Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, the Senate adjourn until Tuesday, April 17, at 10 a.m.; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of Proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business until 11 a.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 1789, the postal reform bill, under the previous order; and that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m., to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

Mr. President, I am advised to inform my colleagues that the first vote tomorrow will be at approximately 11:10 a.m. on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 1789.

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

Madam President, I rise today to talk about the changes the affordable care act is making to the way care is delivered in our health care system. This is a topic that has not received much public attention. Instead, the public debate has largely focused on contentious flashpoints such as the individual mandate or preposterous false claims about death panels or rationing or socialized medicine.

While these contentious debates have raged on, there has been a quiet, steady, and important effort made by the health care industry, by State and local leaders, and by the Obama administration to improve our model of health care delivery. Progress made on these efforts is steadily transforming the care that is delivered under our health care system, from care that is disorganized and fragmented and often riddled with error, to care that is coordinated, efficient, and the high quality Americans deserve. By improving the quality of care and our health outcomes, these delivery system reforms promise to significantly reduce health care costs. Care gets better, costs go down, a true win- win.

I came to the floor today to release a report on health care delivery system reform and on the administration's progress implementing these provisions of the affordable care act. I undertook this project with the support and assistance of Chairman Harkin and Senator Mikulski, both strong advocates and experienced legislators on the types of reforms that are highlighted in the report.

The report makes the case for the reforms our country urgently needs in order to tackle our health care cost problem. My report defines five priority areas of health care delivery system reform: payment reform, quality improvement, primary and preventive care, administrative costs, and health information infrastructure. It outlines the potential cost savings in each area.

It also highlights successes across the country from leading private health providers such as Geisinger Health Systems in Pennsylvania, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, and the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, to the State of Vermont's Blueprint for Health, to several examples in my home State of Rhode Island, which has shown great leadership. We have much to learn from these efforts, and the affordable care act gives us the tools to support this type of reform across the country.

The problem is our health care delivery system remains clumsy and wasteful. We spend more than 18 percent of America's gross domestic product on our health care system every year. To put that into context, the highest any other industrialized country spends is approximately 12 percent of gross domestic product on health care. Eighteen percent United States of America; least efficient other industrialized country in the world, 12 percent. Huge room for improvement. In a nutshell, we overspend and underachieve.

The President's Council of Economic Advisers estimated that over $700 billion a year can be saved without compromising health outcomes. The Institutes of Medicine put the savings from these kinds of reforms at $765 billion a year. The New England Health Care Institute projected $850 billion in savings annually, and the Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have estimated the savings at $1 trillion a year. Whichever is accurate, this is clearly an enormous opportunity and it is right before us. We can achieve better results for American patients and families, and spend less to do it.

As I said, the solutions fall into five priority areas: payment reform, primary and preventive care, measuring and reporting quality, administrative simplification, and health information infrastructure. These solutions do not cut benefits; they do not increase premiums. Instead, they realign incentives to reduce or get rid of overpriced or unnecessary services, inefficiently delivered care, excessive administrative costs, and missed prevention opportunities.

In this report, we outline actual savings and care improvements that can be found in each priority area. For example, payment reform refers to the new payment reform models that pay doctors more for getting better results, as opposed to ordering more procedures.

In 2010, Blue Shield of California collaborated with Hill Physicians Medical Group and Catholic Healthcare West, California's largest hospital chain, on a pilot program for the California Public Employees Retirement System. The pilot program focused on improved coordination of care by sharing clinical and case management information across medical facilities and among physicians.

In its first year, the Blue Shield pilot program reported impressive results: Readmissions were reduced by 15 percent; hospital days were reduced by 15 percent; inpatient stays of 20 or more days were reduced by 50 percent, cut in half--all saving millions of dollars.

In primary and preventive care--as a country, we don't devote nearly enough resources to primary care and prevention. Only 6 percent to 8 percent of health care spending goes to primary care, to your regular doctor appointments. That is less than the percentage that goes in private insurance to insurance company overhead.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to give an example: When colorectal cancer is found early and treated, the 5- year survival

rate is 90 percent. But screening rates for colorectal cancer are low. The National Health Interview Survey found that in 2005, only half the population aged 50 and older received recommended screening for colon cancer. The American Cancer Society has found that increased colorectal screening in the pre-Medicare population could save lives and reduce subsequent Medicare treatment costs by $15 billion over 11 years.

