our country's economic competitiveness, bringing savings to businesses and families, reducing demands on our electric grid, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Having watched the development of this legislation as the former chair of the Energy Committee and now chair of the Finance Committee, I think every Member of the Senate understands how important it is to secure a cleaner, more efficient, job-creating energy future. This legislation provides that opportunity. It was a good bill when the Senate considered it last September, it is an even better bill tonight, and to a great extent it is made better because colleagues such as Senator Joe Manchin and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Senator Hoeven have worked together on a very contentious matter involving renewable energy in Federal buildings. It is the latest demonstration of good will and comity that has dominated this debate, at least as it relates to the substance of discussing energy efficiency legislation.

I thank our chair Senator Landrieu for the first-rate job she has done not only on this but on the matters before the Energy Committee. I also thank my good friend and colleague Senator Murkowski for the same sorts of efforts she made to work with me as the chair and Senator Landrieu. I think those efforts are going to pay off. Let's make sure they pay off immediately with the Senate this week moving forward and passing the bipartisan Shaheen-Portman legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Landrieu, I ask unanimous consent that Megan Brewster, a fellow in Senator Landrieu's office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 113th Congress.

Mr. President, on Monday, the Finance Committee reported S. 2260, the Expiring Provisions Improvement Reform and Efficiency (EXPIRE) Act of 2014, and S. 2261, the Tax Technical Corrections Act of 2014.

At the time that the bills and accompanying reports were filed, the statements of the Congressional Budget Office, required under section 402 of the Budget Act, were not yet available, and, in each case, the committee report indicated that the statements would be provided separately.

I ask unanimous consent to have the CBO statements printed in the Record.

Mr. President, as the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee--16 working days on the job--it is humbling to be parachuted late into the issue of reimbursing doctors for Medicare services, and I intend to be brief here at the outset of this debate.

All sides agree that the current system for paying doctors, known as the SGR, does not work well for seniors, the many gifted physicians who serve them, or taxpayers. Devised in 1997, the SGR sets an annual cost target for Medicare physician payments, and it is honored more in the breach than in the observance. When the SGR is not met, the Congress says that is OK, we will just apply a patch and we will punt. Patch it up and let that SGR limp along, just as it has year after year after year.

Mr. President and colleagues, there have now been 16 of these patches--16--and every Senator who I talk to says that just defies common sense and it seems bizarre even by Beltway standards. The cost of the patches now resembles the cost of the full repeal.

To his great credit, the majority leader, Senator Reid, has repeatedly said his first choice for dealing with this issue is to finally repeal the SGR. Now is the ideal time for repealing SGR. The cost of full repeal is far less than anticipated. Thoughtful, bipartisan work has been done in the House and the Senate on repeal and replace, and leading advocates for seniors and their doctors want to replace the status quo with real reform.

So as an alternative to the flawed status quo--an SGR patch No. 17-- this afternoon I will make two unanimous consent requests so that the Senate is allowed to have a choice; specifically, a vote on a proposal to permanently repeal and replace the SGR and also to fund the health care extenders.

I will wrap up by briefly describing this proposal. Its essence is to close two chapters of Federal budget fiction. Since the SGR is just pretending that Congress will hold the line on Medicare spending, I believe it is time to end this fiction and wipe SGR off the books. And for balance, I am going to propose ending another piece of budget fiction, specifically the Overseas Contingency Operations, known as OCO, and the spending on wars that are winding down. This too is fiction.

As former Republican Senator Jon Kyl said--a conservative by anybody's calculation--during a previous SGR debate, let's use war savings for one last time to wipe out the debt Congress has built up by overriding reductions in payments to doctors, and from that point on war savings would only be used for defense.

So there you have my proposal: truth in budgeting all around. Wipe the slate clean on Medicare so you can support seniors and their doctors and move forward with real reforms along the bipartisan lines the House and Senate have already agreed to.

I would add that if Congress took the action I just proposed, it could go farther and address the health extenders. Unlike the SGR, these are real programs helping, for example, vulnerable low-income seniors, rural communities, and seniors who need a variety of therapies. Each one of those has strong bipartisan support.

This, too, could be addressed in a fiscally responsible manner. A big chunk of the cost of 10 years' worth of these extenders could be addressed with the savings of the 1-year patch.

