Floor Statements

Let me first congratulate Chairman Harkin for his remarks today but more than that the work that has preceded today on the health care bill. He was an ardent advocate for the prevention programs that save lives and money. It was a real pleasure to work with him at that time.

Today is the second anniversary of the passage of the affordable care act. I wish to describe how the law is already making a difference for families in Rhode Island and across the country by drastically improving access to higher quality care, by addressing rising health care costs, and by protecting consumers.

Look at the changes. Children with preexisting conditions were denied coverage--no longer. Lifetime limits on insurance policies left many American families struggling to pay medial care bills on their own--no longer. Insurers could cancel coverage for individuals who became sick--no longer.

In addition, the law helps kids just out of school who all too often cannot get that first job with health insurance. It helps them to stay on their parents' insurance policies until age 26. For seniors, prescription drug costs are down as the Medicare doughnut hole begins to close. This is real change, and it hits home in my home State of Rhode Island. I hear from Rhode Islanders and I listen.

I heard from Greg, a father in Providence, who told me about his 16- year-old son Will. Will spends 2 hours every day undergoing treatment to keep his cystic fibrosis in check. In addition to his daily treatment and prescriptions, Will sees a specialist four times a year to monitor the disease. Greg said he often thinks about his son Will's future and whether his son will be able to maintain health insurance coverage and receive the treatment he needs.

Thanks to the affordable care act, Will does not have to worry about insurance companies denying him coverage because he has a preexisting condition or fear that he will have to go without treatment because his medical bills will have pushed him over some arbitrary lifetime limit.

As many as 374,000 Rhode Islanders, including 89,000 children similar to Will, can now receive the treatments they need free from lifetime limits on coverage. People who want to repeal ObamaCare should be ready to look Greg in the eye and tell him why they want to take that away from him and his son.

Olive, a senior from Woonsocket, shared with me that her husband takes several medicines to help treat his Alzheimer's disease. A 3- month supply for two of his medications costs close to $1,000. As Olive said: Those months go by quickly. Last year, Olive and her husband fell into the prescription drug doughnut hole in July. Without the affordable care act, they would have been responsible for paying the full cost of his medications out of pocket, but because of health care reform, Olive and her husband received a discount on their prescription drugs and saved $2,400 last year.

Olive and her husband are 2 of the over 14,800 Rhode Islanders who received a 50-percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs when they hit the doughnut hole. This discount resulted in an average savings of over $550 per person, for a total savings of more than $8.2 million for seniors in Rhode Island alone.

People who want to repeal ObamaCare should be ready to look Olive in the eye and tell her why that $8.2 million should go back into the drug companies' pockets, why she and her husband should have to cough up an extra $2,400 for the drug companies.

Brianne, a 22-year-old graduate of the University of Rhode Island, currently works part time as a physical therapy aid in Providence. Her job does not offer health insurance. Brianne suffers from several seasonal and food allergies. She makes frequent trips to her allergist. Because of the affordable care act, Brianne can stay on her mother's health insurance so she can continue to get the treatment she needs. Without this coverage, Brianne said, she would be hard-pressed to afford the treatments necessary to address her allergies.

As of June of last year, Brianne was 1 of over 7,500 young adults in Rhode Island who gained insurance coverage as a result of the reform law. People who want to repeal ObamaCare need to explain to Brianne why she and those other 7,500 Rhode Island kids should be kicked off their parents' policy.

The affordable care act has also brought needed relief to employers that are still the leading source of health coverage in the United States. Geoff is a small business owner in Providence. He provides health care insurance for his employees because, as he said, ``It's the right thing to do.'' But the rising costs of his employees' health insurance have placed increased pressure on his business. Geoff's business qualified for the health care law's small business health care tax credit, which covers up to 35 percent of premiums paid by a small business owners for its employees' coverage. These credits are a lifeline for small businesses that are struggling in today's difficult economy and for the people those small businesses employ. People who want to repeal ObamaCare need to look Geoff in the eye and tell him why they want to take away that tax credit lifeline that lets him provide coverage for his employees.

The affordable care act also provided support for community health centers. In Rhode Island, similar to elsewhere in the country, community health centers fill a critical gap in our health care system, delivering comprehensive, preventive, and primary care to patients, regardless of their ability to pay.

Dennis Roy is the CEO of the East Bay Community Action Program in Rhode Island. He tells me the affordable care act has provided critical support for his community health center's mission. East Bay has received $3 million through this law to construct a new community health center in Newport which, despite its international reputation, is one of Rhode Island's poorer cities. The new community health center will triple the available patient care space for needy Newport County residents.

To date, Rhode Island community health centers have received $14.8 million to create new health center sites in medically underserved areas. This is important American infrastructure, and we should not tear it down to make a political point or to assuage a political ideology. These stories are just a few of many that show how the affordable care act is working for Rhode Island families, seniors, and small businesses.

Although we have made great progress, the work continues. Over the last 2 years, a tremendous effort has been made by the health care industry, by State and local leaders, and by the Obama administration to develop a better model of health care delivery, to shift from a system that is disorganized and fragmented to one that is coordinated, is efficient, and delivers the high-quality care Americans deserve.

Private health care providers, such as Geisinger, Intermountain, and the Marshfield Clinic, are already focusing on quality rather than quantity, efficiency rather than volume, to better serve their patients and their bottom line. Because of the affordable care act, the Federal Government now has the opportunity to support and encourage their focus and to deliver much needed savings in the most patient-centered way, by improving the quality of care and health outcomes.

There is tremendous potential for improved care and cost savings in five key areas: payment reform, primary and preventive care, measuring and reporting quality, administrative simplification, and health information technology.

Savings, from a range of responsible viewpoints, run from $700 billion to $1 trillion a year, all without compromising the quality of care Americans have come to expect--indeed, likely improving the quality of care.