On measuring and reporting quality, we don't do this anywhere near well enough. Nearly 1 in every 20 hospitalized patients in the United States gets a hospital-acquired infection. This is very expensive and it is preventable. A hospital-acquired infection should be a never event. Yet it costs our health care system approximately $2.5 billion a year in harmful costs we could avoid.

Administrative simplification. The proportion of the U.S. health care dollar that is lost to administration has always been high relative to our peer countries. The cost of administration by insurance companies is not only high itself, but it creates a shadow cost imposed on providers who have to fight back against the insurance company claims denial apparatus, and that cost is probably even higher.

A study published in Health Affairs documented that physicians spent on average 142 hours annually interacting with health plans, totaling nearly 7 percent of total health care costs. That is just the physician's time. That doesn't count all the nonphysician office staff dedicated to administration and chasing the insurance companies.

Last, health and information technology. Health information technology is the essential underlying framework for health care delivery system reform. It is the foundation on which other delivery system reforms can be built. In 2000, the Institute of Medicine estimated the number of deaths resulting from medical error as high as 98,000 American deaths annually. The most common cause of those preventable injuries and deaths in hospitals was medication errors, which can be reduced dramatically through the adoption of computerized physician order entry systems--health information technology.

The reform areas my report discusses synchronize with one another, and there is a growing national movement of providers and payers and States that recognize their critical importance. Focusing on quality rather than quantity and focusing on efficiency rather than volume will better serve not only their patients but their bottom line.

The report I am releasing today looks at 45 provisions in the affordable care act that promote these delivery system reforms. From the discussion one would not know that virtually one-third of the affordable care act was about these delivery system reforms because they have been noncontroversial, but they are in there and they are important.

The report also assesses the administration's progress in implementing them. We found that the administration has already implemented 25 provisions fully and made significant progress on two others. The complexity and sheer number of reforms included in the law make this accomplishment in a relatively short period of time noteworthy.

In addition to the hurdles presented by our fragmented health care system, there has been resistance in Congress to the administration's implementation efforts that has also created barriers. For the 20 delivery system provisions that have not yet been implemented, lack of congressional funding is a significant factor in delaying their forward progress.

In these reform provisions, the affordable care act is supporting and building upon the efforts undertaken by the private sector by realigning incentives in the health care system to support private sector efforts. A broad array of pilot and demonstration programs has been launched, from which best practices will be deployed nationwide. The process to get to a more sustainable path will be one of, as CBO Director Elmendorf said, ``experimentation and learning. It will be a process of innovation.''

The affordable care act improves the conditions that allow that innovation to take place, and it has the mechanisms needed to propagate those reforms widely throughout the system as quickly as possible once they are proven effective.

American ingenuity can overcome our toughest challenges, not through command and control but through dynamic, flexible, and persistent experimentation, learning, and innovation. We are at a fork in the road on our health care future. One path we could travel is to protect the dysfunctional status quo and cut benefits to pay for the waste. That is the way a lot of my colleagues want to go.

The other way is to shift incentives so that we innovate toward better, safer health care--which costs less. We as Americans need to trust that the path of innovation and experimentation is the right one and not give up on these efforts.

Last year, George Halvorson, who is the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and knows a little something about health care, said it this way:

There are people right now who want to cut benefits and

ration care and have that be the avenue to cost reduction in

this country and that is wrong. It's so wrong it's almost

criminal.

He continued:

It's an inept way of thinking about health care.

The affordable care act has the tools that enable providers to focus on quality rather than quantity, efficiency rather than volume, and patients rather than their bottom line, to avoid the inept way of thinking about health care.

As I close, let me say that throughout the process of writing this report I found one thing to be glaringly absent; that is, a cost savings goal set by the administration for us to reach toward on these delivery system reform provisions.

In 1961, President Kennedy declared that within 10 years the United States would put a man on the Moon and return him safely. This message was clear, it was direct, and it created accountability. As a result, a vast mobilization of private and public resources occurred to collaborate in innovative ways to achieve the President's purpose.