So here is my closing: A lot of good work has gone into a bipartisan, bicameral reform plan that finally repeals and replaces the SGR. I would just say to my colleagues, doesn't that deserve a vote? If my unanimous consent request is accepted, we would have that vote.

At this time, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order with respect to H.R. 4302, following disposition of the Owens nomination, when the Senate resumes legislative session, the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 336, S. 2157; that following the reporting of the bill, the bill be read a third time and the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill with no intervening action or debate; and that upon disposition of the bill, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 4302, as provided under the previous order.

I object, Mr. President.

Mr. President, before my friend from Alabama leaves the floor--just to highlight where we are--I think he knows how strongly I feel about always trying to tackle these issues in a bipartisan fashion. I would just assure the Senator from Alabama, the reason we took as our underlying repeal-and-replace bill the good work that was done by Senator Hatch and Chairman Camp and Chairman Upton is I felt that extended the olive branch in trying to bring the parties together. I intend to do that consistently on the Finance Committee--pretty much just

the way I did when I supported George W. Bush on Part D of Medicare.

The challenge, of course, here is that this would be the 51st attempt to essentially try to make changes in the ACA that would end up particularly shifting costs to so many vulnerable people.

It seems to me, particularly today as we have thousands and thousands of people still trying to sign up--I noticed the Wall Street Journal, Saturday, stated that the CBO said the original target for the Affordable Care Act had been met. I think it would be particularly unfortunate to go forward with what would be the 51st effort to try the same kind of approach that particularly would cause so much cost shifting in American health care onto the books of a lot of folks who are already walking an economic tightrope.

I know a number of my colleagues want to speak. As the manager of the time, it is my intention to try to alternate with colleagues of various points of view with respect to this issue. I am sure that will be done as well on the other side.

I note my friend from Virginia on the floor. He is going to be the new chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility. I think he brings extraordinarily important credentials to this job. His support of the kind of approach I have advocated this afternoon highlights that this will have support in both political parties from Members who have strong credentials in terms of promoting fiscal responsibility.

I would yield to him and look forward to my colleague's remarks.

Mr. President, before he yields the floor, through the Chair, I would pose a question to the distinguished Senator from Virginia.

The Senator from Virginia has, as usual, gotten right to the heart of the long-term challenge with respect to entitlements. I have always tried to describe it as the challenge of protecting the Medicare guarantee because what seniors have is a guarantee. It is not something that is up for grabs. It is a guarantee. It is inviolate. Protecting their guarantee means that in the days ahead we are going to have to figure out new ways to hold down costs.

What I have heard the Senator from Virginia talk about very eloquently is one of the key ways to do that is what the Senator from Virginia and I have sought to do, which is to start having Medicare-- start having Medicare pay for value rather than just staying with this volume-driven fee-for-service system, which largely rewards inefficiency. I think it is my sense that the Senator from Virginia believes it is very hard to start the kind of real entitlement reform we need, where we protect the Medicare guarantee and hold down costs, unless we make the kind of approach we are advocating in this repeal- and-replace strategy with SGR.

We better get to it, because until we have those changes, we cannot begin to get on with another area that the Senator from Virginia feels very strongly about; that is, chronic diseases--diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and stroke--which consume more than 80 percent of the Medicare budget. By my calculation we cannot get on that or any of the structural entitlement challenges until we do what the Senator from Virginia is talking about: Is that pretty much the way the Senator from Virginia sees it?

Before he leaves the floor, I want to say to the Senator from Oklahoma, who says--and always with a smile--that he and I certainly don't agree on everything in this debate, that the concept of what he is talking about--that physicians spend time with their patients--is certainly a concept that ought to be incorporated into how we proceed in the days ahead.

The other aspect of this that people ought to focus on, with respect to what the Senator from Oklahoma is talking about, is that time that the physician spends with the patient in the office presents a pretty good chance that some of those discussions they have there in the office are going to help keep that patient out of the hospital, and all sides ought to see that as a constructive goal.

So I want my colleague from Oklahoma to know that in the discussions he and I have had--and I appreciated the way my colleague said with a smile we don't agree on everything--the concept he is talking about with respect to doctors and time in the office--is something that ought to be incorporated into this, and it is my intention to work with my colleague on that.