I will shortly release a report to Chairman Harkin and the HELP Committee on the Obama administration's implementation of the delivery system reform provisions of the affordable care act. When I say ``delivery system reform,'' I mean those provisions that

improve the quality of care, avoid medical errors, coordinate care better, reward prevention and primary care, reduce administrative overhead, and reward who gets the best health outcomes, not who orders the most treatment procedures.

I worked with Senator Mikulski on this project. She authored the key delivery provisions of the law and has great expertise in this area.

These changes will make a real difference for millions of Americans, and I look forward to sharing the report and its findings with my colleagues next week.

Before I close, I would like to acknowledge Rhode Island's work on a State health insurance exchange provided for by the affordable care act. Rhode Island is leading the way as the first State to receive level two grant funding to set up the exchange. The exchanges are commonsense, local, competitive marketplaces where individuals and small businesses will be able to purchase health insurance, with the prices and benefits out there on display. When insurance companies compete for your business on a transparent, level playing field, it will drive down costs. Exchanges will let individuals and small businesses use their purchasing power to drive down costs, much like big businesses are able to do.

Progress has been made by State leaders such as our Lieutenant Governor Elizabeth Roberts, who is leading this effort to get to this point. They are remarkable. I urge them to keep up the good work.

Whether it is changing the lives of Gregg and Will or Olive or Brianne or Geoff and his employees or whether it is building our community health center infrastructure or supporting the private sector leaders who are pivoting to a new and better and more efficient delivery system or whether it is something as simple as a marketplace for health insurance that is open, fair, and on the level, the affordable care act has made a real difference for hard-working families in Rhode Island. I will continue to work hard alongside these leading health care providers, alongside the Obama administration, and alongside my colleagues in the Congress to see the full promise of the affordable care act realized for this great Nation's advantage.

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

Madam President, I wish to join my colleagues in a tribute to Senator Mikulski.

I am delighted to join my colleagues in joining in this tribute to perhaps our favorite colleague, Barbara Mikulski, on her becoming the longest serving woman in congressional history. Her work in these Halls has made our country stronger. In a place where partisan rancor too often rules the day, she has established a legacy of service to her constituents and to all of us in this body that stands as an example to every one of us.

Her political career began in the late 1960s when she launched a campaign to stop the construction of a highway over a historic neighborhood she wanted to protect in Baltimore. She won that battle and went on to run for the Baltimore City Council in 1971. More than 40 years later and following a successful stint in the House of Representatives, Barbara Mikulski continues to blaze an impressive trail.

During her 27 years in the Senate, she became the first woman to sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee, the first woman to chair an appropriations subcommittee, and the first Democratic woman elected to Senate leadership. Last year, we celebrated Barbara as she became the longest serving female Senator. Now she has crossed yet another milestone, passing Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, having served in the Congress longer than any woman in history.

Of course, we do not just celebrate the quantity of Barbara's service but its quality. No one is better at drilling down to the heart of an issue and expressing it in punchy, unforgettable terms. No one cheers us up more than Barbara when she tells us to: Stand tall, square our shoulders, put on our lipstick, and rise to the occasion. We do not all put on lipstick, but we all get the message.

No one better combines the idealism of politics with the proactive abilities of government. She told me once with a twinkle in her eye, ``I am a reformer, but I am a bit of a wardheeler too.'' Practicality and passion combined is what makes politics successful, and no one does it better than Barbara.

When she was first elected to the House in 1977, she was 1 of 21 women in Congress; 18 in the House and only 3 in the Senate. Today there are 93 women

serving including 17 Senators. Barbara has earned the distinction of dean of the Senate women. But she never, never forgot her roots as a champion for those who need a voice in this building.

In her years in the Senate, Barbara Mikulski's dedication to her constituents and women's rights has been clear, from becoming a champion of women's health issues to organizing training seminars for women of both parties elected to the Senate, to sponsoring and pushing through with a force that we all remember the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

During my much shorter tenure as a Senator, I have had the great privilege and pleasure to work with Barbara to pass landmark health care reform legislation out of the HELP Committee. I have also served with her on the Intelligence Committee, and worked closely with her on the Senate Intelligence Committee's cyber task force to evaluate cyber threats and issue recommendations to the full committee. I have taken from those experiences great affection and respect for Senator Barbara Mikulski. These are issues that are complex, complicated, difficult, and abstruse, and she brought to them the verve and the vigor and the vision to move on them. And those really are her hallmarks: verve, vigor, and vision.

I know all of us here in this Chamber are proud to call Senator Barb our colleague and friend as she makes history yet again. Her hard work and collegial spirit have enriched this Senate. I wish her all of the best in the accomplishments ahead. On behalf of all Rhode Islanders, Senator Mikulski, I congratulate you for this milestone in your history, the Senate's history, and our Nation's history.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I am here today to introduce the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, and we are informally closing DISCLOSE 2.0 in recognition of the original bill that Senator Schumer worked so hard to get passed a few years ago.

The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and special interest money in elections, bringing about an era where corporations and other wealthy interests can drown out the voices of voters in our political system.

Worse still, much of this spending is anonymous so the public does not even know who is spending millions to influence our elections. Here is how my home State newspaper, the Providence Journal, explained the Citizens United decision:

The ruling will mean that, more than ever, big-spending

economic interests will determine who gets elected. More

money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns.

Free speech for most individuals will suffer because their

voices will count for even less than they do now. They will

simply be drowned out by the big money.

I think events have proven the Providence Journal correct. Senator John McCain recently described these events. He said:

I predicted when the United States Supreme Court, with

their absolute ignorance of what happens in politics, struck

down [the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law], that there

would be a flood of money into campaigns, not transparency,

unaccounted for, and this is exactly what is happening.

If we look at the 2006 and 2010 congressional elections where there was not a Presidential race going on after Citizens United in 2010, there was a fourfold increase in expenditures from super PACs and other outside groups compared to what occurred in 2006, with nearly three- quarters of that political advertising coming from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006--three-quarters of it.