While the issue facing our country in health care is different, the urgency and the need to mobilize the public and private sectors toward improving quality and reducing cost is the same. So I challenge the administration to set a cost-savings target for delivery system reform. A cost-savings target will focus, guide, and spur the administration's efforts in a manner that vague intentions to bend the health care cost curve will never do. It also will provide a measurable goal by which we can evaluate our progress.

A clear and public goal will help make this vision of our health care system a reality. It will drive forward progress, and it will generate momentum to achieve that goal.

I urge the administration: Set a goal you are prepared to be accountable to meet.

When President Kennedy announced in September of 1962 that America would strive to put a man on the Moon, he said:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade . . . not

because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that

goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our

energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are

willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one

which we intend to win.

We need to face the challenge posed by the rising health care costs in our system. We need to recognize we cannot postpone finding a solution. We can win this challenge, we can drive our system toward a sustainable path of higher quality care and improved outcomes, and we can do so by setting clear goals and supporting the measures in the affordable care act that propel us in that direction.

I yield the floor.

I wonder if the Senator would yield for a question.

Setting aside the questions that this raises about the House's ability to govern, which I think are raised by this issue but focusing on this highway question, it is now the end of March. If we go 90 days, 30 days takes us through the end of April, 30 more days takes us through the end of May, and 30 more days takes us through the end of June. There is a seasonal component to getting this work done, is there not? What is the effect of our entire highway, road, and bridge industry having no certainty about what their funding is going to be until practically the Fourth of July

with the construction season then underway?

Mr. President, I see the Republican leader is on the floor, and I understand there may be a unanimous consent that is propounded, and I can offer some remarks in the context of an objection and a counterproposal, if the minority leader would like to proceed now.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak until I get a signal from the majority leader that he will seek recognition, at which point I will yield the floor.

I wished to follow in the footsteps of Senator Landrieu of Louisiana and reflect my own dismay and dissatisfaction with the situation we are in right now. The House extension on the highway bill, which we are going to be asked to proceed with, is going to cost--as far as the estimates I can see so far--around 100,000 jobs, and that is damage to our economy. That is a self-inflicted wound. More specifically, it is a House-inflicted wound, and I would very much like to see the Senate fight to force action on the Senate highway bill. It is a bipartisan bill with amendments and is fully paid for. This is a serious bill, as opposed to inflicting this kind of damage on our economy with a short- term extension.

Does the majority leader seek recognition?

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I would like to join my colleagues in trying to find a way to attach the Senate bill which passed this body better than 3 to 1, with a huge bipartisan majority, which is a good bill. It was paid for and had weeks of collegial work, back and forth, with bipartisan amendments, which is a serious bill that every major business group in the country, every major labor group in the country, and even environmental groups are supporting.

As the Senator from Maryland has said, it would certainly virtually be passed by the House if the Speaker would only bring it up, but for partisan reasons the House has refused to even bring it up for a vote. Instead, they sent us this extension which will cost 100,000 jobs.

It is my view that if we can send it back in this form, we will not experience the parade of horribles that the distinguished Republican leader has suggested because it will not come to that point. They will, in fact, pass the Senate bill and we will have a real highway bill and not a partisan extension that kills 100,000 jobs.

It is 1,000 jobs in my home State of Rhode Island. We have over 10 percent unemployment. This is a self-inflicted wound that hits Rhode Island, that hurts my home State. It makes no sense. Therefore, I ask, again--and I apologize for coming back to this, but I think it is important that we try to defend this body, which has worked well together, which has made a sensible, serious bill and is being infected by the dysfunction that is presently taking place in the House. This extension is a representation of that dysfunction.

So I again ask unanimous consent that the majority leader's request be modified so the amendment at the desk, the text of our highway bill, S. 1813, be added to the bill, that the text be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

I thank both the majority leader and minority leader for their patience.

Mr. President, it is with great sadness but also considerable pride that I join Senator Reed today to honor the service of SGT Dennis P. Weichel, Jr., of the Rhode Island National Guard, who died 1 week ago today while serving our country in Afghanistan.

Dennis' actions in defense of the lives of vulnerable civilians embody the most noble spirit of service, sacrifice, and loyalty found in the hearts of the men and women serving our Nation in uniform in the most dangerous corners of the globe. In particular, they reflect the spirit of service of the Rhode Island National Guard, which is the second most heavily deployed State guard in the country.