Mr. President, I want to pick up on another aspect of what both

the Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Oklahoma have talked about, and that is that at this rate we have to be concerned that after patch 17 there will be patch 18, and after 18 there will be patch 19. I am sure there are some young people up in the galleries who are light years away from Medicare. In fact, the distinguished Presiding Officer of the Senate is a number of years away from the program, and I don't want to see him looking at patch 30 or 31 or 32. But the reality is if all we do is to take what we have and extend it, we are not going to turn this situation around.

My colleague from Virginia and I started talking about one of the key concepts in our repeal and replace strategy, and that is making sure we have a hard date--really, for the first time--to start paying for value in health care. Repeal and replace has that hard date. This is long, long overdo. Until then, in much of our country, we will still have volume-driven, fee-for-service medicine still driving health care in those communities from one end of the country to another.

I heard one observer say what they hoped for is that somebody in Washington would take a machete to fee-for-service. At a minimum, we ought to do what repeal and replace does, which is to reward for the first time quality, and ensure the message goes out to every corner of the country. I have heard the distinguished Presiding Officer of the Senate say with respect to his important health care reform efforts that instead of just paying for volume, we should actually pay for results, and results mean patients have a higher quality of life. What we know, in many instances, is that kind of care also costs less because we don't have people sicker and needing more expensive services and possibly institutional care.

So now, while I wait for additional colleagues to come and speak, I want to take a few minutes to describe some of the other opportunities we are missing out on by not going forward with full repeal and replace, as I and Senator Warner and others would like to see.

In particular, it is very clear that Medicare in 2014 is remarkably different than Medicare back when it began in 1965. Medicare in 2014 is now dominated by chronic disease. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke is more than 80 percent of the Medicare spent. I believe we have some opportunities for some very important breakthroughs.

The Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson, has joined me in a bipartisan bill here--the Better Care, Lower Cost Act. It is bipartisan in the other body with Congressman Peter Welch and Congressman Erik Paulsen. That would give both parties an opportunity for the first time to provide the real financial incentives for the long term to reward the kind of coordinated care we are not getting in this country for seniors.

For many seniors, after the free physical they now get under Medicare, their care is so fragmented, so poorly coordinated that until they land in a hospital emergency room, perhaps with a $1,100 deductible and can't figure out all the doctors they have seen during their odyssey through chronic care treatment, we have virtually no system that responsibly manages and is accountable for that senior's care.

In repeal and replace, we take the first steps toward building a chronic care policy for our country. We take the chronic special needs plans--what are called the CSNPs--that haven't worked out as hoped and initiate reforms for those particular plans to ensure that all of the individuals who are part of that program would, for the first time, have an individual care plan. That is something many seniors--certainly a majority of seniors--lack, particularly if they are part of traditional fee-for-service medicine. They don't have an individual care plan. They might have two or more kinds of chronic conditions.

A senior might think they can manage their own medicines and manage their own nutrition, but there would be an alternative. That would be what Senator Isakson and I have talked about for the long term and what we would begin with in a true repeal and replace program for SGR. With SGR, we would start finally looking at those chronic care patients in a way that ensured they got coordinated care from the first time they saw a physician, who, under our approach for the long term, would have a pharmacist and a physician assistant and maybe a nurse. They would be able to have one person accountable for their care.

The irony is that all over the country there are programs that are now doing this and reaping dramatic savings. For example, in rural Pennsylvania there is a particularly promising program where the savings have exceeded more than 20 percent on some of the sickest patients with the kind of approach that Senator Isakson and I are advocating for the long term, and which we would at least begin with these chronic special needs patients under full repeal and replace of the SGR.

Now, I want to close with one other point before I yield the floor to colleagues. The full repeal and replace of Medicare would also contain an idea that Senator Grassley and I have worked on for over 3 years, which is to open the Medicare database. The Medicare database is really a treasure trove of the most useful information about Medicare claims and payments around this country. It holds the record of all payments from taxpayers to physicians and other providers for seniors' health care.

Right now, access to this Medicare database is very limited. If the public or seniors or others want to get access to this information, they have to wade through the bureaucracy, and there are simply very substantial obstacles. We know this kind of information can often produce better quality for lower prices because providers who do well when that information gets out will see they are rewarded for their work, and those that are not measuring up to those standards will either have to change their practices or simply find it hard to keep their doors open. The markets work best when information is transparent for all parties.