Also, in 2010, those 501(c)(4) and (c)(6) organizations spent more than $135 million in unlimited and secret contributions. Anonymous spending rose

from 1 percent of outside spending in 2006 to 47 percent of outside spending in 2010. Nearly half of the money spent through these outside organizations is anonymous and secret.

If we look at the 2012 race that we are in right now, a Presidential race, and compare it to the last Presidential race, we are already seeing similar ominous signs about the influence of money. The Federal Election Commission predicts that over $11 billion will be spent on the 2012 elections, about double what was spent in 2008.

Super PACs, mostly linked to individual candidates, spent about $100 million through the Super Tuesday contest in the Republican Presidential primary, again, about twice what was spent over the same period in 2008. In the two weeks leading up to Super Tuesday, outside PACs that supported the Republican Presidential candidates spent three times as much as the candidates themselves.

Our campaign finance system is broken. Immediate action is required to fix it. Americans of all political stripes, whatever their persuasion, are disgusted by the influence of unlimited anonymous corporate cash in our elections and by campaigns that succeed or fail depending on how many billionaires the candidates have in their pockets.

Editorial boards across the country decry this new pollution of our politics. Republicans, such as former Governors Mike Huckabee and Tom Ridge, have concluded that super PACs are, in Mr. Huckabee's words, ``one of the worst things that ever happened in American politics.''

Seven in ten Americans, including a majority of both Republicans and Democrats, believe super PACS should be illegal. Countless Rhode Islanders are fed up with the influence of corporate money in elections. I hear them at my community dinners; I read their mail. Charles in Little Compton wrote to me,

[I]t is wrong that someone who shouts louder or further, in

this instance solely because they have more money, should

drown out another person . . . [C]orporations have no problem

getting their views aired.

Hope-Whitney in Bristol wrote,

[J]ust the idea that a corporation is considered an

individual in regards to politics goes against everything

American to me. . . . [T]hey have become the Emperors as they

have the financial ability to be heard everywhere. . . . I'd

be willing to bet that a majority of their own employees do

not agree with their political representation.

Elizabeth in Wakefield wrote:

Big business should not control our elections. It is bad

enough that they deeply influence our politicians through

lobbyists.

But because of a 5-to-4 decision by the conservative Justices in Citizens United, Congress cannot prohibit super PACs from drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans in our elections. That leaves us with one weapon left in the fight against the overwhelming tidal wave of money from special interests. That weapon is disclosure, daylight, information.

Today, along with 34 other Senators, I am introducing legislation that will shine a bright light on these powerful shadowy interests. With this legislation, every citizen will know who is spending these great sums of money to get their candidate elected. I am delivering this speech at a time that Senator Bennet, the distinguished junior Senator from Colorado is presiding. I am very conscious and aware as I deliver it of the immense amount of work that he has put in in the process of preparing this legislation, working on a strategy for going forward, working with our leadership to commence that strategy.

I am grateful to him and the other Senators I will mention later. For now I will give the Presiding Officer the lead. In 2010, under Senator Schumer's leadership and guidance, we came within one vote of passing his original DISCLOSE Act. Since then, the problem of anonymous and unaccountable corporate money has become dramatically worse, and Americans are losing faith in our political system as a result.

More and more people believe their government responds only to wealthy and powerful corporate interests. As they see their jobs disappear and their wages stagnate, and bailouts and special deals for the big guys, they lose faith that their elected officials are listening to them. For our democracy to remain strong, this trend cannot continue. We must redouble our efforts and pass the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.

The bill we are introducing today has been trimmed down so it just does two simple things: One, if you are an organization such as a corporation, a super PAC or a 401(c)(4) group spending money in an election campaign in support of or in opposition to a candidate, you have to tell the public where that money came from and what you are spending it on in a timely manner. That should not be a controversial idea to anyone, at least to anyone who is not seeking special influence.

If you are a top executive or a major donor of an organization spending millions of dollars on campaign ads, you have to take responsibility for those ads by having your name on the ad, and in the case of an executive appearing in the ad yourself. That is it. Two simple provisions. Disclosure and a disclaimer. These are reasonable provisions that should have wide support from Democrats and Republicans alike.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012, the DISCLOSE 2.0 Act, trims down the original DISCLOSE Act in another way. We have raised the threshold for donations that require disclosure from $600 to $10,000. It may sound as though $10,000 is a ridiculously high threshold, as though that is an awful lot of money, but when we look at what is happening in these super PACs, $10,000 in this particular world is no big deal.

Ninety-three percent of money raised by super PACs in 2010 and 2011 that can be traced to specific donors came in contributions of $10,000 or more. So we will catch probably 93 percent of the money in this reporting provision, while leaving smaller donations and dues payments to membership organizations private.

The act also does not require the disclosure of nonpolitical donations, affiliate transfers, business investments, and other transfers of money that have nothing to do with electioneering.

At the same time, however, the bill also contains strong provisions to prevent the use of dummy organizations or shell corporations to hide their donations from public view. The way this bill is drafted, if somebody sets up a phony organization to take a contribution and, in turn, make that contribution to another phony organization and, in turn, make that contribution to another phony organization, before it finally lands in a super PAC that is benefiting a candidate, we will be able to trace that series of transactions.

So it is a good law, a simpler law, an effective law. It only goes after high-dollar givers. Passing it would prove to the American people that Congress is committed to fairness, that we are committed to equality, and that we are committed to the fundamental principle of a government ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.''

In closing, I thank Senator Schumer for his exemplary leadership and determination on this vitally important issue, as well as Senators Michael Bennet, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom Udall, all of whom have worked very closely on this legislation. I also thank the act's other cosponsors--all 35--who, similar to myself, understand that the legitimacy of our democratic process and the integrity of our democratic elections are at stake.

I look forward to working with any of my colleagues in the Senate who believe the voices of American citizens should be defended, and I hope all will join me in supporting this critical piece of legislation to restore integrity to our elections.