Dennis, who was 29 years old, lived in Providence. He had joined the Rhode Island National Guard in 2001, and he deployed to Iraq in 2005 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom as a member of Company D, 3rd Battalion, 172nd Infantry, Mountain, Regiment. In November 2011, Dennis mobilized with Company C, 1st Battalion, 143rd Infantry Regiment, 56th Troop Command, to Camp Atterbury, IN. His unit deployed forward to Afghanistan just this month.

He had only been in Afghanistan a few weeks when his unit encountered a group of children on its way out of the Black Hills Firing Range in Laghman Province. The children were scavenging in the road for brass shell casings, which are recyclable for money in Afghanistan.

Dennis, a father of three, hopped down from his vehicle to help move the children safely out of the path of the convoy of trucks and armored vehicles. As the heavy trucks rumbled past, it appears a young Afghan girl darted back into the road to grab one last brass shell casing. Seeing one of his unit's Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles bearing down on the girl, Dennis reacted swiftly and selflessly, lifting the girl to safety and placing himself in the path of the 16- ton MRAP.

I am sure this was a parent's instinct and that Dennis had in mind his own children: Nicholas, age 8; Hope, age 6; and baby Madison. Dennis was evacuated to the Jalalabad Medical Treatment Facility, and there he succumbed to his injuries.

Dennis leaves behind his fiancee Ashley, the mother of their 8-month- old baby girl Madison. He leaves behind his former wife Amanda, who is mother to his son Nicholas and his daughter Hope. He leaves behind his mother and father Linda Reynolds and Dennis Weichel, Sr.

My deepest and heartfelt sorrows and prayers go out to all of Dennis's family and to his friends. Senator Reed and I will join them this weekend to pay our respects when Dennis comes home for the last time to Rhode Island.

Dennis acted with instinctive bravery on that road in Laghman Province. His action reflected the selfless dedication of an American soldier and the heart of a father toward a child. Dennis has been posthumously promoted from the rank of specialist to sergeant, and his family will receive the Bronze Star he has been awarded for heroism.

The writer Joseph Campbell once described a hero as someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than one's self. In giving his life to save one small child, SGT Dennis Weichel has reflected great honor upon our military and its best traditions and this great Nation and the values for which it stands. He will justly be remembered a hero.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wish to take some time this evening to congratulate our Environmental Protection Agency and to thank them for the rule they proposed this week regarding new coal-fired powerplants.

They have taken a certain amount of heat over this rule and have been criticized. But I come from Rhode Island, and Rhode Island is a downwind State from the coal-fired powerplants of the Midwest. We pay the price for the coal power those Midwestern States burn. We pay the price in children coming in to our hospitals with asthma attacks. We pay the price in ozone levels that are outside our control. We are a State that contributes very little in pollution to other States, but we are on the receiving end. We are down the gun barrel of the big array of coal-fired powerplants in the Midwest.

They have not only continued to burn dirty coal, they have built particularly high stacks so the emissions from that coal plant get pushed into the high atmosphere and they move east toward Rhode Island in the prevailing winds and we experience that as smog, as ozone, as air pollution. So there is an element of deliberateness to this.

There are places in this country that are in compliance with air quality standards because they have put their emissions up high enough that it lands somewhere else. Rhode Island is often out of compliance with air quality standards, and it is not from emissions in our home State. So we hear a lot from the coal-burning polluters about all the terrible things the EPA rule is going to cause. It is going to cause nothing but good in Rhode Island.

It is outrageous that on a bright, clear summer day one can be driving in to work in Rhode Island and hear over the car radio the announcer letting us know that today is going to be a bad air day in Rhode Island. We look out the window and it looks absolutely beautiful, but it is going to be a bad air day, they tell us. Infants should be kept indoors in air-conditioning, seniors should not go outside, people with breathing difficulties should stay indoors, and everyone should avoid vigorous physical activity because the air quality is too poor. That is not a price a carbon polluter in one State should get to require the seniors, the children, the families in another State to have to pay.

I am delighted EPA has begun to apply this rule. Unfortunately, it only applies to new powerplants. So the existing coal-burning powerplants that create so much of this pollution in our State, we are going to need to continue to work to crack down on until these States are sufficiently responsible in their use of power and in how they burn fuel to generate their power that they are not exporting bad air and pollution to other States.