Today, most patients lack any comparative information and usually don't find out the cost of their care until after the fact, if at all. So Senator Grassley and I have proposed there be a free and searchable database, one that would allow seniors to find and choose doctors and other health care professionals enrolled in the Medicare program, adding the actual services that are performed and what price Medicare pays for those services.

Americans would finally be able to compare what Medicare pays for particular services in different parts of the country. Opening the Medicare claims database in this way would help us hold down health care costs, would also improve the quality of Medicare services, be a tool in fighting fraud, and would be useful in helping individuals with private health plans--private plans, HSAs and employer-based insurance.

What is going to happen there is, if you have an employer plan in Hartford, CT, or an HSA in Connecticut, the first thing you are going to say is, this is what Medicare pays for a particular service; why can't I, with my employer plan or my HSA have the same price? If I am not getting it, that probably means I am getting less pay, and I would rather see health care costs held down so I could get more in my paycheck.

So opening the record--from a quality standpoint--of Medicare-paid services would be a very powerful tool for measuring hospital and doctor performance. The claims data, with full protection of patient privacy, would open how doctors and hospitals are treating patients. It would also provide a full accounting of areas which lack access to doctors, specialists, treatment, and procedures. Making this information readily available would also allow doctors to collaborate on improved care management, and make sure the highest quality services are delivered to patients at lower costs.

Finally, the transparency we would get from the efforts Senator Grassley and I have teamed up on, which was part of the full repeal- and-replace strategy, would help us have a powerful new tool against fraud and waste.

We look at the Medicare Program. The Wall Street Journal and the Center for Public Integrity have been able to, even with limited access to Medicare claims data, look at that information and expose through a series of articles how doctors and medical practitioners game Medicare to increase their profits. If we made the system

more transparent, as Senator Grassley and I have sought to do and is in the full repeal-and-replace proposal, we would have a significant new tool to root out those--and they are a relatively small number, fortunately--who truly fleece seniors and taxpayers and allow us to get more value for the Medicare dollars.

In 2012 the Medicare Program cost about $580 billion. In a few years, given the demographics and technology, this bill is going to go over $1 trillion.

Often when I go to a high school and meet with young people--as I am sure does the distinguished Presiding Officer--16-, 17-, and 18-year- olds, we talk about matters which concern them, student scholarships, parks, transportation. Toward the end of the meeting I often say: So you all are 16, 17, and 18. My guess is, given your age, you probably tweet your friends when you get up in the morning about Medicare.

These students smile: Well, there is another person from Washington, DC, who doesn't get it.

I kid with them a little bit. Finally, I say: I just want you to know I am kidding, but not really. Because if we don't figure out how to protect the Medicare guarantee and hold down the costs for all you students who care about scholarships and parks and roads and the like, guess what. There is not going to be any money for the concerns which are first and foremost to you.

At this point, of course, the students jump right in, and they want to know about preventive medicine and how to root out waste and some of the things we are talking about. But we can't get to a lot of those important Medicare reform issues which Senator Warner articulated so well when he began his remarks if we can't get full repeal-and-replace of the badly flawed Medicare SGR Program.

I have spent a few minutes talking about how Senator Isakson has an approach which is bipartisan in both the Senate and the House on how to deal with chronic disease; I have talked about opening the Medicare database which is in full Medicare repeal and replace; I have talked about some broad reforms. Of course, at the center is paying for value, which is in full repeal and replace starting in 2018, and we may not get for a while if the Congress just keeps reupping from the 17th patch to 18th patch to the 19th patch.

So what we are going to have to do here in this body--and I know the distinguished Presiding Officer has a great interest in the question and the budget and the future particularly of entitlement costs, which I would say puts the Medicare guarantee and holding down costs front and center--we are going to have to speed up, we are going to have to accelerate the drive to actually get full repeal and replace, rather than patch 17, patch 18, patch 19, patch 20, and up. My view is we ought to be doing it now.

I recognize the objection from the other side. But I have talked to a lot of Senators over the last 3 days of both political parties, and I think there is a growing awareness that simply extending what we already have and punting on the need to fix the urgent structural problems with what we have--which is what some Senators and House Members sought to do--can't be ducked much longer.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time for closing.