Mr. President, I am here today to introduce the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, and we are informally closing DISCLOSE 2.0 in recognition of the original bill that Senator Schumer worked so hard to get passed a few years ago.

The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and special interest money in elections, bringing about an era where corporations and other wealthy interests can drown out the voices of voters in our political system.

Worse still, much of this spending is anonymous so the public does not even know who is spending millions to influence our elections. Here is how my home State newspaper, the Providence Journal, explained the Citizens United decision:

The ruling will mean that, more than ever, big-spending

economic interests will determine who gets elected. More

money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns.

Free speech for most individuals will suffer because their

voices will count for even less than they do now. They will

simply be drowned out by the big money.

I think events have proven the Providence Journal correct. Senator John McCain recently described these events. He said:

I predicted when the United States Supreme Court, with

their absolute ignorance of what happens in politics, struck

down [the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law], that there

would be a flood of money into campaigns, not transparency,

unaccounted for, and this is exactly what is happening.

If we look at the 2006 and 2010 congressional elections where there was not a Presidential race going on after Citizens United in 2010, there was a fourfold increase in expenditures from super PACs and other outside groups compared to what occurred in 2006, with nearly three- quarters of that political advertising coming from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006--three-quarters of it.

Also, in 2010, those 501(c)(4) and (c)(6) organizations spent more than $135 million in unlimited and secret contributions. Anonymous spending rose

from 1 percent of outside spending in 2006 to 47 percent of outside spending in 2010. Nearly half of the money spent through these outside organizations is anonymous and secret.

If we look at the 2012 race that we are in right now, a Presidential race, and compare it to the last Presidential race, we are already seeing similar ominous signs about the influence of money. The Federal Election Commission predicts that over $11 billion will be spent on the 2012 elections, about double what was spent in 2008.

Super PACs, mostly linked to individual candidates, spent about $100 million through the Super Tuesday contest in the Republican Presidential primary, again, about twice what was spent over the same period in 2008. In the two weeks leading up to Super Tuesday, outside PACs that supported the Republican Presidential candidates spent three times as much as the candidates themselves.

Our campaign finance system is broken. Immediate action is required to fix it. Americans of all political stripes, whatever their persuasion, are disgusted by the influence of unlimited anonymous corporate cash in our elections and by campaigns that succeed or fail depending on how many billionaires the candidates have in their pockets.

Editorial boards across the country decry this new pollution of our politics. Republicans, such as former Governors Mike Huckabee and Tom Ridge, have concluded that super PACs are, in Mr. Huckabee's words, ``one of the worst things that ever happened in American politics.''

Seven in ten Americans, including a majority of both Republicans and Democrats, believe super PACS should be illegal. Countless Rhode Islanders are fed up with the influence of corporate money in elections. I hear them at my community dinners; I read their mail. Charles in Little Compton wrote to me,

[I]t is wrong that someone who shouts louder or further, in

this instance solely because they have more money, should

drown out another person . . . [C]orporations have no problem

getting their views aired.

Hope-Whitney in Bristol wrote,

[J]ust the idea that a corporation is considered an

individual in regards to politics goes against everything

American to me. . . . [T]hey have become the Emperors as they

have the financial ability to be heard everywhere. . . . I'd

be willing to bet that a majority of their own employees do

not agree with their political representation.

Elizabeth in Wakefield wrote:

Big business should not control our elections. It is bad

enough that they deeply influence our politicians through

lobbyists.

But because of a 5-to-4 decision by the conservative Justices in Citizens United, Congress cannot prohibit super PACs from drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans in our elections. That leaves us with one weapon left in the fight against the overwhelming tidal wave of money from special interests. That weapon is disclosure, daylight, information.

Today, along with 34 other Senators, I am introducing legislation that will shine a bright light on these powerful shadowy interests. With this legislation, every citizen will know who is spending these great sums of money to get their candidate elected. I am delivering this speech at a time that Senator Bennet, the distinguished junior Senator from Colorado is presiding. I am very conscious and aware as I deliver it of the immense amount of work that he has put in in the process of preparing this legislation, working on a strategy for going forward, working with our leadership to commence that strategy.

I am grateful to him and the other Senators I will mention later. For now I will give the Presiding Officer the lead. In 2010, under Senator Schumer's leadership and guidance, we came within one vote of passing his original DISCLOSE Act. Since then, the problem of anonymous and unaccountable corporate money has become dramatically worse, and Americans are losing faith in our political system as a result.

More and more people believe their government responds only to wealthy and powerful corporate interests. As they see their jobs disappear and their wages stagnate, and bailouts and special deals for the big guys, they lose faith that their elected officials are listening to them. For our democracy to remain strong, this trend cannot continue. We must redouble our efforts and pass the DISCLOSE Act of 2012.

The bill we are introducing today has been trimmed down so it just does two simple things: One, if you are an organization such as a corporation, a super PAC or a 401(c)(4) group spending money in an election campaign in support of or in opposition to a candidate, you have to tell the public where that money came from and what you are spending it on in a timely manner. That should not be a controversial idea to anyone, at least to anyone who is not seeking special influence.

If you are a top executive or a major donor of an organization spending millions of dollars on campaign ads, you have to take responsibility for those ads by having your name on the ad, and in the case of an executive appearing in the ad yourself. That is it. Two simple provisions. Disclosure and a disclaimer. These are reasonable provisions that should have wide support from Democrats and Republicans alike.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2012, the DISCLOSE 2.0 Act, trims down the original DISCLOSE Act in another way. We have raised the threshold for donations that require disclosure from $600 to $10,000. It may sound as though $10,000 is a ridiculously high threshold, as though that is an awful lot of money, but when we look at what is happening in these super PACs, $10,000 in this particular world is no big deal.

Ninety-three percent of money raised by super PACs in 2010 and 2011 that can be traced to specific donors came in contributions of $10,000 or more. So we will catch probably 93 percent of the money in this reporting provision, while leaving smaller donations and dues payments to membership organizations private.