As important as this is to Rhode Island as a downwind State, as important it is to protect the lungs of our kids and our families, this is also an important step for EPA to have taken because of the global problem we have from carbon pollution. The carbon pollution we are unleashing as a country--frankly, as a species across the globe--is having a dire effect in our atmosphere. It is having a dire effect in our oceans. It is truly causing our climate to change and the changes are going to be very difficult and very dangerous for our country in the future. That is not just my opinion. That is the opinion of our military leaders. That is the opinion of our national defense intelligence establishment. It is treated as a fact in those responsible quarters of our government.

Unfortunately, here and down there in the House of Representatives, there is a campaign of denial that is being propagated that is clearly supported by the polluting industries and has the purpose of protecting their financial

interests and enabling them to continue to profit from the harm they are imposing on our oceans and on our atmosphere.

It would be nice if the laws of government could supersede the laws of nature. It would be nice if we could repeal the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, the laws of biology, but we can't. It is arrogance to presume we could. The fact of what the carbon pollution is doing to our world can be denied in this Chamber, it can be denied down the hall in the House of Representatives all day long and all night long, and it is not going to change the result. It is actually only recently that there was a denial industry attacking the problem of climate change and trying to minimize it, trying to mock it, trying to distract people from it.

In the past, the denial industry was pointed elsewhere. In the past, the denial industry was supporting the tobacco companies in convincing people it wasn't that bad for them. The science isn't complete yet. Don't worry. There is still doubt.

It deployed itself against lead. When the dangers of lead paint became known, the denial industry went to bat for the lead industry. It denied that lead was very poisonous, said it only happened to very poor people, went through all their rigmarole. The same process: create doubt about a scientific concern in order to prevent action being taken to protect people. Now they have turned on carbon pollution.

But before they turned from tobacco and lead to carbon pollution, it was pretty well accepted how basic this science is. The first scientist to determine that carbon dioxide would have the effect of warming the atmosphere if its concentration increased was a scientist named Tyndall. I think he was Irish and wrote in England in 1865. Around the time of the Civil War, this was discovered.

By the year I was born, in 1955, there are basic texts that describe that the more carbon pollution we put into the air, the more it traps heat, the warmer the climate gets.

It is virtually indisputable what is happening to the oceans. We are not talking projections. We are not talking estimates. We are talking measurements, and the measurements show the acidity of our oceans and the increase in acidification is happening faster than it has in 3 million years. The extent of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now, measured, is outside of a bound that has been maintained on the surface of our planet for 800,000 years--8,000 centuries. That is a long time. We have only been farming as a species for about 10,000 years. So 800,000 takes us way back to a very primitive species. Through all that time, we have been in this bandwidth of carbon in our atmosphere and now we are out of it. We are flying out of it, and it is getting worse all the time.

Instead of taking it seriously in this building, we are listening to the siren song of the big-money polluters, as if the laws of government, the laws of Congress could repeal the laws of nature that we know--the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, the laws of biology that are causing this to happen.

I appreciate very much the Presiding Officer, the junior Senator from Minnesota, having been so energetic and helpful in continuing to bring this thought to the Senate floor. I think we had an effective and important colloquy on the floor several weeks ago discussing this very point. I think it is important that from time to time we stand and remind our colleagues that there is a truth to this matter. The truth is that we are releasing unprecedented, massive amounts of carbon pollution into our atmosphere that, as a matter of science, the laws of physics, warm the atmosphere, and that warming atmosphere creates dramatic changes in our weather, in our coasts, in our sea levels. Our coasts are probably going to be hit the hardest of anyplace, and Rhode Island is a coastal State.

The ocean absorbs the pollution, so the harm is not just in the atmosphere and to the climate, it is to the ocean itself as its pH level changes from the absorption of carbon. Nobody doubts that the ocean absorbs carbon. There is no credible debate on that. You can measure the ocean's pH.

It is important that every once in a while we tell the truth on this because the time is coming very close when it will be past the tipping point of taking the action we need to take to protect ourselves, protect our coasts, our economy, our national security.

I wanted to take this moment as the week ended to come and share my thoughts again on this subject. I will continue to do it from time to time because I think it is important that America be a country that tells the truth about problems, and I think it is important that Rhode Island, as an ocean State, be as protected as we can from the changes we see coming.