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

Mr. President, I would like to respond to the Senator from Kentucky by again making it clear that it is my interest to work very closely with colleagues on the other side of the aisle on these health care issues, and that is why we took the proposal Senator Hatch had for repeal and replace on Medicare as the base bill. It is why I spent a lot of time working with colleagues on the other side of the aisle on Medicare Part D and trying to make sure it could be implemented well.

What was striking was that a lot of the stories about Medicare Part D in the first couple of months resembled the stories we are now seeing about the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office has made the comment that Part D has come in more than 25 percent less in terms of projected costs than what CBO saw years ago.

We are going to work in a constructive way. I hope we will not see a push, for example, to repeal the Affordable Care Act because if you do that, you will go back to the days when health care in America was for the healthy and the wealthy because you would again allow discrimination against those with a preexisting condition. The Affordable Care Act has air-tight protection for those who have a preexisting condition, and if you repeal the Affordable Care Act, you would simply go back to those days.

Working with colleagues in a bipartisan way on strengthening the health care system and our economy--absolutely. But turning back the clock on vital consumer protections, such as protecting our people from discrimination against preexisting conditions, is something that I think would be a huge mistake.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last weekend. It is entitled ``Health Insurers Make Late Push to Enroll Young People'' with respect to the Affordable Care Act. The signups topped the Congressional Budget Office's target ahead of the March 31 deadline.

I was particularly pleased by the comments from insurance executives in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Florida. They all talked about how more younger people are signing up, which, of course, is key to what we all want to do in terms of bipartisan approaches that strengthen the role of private health care in America.

I would like to have this article printed in the Record so my colleagues can read the remarks of Highmark, Inc., a major health plan based in Pittsburgh. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island said their fastest rising segment in March was people ages 22 to 40. Florida Blue senior vice president Jon Urbanek said, ``Younger people are signing up.''

I think all of this indicates--as far as private sector health care is concerned, which we all sought to promote in connection with this-- that more younger people are signing up for these plans.

Also, in response to my friend from Kentucky who asked about the jobs agenda, Senator Hatch and I have been working very constructively together on efforts to go forward in the Finance Committee--which could even begin this week--to deal with the tax extenders. Tax extenders are particularly important for the jobs Senator McConnell seeks--as he mentioned in his remarks--to get some traction. We will be talking about an extension for the research and development tax credit, which is key for innovation. We will be talking about jobs and renewable energy and jobs for veterans. This is the kind of jobs agenda we are pursuing in the Finance Committee.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Cardin be yielded 5 minutes at this time to address the SGR.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the waiver provisions of applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of the pending bill, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent to make a unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous order with respect to H.R. 4302, following disposition of the Owens nomination, when the Senate resumes legislative session, the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 336, S. 2157; that the substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill with no intervening action or debate; and that upon disposition of the bill, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 4302 as provided under the previous order.

I object.

Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I thank my partner from Utah for his exceptional work in terms of putting together a repeal and replace program and say, as I have in the course of the afternoon, that essentially the proposal I have talked about here today could more properly be called the Hatch-Kyl plan because the underlying bill is essentially the outstanding work done by the Senator from Utah, Chairman Camp, Chairman Upton, a number of Democrats, and essentially takes as a pay-for what our former colleague, Senator Kyl, a conservative by anybody's calculation had in mind.

We are going to be doing a lot of bipartisan work in the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Hatch and I, as I touched on earlier, are already working on the tax extenders. I simply thought that the ideas of Senator Hatch and Senator Kyl, two conservatives who I admire, fit quite well with the kind of bipartisan approach that you heard many Senators on this side of the aisle talk about this afternoon, such as Senator Cardin and Senator Warner.

At the end of the day, I guess I will put my final remarks in the context of what Senator Coburn, our friend from Oklahoma, said. He essentially said: Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today. The good work that Senator Hatch has done on this--I was not the point person for the Democrats at that time; it was Chairman Baucus--I think highlights what we could be moving on today.

The pay-for that our former colleague Senator Kyl from Arizona put forward several years ago is just as valid as it once was. So we will continue, as Senator Hatch has described this afternoon, to work very closely together. I am hopeful that here in the next couple of days colleagues will also see it on a vital matter relating to jobs because the two of us are working together on tax extenders, which is for promoting innovation in our economy: the research and development credit, renewable energy, jobs for veterans.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Anne Dwyer, a staff member on the Finance Committee, have floor privileges for the 113th Congress.