The act also does not require the disclosure of nonpolitical donations, affiliate transfers, business investments, and other transfers of money that have nothing to do with electioneering.

At the same time, however, the bill also contains strong provisions to prevent the use of dummy organizations or shell corporations to hide their donations from public view. The way this bill is drafted, if somebody sets up a phony organization to take a contribution and, in turn, make that contribution to another phony organization and, in turn, make that contribution to another phony organization, before it finally lands in a super PAC that is benefiting a candidate, we will be able to trace that series of transactions.

So it is a good law, a simpler law, an effective law. It only goes after high-dollar givers. Passing it would prove to the American people that Congress is committed to fairness, that we are committed to equality, and that we are committed to the fundamental principle of a government ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.''

In closing, I thank Senator Schumer for his exemplary leadership and determination on this vitally important issue, as well as Senators Michael Bennet, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley, Jeanne Shaheen, and Tom Udall, all of whom have worked very closely on this legislation. I also thank the act's other cosponsors--all 35--who, similar to myself, understand that the legitimacy of our democratic process and the integrity of our democratic elections are at stake.

I look forward to working with any of my colleagues in the Senate who believe the voices of American citizens should be defended, and I hope all will join me in supporting this critical piece of legislation to restore integrity to our elections.

I wish to express deep concerns about the so-called JOBS Act sent to us by the House and to commend my senior Senator Jack

Reed and Senators Levin and Landrieu for putting forth a balanced and thoughtful alternative.

Everyone in this body agrees that Washington should be doing as much as it can to create jobs for middle-class Americans. But if the financial crisis of 2008 taught us anything, it is that smart regulation of our capital markets is a key element of sustained economic growth.

Unfortunately, this legislation would eliminate key investor protections and allow for fraud and abuse to flourish in a shadowy world of unregistered securities. According to John Coates and Bob Pozen of the Harvard Law and Business Schools, respectively, the House bill ``could spur more shady deals than new jobs.'' John Coffee of Columbia Law School has called it the ``the boiler room legalization act''--a reference to brokerage operations that profit from unloading questionable securities on unsuspecting and inexperienced investors.

Over the past few days, opposition to the House bill has extended far beyond economists, with investor and consumer protection groups, ranging from the Council of Institutional Investors and the North American Securities Administrators Association to the AARP and Consumer Federation of America, calling for substantial changes. These groups have encouraged the Senate to reexamine many of the House bill's provisions, including ones that would: allow unregulated Web sites to sell unregistered stock to middle-class investors; permit stock brokers to advertise risky private offerings on billboards and in cold calls to seniors homes; and strip away the corporate governance and executive compensation transparency requirements that we worked so hard to pass in the 2010 Wall Street reform bill.

Senators Jack Reed, Carl Levin, and Mary Landrieu have worked around the clock to produce an alternative that maintains key investor protections. I commend them for their work, and am proud to cosponsor their substitute amendment. I hope we can use this amendment as a starting point to negotiate a compromise final bill--one which achieves the goal of making capital more accessible to small start-ups, without making the markets riskier for average investors. If we do not take the time to get this important bill right, I fear we will live to regret our haste.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro framed well the dangers of undercutting securities regulations when she warned, ``if the balance is tipped to the point where investors are not confident there are appropriate protections, investors will lose confidence in our markets, and capital formation will ultimately be made more difficult and expensive.'' Let's pass a capital formation bill that strikes the right balance between capital formation and investor protections. In my time as U.S. Attorney and Attorney General, I have seen the devastation that financial fraud can inflict on a family, and I have seen how unscrupulous con men, stock jobbers, fraudsters, and boiler room operators can be. It is worth it to take the trouble to protect against the crooks who could take advantage of the loopholes this bill leaves to exploit innocent victims. I urge my colleagues to support the Reed-Levin-Landrieu alternative and to oppose the House-passed bill. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, Marie Colvin died last week, Wednesday, in Syria. As I speak, her body is still in Homs because the Assad regime refuses to honor the centuries-old tradition of human decency that even in war you are allowed to recover your dead.

An American official in a position to know about the circumstances of her death has used with me the word ``murder,'' and this is not an official who uses such words loosely. News reports have suggested Marie was targeted using her cell phone signals. Why was she killed? Marie once said: ``Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction, and death, and trying to bear witness.''

She was killed because she was doing what she was passionate about and what her gift was; that is, to bear witness.

Marie was in Syria to bear witness to the massacre of the innocent in the city of Homs by the Assad regime. Her last report to the BBC was of a baby killed by shrapnel, dying in its mother's arms. That baby had no voice and that mother had no voice, but Marie was there. She was there making sure the dead did not die unheralded and the killers did not escape unwatched. She was there so they wouldn't get away with it. She was there to bear witness.

The dictionary tells us that to bear witness means ``to see, to be present at, or know at firsthand.'' It means to ``testify.'' It means ``to show by your existence that something is true.''

This was Marie. Over and over she put herself in harm's way as she followed her calling to bear witness to the atrocities of our world.

In Sri Lanka's brutal conflict, she was hit by the explosion of a rocket-propelled grenade, and in addition to other injuries, she lost sight in one eye. She was shot at that day after calling out, ``I'm a journalist.''

In the Balkans and Chechnya, at Libya and around the world, she went to bear witness to suffering and corruption. I think she spent more time on the ground in Libya than any other Western correspondent.

Marie was proud of this work, saying:

We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of

war and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.

Sometimes she managed to do more than just expose atrocities. In East Timor, she went to bear witness to the massacres. When the U.N. threatened to pull out of a base, leaving local employees and those sheltering there to the mercies of the massacre, Marie announced, ``I'm staying with them.''

That created a new predicament for the U.N. leadership, and faced with Marie's courage, they decided to stay. Massacre averted.

Marie was special. Her friends all knew it. Her colleagues knew it. The people who were trapped in the wars and conflicts she covered and who saw her there, sharing their risks and their suffering, and who knew someone would bear witness knew it. The Bible talks of bearing witness. It tells that John the Baptist ``came as a witness, to bear witness about the Light, that all might believe through him.''