The IPCC just reported on the weather effects of climate change and said that you cannot assign a particular storm to the effects of climate change, but in various areas you can connect the threat to climate change with varying degrees of certainty. With respect to the threat from sea-level rise and from worsened storms driving that raised sea ashore and causing flooding and damage, the certainty range was 90 to 100 percent. If we are not going to listen to warnings that the scientists now tell us are 90 to 100 percent certain, we are really making a grievous mistake.

I will conclude by thanking the Presiding Officer again for his support and help. I hope the time comes when this body can actually treat this problem in a serious and sober way and the dark hand of the polluting industry tapping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears and telling us what we can and cannot say is pushed back and instead we stand in the light of day, in the light of science and fact, and behave responsibly about the changes that are coming and our role in causing these changes.

I see the distinguished Senator from Georgia in the Chamber, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor of the Senate this evening to urge Speaker Boehner and the House of Representatives to pass the bipartisan Senate highway jobs bill now. This is an important bill that would save or create nearly 3 million jobs with really a stroke of the President's pen.

From Washington in the Northwest, 33,700 jobs, to Rhode Island in the Northeast, 9,000 jobs in our small State, to Florida in the South, 81,700 jobs, this is the jobs bill on which we need to act.

Rhode Island would receive $227 million a year for highways, roads, and bridges from this bill, and that would hold us steady at funding this year's funding levels.

Rhode Island would also receive an additional $30.5 million each year for transit projects, which would be a 10-percent increase over this year's Federal aid.

Importantly, this bipartisan Senate bill that will be so good for jobs across this country includes language authorizing the Projects of National and Regional Significance Program. That will help fund critical infrastructure projects such as the Providence Viaduct. Where I 95, the main northeast highway corridor, comes through Rhode Island, it goes through our capital city, Providence, next to the Providence Place Mall, and it proceeds through Providence as a bridge. It is a big, long land bridge. Its condition is so poor that when you go underneath it, as you do to drive down and enter the back parking entrance of the mall, and you look up, you see that between the I-beams that support the highway have been laid planks. The planks are there to keep the highway that is falling in from landing on the cars that pass underneath the highway below.

If you look just to the side where Amtrak, the main rail corridor for the Northeast passes under the Viaduct, you see the same thing: Planks across the I-beams so the road that is falling in does not land on the trains as they pass or block the tracks.

It takes a program like the Projects of National and Regional Significance Program to address repairs of this magnitude, particularly in a small State like mine, which simply does not have the resources to repair a facility like that built in 1964.

The Senate bill would send significant funds to States to build badly needed projects like these. All of those projects not only repair crumbling, broken, and deteriorating infrastructure, but they put Americans back to work at a time when we still urgently need these jobs.

So we passed this bill in the Senate. We passed it with 74 votes, and another Senator making it 75, expressing that had he not been required to be at a funeral in his home State, he would have voted for it. So we have 75 votes on a bipartisan bill that spent, if I remember correctly, 5 weeks on the floor of this body getting amendments, bipartisan amendments, amendments of all kinds being worked on and improved to the point where it could pass out of this body with that kind of a majority--even in the contentious and partisan atmosphere that often prevails in Washington.

It is a good bill, it is a bipartisan bill, it is a highway bill, it is a jobs bill, and the House should move on it.

What have they done instead?

Well, the House Republicans initially proposed funding transportation programs with a 30-percent cut in existing transportation funding. That, obviously, would have been a disaster. It would have resulted in the loss of an estimated 600,000 jobs across the country. So, of course, it was overwhelmingly opposed by transportation advocates and by business groups.

The House Republicans then tried to introduce something called the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act back at the end of January. This bill was so extreme and so flawed that it was even opposed by many House Republicans. It removed dedicated funding for transit programs and went after things like offshore drilling.

Transportation Secretary LaHood was a Republican Member of the House

of Representatives himself for many years. He said about that House bill that it was ``the worst transportation bill I have ever seen'' and that it would ``take us back to the horse and buggy era.''

So with bipartisan opposition to this extreme, the worst bill that Secretary LaHood had ever seen, Speaker Boehner was forced to pull it, and that was that for that effort.