There is a parallel. Marie went as a witness. She went to bear witness in the places cloaked in darkness, that we all might perceive through her. With her death, it is our turn to bear witness. Marie Colvin had a calling, and it is our turn to bear witness to the courage and the passion of that calling. It is our time to bear witness to the grace and humor and brains and skill with which Marie Colvin pursued that calling. It is worth noting Marie did this all with style. I don't think Marie would want the record to fail to reflect that she had style.

There has been an outpouring since the news of Marie's death spread around the world. From heads of state, famous writers, press celebrities, from old friends and colleagues, and from those whose praise she valued the most, the small band of brothers and sisters who practiced the dangerous craft of conflict journalism, there has been a torrent of grief and praise. I have culled from this torrent a collection of remembrances, reflections, tributes, and obituaries about Marie that I now ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

On behalf of a group of old friends who are stricken by her loss, I offer this in affection, in appreciation, and in memorandum.

Marie's mother, Rosemarie Colvin, said of Marie:

Her legacy is: be passionate and be involved in what you

believe in. And do it as

thoroughly and honestly and fearlessly as you can.

Indeed.

With those words, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to speak in support of the Transportation reauthorization bill that is currently before the Senate. It is called the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, so we call it by its acronym, MAP 21. It is a

critical piece of legislation that will put Americans back to work and lay the foundation for future economic growth.

Our transportation infrastructure has long been at the heart of America's success, from the transcontinental railroad to the interstate highway. Yet, across the country, the infrastructure that helped build our great economy has been allowed to fall into disrepair.

For evidence of our Nation's crumbling infrastructure, one need look no further than my home State of Rhode Island. Anyone who drives to work or school in our State sees the problems--bridges that are subject to weight restrictions, highways with lane closures, and roads everywhere marked with potholes. Only one-third of our highway miles are rated in fair or good condition; the majority are poor or mediocre. According to a recent report, one in five bridges in Rhode Island is structurally deficient--the fourth highest figure for any State. You look nationwide, and the picture does not improve.

The American Society of Civil Engineers rates our national transportation systems as near failing. They give our roads and highways a D-minus, our bridges a C, our freight and passenger rail a C-minus, and our transit systems a D. This is not the kind of report card you want to post at home on your refrigerator, and it is not one our great Nation should tolerate.

Instead of committing ourselves to solving our infrastructure deficit, however, we continue to fall short. The civil engineers estimate that we would need to dedicate $250 billion each year to bring our transportation systems into a state of good repair. At current levels, the United States spends only 2.4 percent of GDP on infrastructure, compared with European nations at 5 percent and China and India at about 9 percent.

Let's recall why it is so important that we invest in transportation. Our economy relies on the ability to get goods and services to where they are needed. An entrepreneur cannot start a business if his employees cannot get to work. A manufacturer cannot stay in business if its products cannot reach its customers. A free market can only operate if supply can actually get to demand. Our roads, trains, and buses are what allow this to happen.

If we don't make the necessary investment, our global competitors nevertheless will. MAP 21 represents a downpayment that will fund important highway, transit, and rail projects to repair our aging transportation infrastructure and help ensure that America can succeed, as it has since we first broke ground on the Interstate Highway System.

As important as this bill is to our long-term prosperity and our global economic position, MAP 21 also provides immediate support to local construction projects and the quality jobs that go along with them.

It is estimated that MAP 21 will protect 1.8 million existing jobs around the country, with the potential to create up to a million more new jobs. This is particularly important given the high level of unemployment in the construction industry. In my home State of Rhode Island, this bill would support an estimated 8,100 jobs. At a time when our State's unemployment rate hovers stubbornly around 10 percent, those jobs are absolutely crucial.

Given the decrepit state of our transportation systems, it should be obvious that we will have to address our infrastructure needs at some point. We need to do this work sooner or later, and there is no better time to make that investment than now, with so many workers ready to get to work and so many projects ready to get underway. I know that in Rhode Island there is no shortage of workers or worthwhile transportation projects. In fact, Secretary of Transportation LaHood was in Providence today, and I invited him to tour one of the most significant of Rhode Island's transportation projects, and that is the Providence viaduct. That viaduct is an overland highway bridge that carries Interstate 95 for nearly a quarter mile through downtown Providence, our capital city. It is one of the busiest stretches of the entire I 95 corridor.

The viaduct runs north and south over U.S. Route 6 and State Route 10, the Amtrak northeast corridor, commuter, and freight rail lines, and over the Woonasquatucket River. It provides access to downtown Providence, four universities, Rhode Island Hospital, our convention center and arena, and the Providence Place Mall, not to mention the north-south traffic along the eastern seaboard that traffics through this area.

What Secretary LaHood saw on his tour today is a bridge that is quite literally crumbling. The viaduct was built in 1964, and it is showing its age. Its deck is badly deteriorated, steel girders are cracked and don't meet minimum specifications for brittleness, and our State department of transportation has installed these wooden planks under the I-beams to keep concrete from falling through onto the cars, pedestrians, and even the trains that travel underneath the highway. You can also see here where a section of the concrete has fallen through the supports, exposing the steel reinforcement, which is now rusting out in the open.

While the viaduct remains safe for travel today, it is a weak link in the critical I 95 corridor. It is a potential safety hazard for the 160,000 vehicles that travel on it each and every day, as well as to the cars and trains that pass underneath. The bridge is inspected on a regular basis, just as a precaution. If the viaduct were to fail or simply require posted weight limits, it would cause substantial regional disruptions to traffic and commerce and trade.

Clearly, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. The cost of repairing the Providence viaduct is estimated at roughly $140 million. This is a reasonable investment to help ensure the flow of commerce through the entire Northeast, but it represents a very significant financial burden for a small State such as Rhode Island. Fixing the viaduct would take out almost two-thirds of the money that Rhode Island would get from this bill. Rhode Island simply isn't big enough and doesn't have the resources to tackle this important project and still meet our other transportation obligations.