Then they spent months going after budget proposals that would reduce spending on our highways and on our bridges. Ultimately, they have thrown in the towel. They have no transportation bill in the House. They cannot get one up for a vote. So they have fallen back on trying to pass short-term extensions.

Well, first of all, that is not a great outcome for jobs and for the economy. According to the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, short-term extensions have had significant detrimental effects. These include delaying $80 million worth of projects, which equates to the loss of 1,000 job-years of work; delaying planning for needed safety and structural improvements of a $300 million to $400 million interchange that is in deplorable condition; delaying the advertising and awarding of the entire 2012 formula-funded construction program, which may cause the State to miss an entire construction season, putting the entire road construction industry out of work for that season; making long-range planning and the development of a sound State Transportation Improvement Program nearly impossible; and, last, jeopardizing the State's plans to design and construct the replacement of the Providence Viaduct I spoke about.

So the idea that an extension just carries on the status quo, it is more or less OK, it will not create harm, and it will not cost jobs is just plain dead wrong. There is job loss and there is economic loss associated with these extensions.

So how have they done on the extensions? Well, they have not even managed to pull themselves together to deal with the extensions. The House leadership has proposed 60-day extensions and 90-day extensions to the Federal transportation programs. Twice they have placed these proposals over on their calendar, but both times they have had to pull the proposals down because they do not have the votes.

So what do they have over there? They have no bill they can vote for. The bill they did put up was called one of the worst and most extreme transportation bills in history by a former Republican Congressman. They cannot get their act together to pass an extension. Even assuming it is not a bad idea to pass an extension for our economy, they still cannot do it, even as bad of an idea as that is. So they have nothing, and we are coming up on a deadline. On March 31, the authority to draw funds from the Highway Trust Fund runs out. So we are up against a pretty serious time constraint. As we whittle away to those last days, and as they get ready to leave the House and head home without having done their work on transportation, it is becoming more and more urgent that they take some action. If they cannot do a bill of their own, if they cannot pass a 90-day extension, if they cannot pass a 60-day extension, there is one obvious solution that is standing there as big as the proverbial rhinoceros in the living room; that is, pass the Senate highway transportation bill.

It is right there. It is ready to go. It could be on the President's desk in just days. It is bipartisan, with 75 votes in the Senate. It preserves these important programs and saves or creates nearly 3 million jobs in this country. The people of America understand that our highways, our roads, and bridges are important. They want us to go forward on this bill. This is not controversial. This should be easy.

So the House needs to take a look at where they are and make a hard decision.

They should not go home without addressing this problem and let us hit the deadline wall--particularly not with a good, solid, bipartisan Senate highway bill waiting to be taken up, waiting to be voted on, and waiting to be signed. All of the indications are that if the Senate highway bill were taken up by the House, it would pass overwhelmingly. Who would vote against a bill that creates 2.9 million jobs? Who would vote against a bill that maintains our highways, our roads, and our bridges? Who doesn't get it that in this country, our highway, bridge, and road infrastructure is in terrible shape? We understand this. The Nation's civil engineers have given our infrastructure near-failing grades in these areas. Other countries spend 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 percent of their gross domestic product on infrastructure, keeping it right, knowing it helps grow their economy. We are down below that.

It is very unfortunate that the House at this point cannot sort itself out to come up with its own transportation bill, cannot sort itself out to pass an extension--they cannot even do that. A deadline is coming at them that is nonnegotiable. Ideology, partisanship, rhetoric--all of those things don't matter against the hard deadline they are driving this country toward. I hope and urge that they take up the Senate Transportation bill, put it to a vote, let's get going, let's put 2.9 million people to work rebuilding our roads and highways, and let's get America moving and working again.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 408, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to S. Res. 409, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until Thursday, March 29, at 9:30 a.m.; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 2230, the Paying A Fair Share Act, with the time until 11:30 a.m. equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the Republicans controlling the second 30 minutes; further, that the filing deadline for second-degree amendments to S. 2204, the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act, be 10:30 a.m. on Thursday; and that at 11:30 a.m., the Senate proceed to a vote on the motion to invoke cloture on S. 2204.

Mr. President, I am informed that the first vote tomorrow will be at approximately 11:30 in the morning on the motion to invoke cloture on the Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act. The Transportation bill expires at the end of the month. That will also have to be addressed before we leave this week.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.