I have filed an amendment to MAP 21 to fund the program for the Projects of National and Regional Significance Program. The Projects of National and Regional Significance Program is a competitive grant program that is designed to support critical, high-cost transportation projects that are difficult to complete with existing funding sources. This program can help us address those big infrastructure projects around the country--ones such as the viaduct--that are currently being kicked down the road because the State DOTs cannot scrape enough money together to get them underway.

The Projects of National and Regional Significance Program is authorized in MAP 21. We got that done in the Environment and Public Works Committee. Now we need to get that authorized program funded. I am pleased to have the support of my senior Senator, Jack Reed, and Senator Merkley on this amendment. I look forward to working with them and other Senators so that we can start the important work of rebuilding critical infrastructure projects, such as the viaduct, that are so important to our economy.

While I am thanking other Senators, let me recognize Senator Olympia Snowe for her work on another amendment that would grant States limited flexibility to use congestion mitigation and air quality funds toward their transit systems. This is an important issue for Rhode Island, as we begin to scale up our new South County commuter rail.

I introduced a version of this amendment in committee and continue to believe that increased flexibility in the Congested Mitigation and Air Quality Program, or CMAQ, would promote State-level transit options that we so critically need.

Let me thank our chairwoman, Senator Boxer, and her ranking member, Senator Inhofe, for their consideration of our amendment and, more important, for their hard work on this bill overall. As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I can testify that the leadership of Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe, working together, is what has made the difference for this transportation reauthorization. Through their efforts, we were able to unanimously vote the bill out of committee, making the important statement that investment in our Nation's infrastructure

has strong, bipartisan support. They have set an example that I hope ultimately will be followed by the handful of Senators who are obstructing progress on this transportation bill, and our colleagues on the other side of this building. The American people deserve better than efforts to gut transportation jobs and slash infrastructure programs, or to slow down progress on this bill with irrelevant amendments.

With our economy struggling to get back on its feet, with our roads and bridges in desperate need of repair, now is not the time to be debating unpopular and misguided efforts to roll back protections for women's health. Now is not the time, and this is not the bill, to debate whether we should undermine rules that protect our environment or fast track a pipeline project that is clearly not ready for prime time. We have a bipartisan bill before us. We have a bill that will create jobs. We have a bill that will get our economy moving forward. That should be our priority. We should get to the business of legislating on this bill.

This is a country that does big things. We built highways and rail systems connecting Americans from coast to coast. We built skyscrapers and airplanes and rockets to take us to the Moon and back. Big things are part of America's national identity. Just as important, they are a vital source of jobs during this trying economic time.

Let's keep doing big things. Let's give the people in Rhode Island and across the country a transportation infrastructure they can be proud of, and let's not cut funding and retreat. We cannot afford to go backward. The infrastructure is what supports our economy. We need to refocus on the job of getting America moving ahead, and MAP 21 is a step forward.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

It doesn't make sense. I thank her for getting us to this point. I know how much frustration she must feel, having worked so hard and in such a bipartisan way to get us to this point and to now have a process that would get this bill moving forward and get funding out there, get infrastructure repaired, put men and women to work in good, solid, high-paying jobs, only to be all snarled up so that a small group of people can score points with a political issue that has nothing to do with transportation, infrastructure, or highways.

If people want to have a fight about whether women should get access to contraceptive medicine, I suppose that is their right in the Senate. But the idea to stop a highway bill to forge that fight is what to me is irresponsible.

Yes.

I thank my chairman, and yes, it is kind of astonishing, the breadth and the scope of this amendment. As if CEOs don't have enough power over their workforce, as if they haven't done enough to send jobs from American factories offshore to factories overseas, now they would be able to dictate what kind of health care their employees can receive, and not based on marketplace considerations, not based even on health considerations, but based on their own unchecked moral or religious beliefs.

I think it is a terrible mistake to go down that road, but I think it is a double mistake: it is wrong to go down that road in the first instance, but it is also wrong while we need jobs so urgently, while our highways crumble and our bridges deteriorate and water works continue to fail and we have the ability to put people to work in America at good jobs. You can't offshore a job building an American highway; you have to do it right here in this country. These are important jobs and this is important work. We should be getting about this.

I think it sends a terrible signal to the American people when the Senate, taking up this piece of legislation, has to be led off into all these other battles that have nothing to do with highways, that have nothing to do with infrastructure, that have nothing to do with jobs, but are simply an exercise in political gamesmanship.

It is unfortunate, when there are real stakes for real families on the table and real time slipping by, that we don't get this done. We get jacked up enough around here, but as hard as the chairman has worked to bring this to the floor and to be ready, here we are, stopped again, dealing with irrelevant issues again, and all for the entertainment and distraction of people. It is not about jobs, it is not about the economy, it is not about our infrastructure, it is not about laying the foundation for future prosperity, and so it is frustrating that we have to go through this exercise.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business until 3 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

I note the absence of a quorum.

I am glad to have a chance to join with you today. I appreciate very much Senator Sanders convening us on this day when we have agreed, it appears, to extend the payroll tax; we have agreed, it appears, to extend unemployment insurance; and we have agreed, it appears, to extend the payments for doctors under Medicare, under the so-called doc fix. And the one piece that has fallen out was the tax extenders that support our clean energy industry.

Our clean energy industry has more employees than Big Oil, and there are well-paying jobs. It is a growing industry, and it creates American manufacturing and American installation.

Senator Udall was talking about the economic value of these wind farms. I know that in his home State, there are plenty of wind farms that are built on the land. In my home State, we are working toward having wind farms that are built offshore. And the ability to construct those giant turbines at Quonset Point in Rhode Island, in order to install them offshore and enjoy the power and the jobs that result, is something that is really important to us.

So I am glad the Senator has called us together to focus on this question of the tax extenders and also to focus on the environmental harm of climate change. I will turn it back to the Senator, but I wish to make one last point before I do, which is that there is a certain amount of sort of snickering around Washington about climate change, which is a unique feature to Washington. If you go out in the scientific community, nobody is laughing. They are very anxious. They are worried.

The major scientific organizations have all signed off on public letters urging us to do something about this because it is so significant. We have looked out at the first dozen billion-dollar storms year that we have had. Wherever you look around the world, we are seeing extreme weather. And the notion that when the scientists predicted extreme weather and now we are seeing it--if that should not be cause for additional concern, that really flies in the face of both prudence and reality.

The last area where we are really getting clobbered is with our oceans. As we pump, in human time, unprecedented amounts of carbon into our atmosphere, it is taken up by the oceans. It is absorbed by the oceans. During the course of the Industrial Revolution and to now, the oceans have absorbed enormous amounts of carbon. It is changing the oceans. It is killing off coral reefs in the tropical areas. It is making the oceans so acidic that the little organisms that are at the base of the food chain are having trouble growing to their proper size. It is becoming a hostile environment. Creatures do not live well in an environment in which they are increasingly soluble.

These are not theories, these are measurements by scientists who go out and actually measure what is happening. The blindness in Washington to this problem is something that is not only a cause for concern now but is going to be a cause for harsh judgment in history's eyes.

Special interests would be my answer. We have seen it before. We saw the science mocked that tobacco was injurious to human health. We saw the science mocked that the lead in paint was injurious to children. And now we have seen mockery of the science that shows that when you put unprecedented amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, it changes things.

The science is actually not new. The scientist who created the global warming theory was a scientist named Tindall who published his work around the time of the American Civil War, and it has never been controversial. The idea that when you put enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, it creates a warming effect, a blanketing effect, we have known this literally since the horse-and-buggy era. The difference is that there are now powerful special interests that are involved.

To Senator Udall's points, we are at a point of choice. We can choose to go toward having the environmental needs of the country met and the energy needs of the country met with clean, American-made, manufactured power that is renewable. The Senator is right about the capabilities of offshore wind on the east coast, but that is not the only road we can take. We can continue to support multinational mega-corporations that have no loyalty to any flag or nation, that traffic internationally in oil, and that want to make sure that we stay, as President Bush said, addicted to oil. There is a choice, and I think those special interests have a clear desire as to what choice this country should make. I happen to believe it is contrary to this country's national interests, so that is why we are here fighting to try to steer in the other direction.

And the results are really profound.

I will close with this point in this discussion. For as long essentially as mankind has been on this Earth, for 800,000 years--to put 800,000 years in scale, we have probably been engaged in agriculture as a species for 10,000 or 15,000 years. Before that we were pure hunter-gatherers. So 800,000 years--8,000 centuries--is an enormous period of time in human history. It is essentially the entire sweep of the human species on the face of the Earth. Throughout that period, we have existed within an atmosphere that stayed within a range of carbon concentration. For the first time in 8,000 centuries, we have now rocketed outside of that range. That ought to be a pretty significant warning to us that we are in new and untested territory in terms of the basic conditions of the environment that supports our species. And because the concentrations in the atmosphere have grown so greatly, so has the acidity of our oceans. If you go back into geological time to look at what changes such as these can potentially lead to, you see really massive adverse events such as catastrophic die-offs of species.

So we are playing with potentially very big consequences. We are playing outside of the boundaries that have governed our planet for 800,000 years, and we are refusing to correct what is going on, I believe, as both of you have pointed out, because of one predominant reason; that is, the power of special interests to phony-up a debate in this town.

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

I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Mr. Whitehouse pertaining to the introduction of S. 2059 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Madam President, I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to join my senior colleague, Senator Reed, in tribute to the memory of a great public servant and a great friend, Jay Joseph Garrahy, former Governor of Rhode Island, who passed away last week at the age of 81.

At his funeral services this week, he was remembered by an enormous crowd for his warmth, for his kindness, and for his steady leadership of our State.

Joe Garrahy was born in Providence, RI to a blue-collar, Irish immigrant family. He worked his way through Catholic school, and he served in the Air National Guard and in the Air Force during the Korean war. He came back home from the war and went to work as a beer salesman for our Narragansett Brewery. He was what they fittingly called a Narragansett Goodwill Man. And, as Senator Reed has explained, Joe Garrahy brought good will wherever he went.

He turned to politics and to public service with the 1960 Presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. Joe followed his path himself, ultimately, with election to the Rhode Island Senate, and then he was elected statewide as Lieutenant Governor, and then served two terms as Rhode Island's Governor--serving as Chief of State in the very statehouse where his mother had once cleaned floors. It was a beautiful American success story for him to rise to lead the statehouse that his mother had cleaned.

The story was told at his funeral that when he was Lieutenant Governor and she was still cleaning the statehouse, he said: Mom, don't you want to find something else to do now that I am here as Lieutenant Governor? She turned to him and said: Joe, I got here first.

In his public life, Joe Garrahy always made the effort to be what he once described as ``probably one of the easiest guys in the State of Rhode Island to get along with.'' He sure was. I don't think anyone who has worked with him over the years would disagree with that. Joe was certainly always very kind and supportive to me as I embarked on my fledgling career in public service.

But Governor Garrahy's service to our State stands as a guidepost for today's political leaders. He saw Rhode Island through the difficult economic recession of the early 1980s. He was a staunch defender of Narragansett Bay, our environmental jewel, and of Rhode Island's open spaces; his efforts to attract high-tech industries to Rhode Island and to advance our economy; his work on behalf of children and senior citizens and those with disabilities all continues to inspire us.

Of course, all Rhode Islanders who are old enough remember the blizzard of 1978, which buried parts of our State under 3 feet of snow and brought our roads and businesses to a shuddering halt. People spent days in factories, in movie theaters, in department stores where they were snowed in. I still recall the scene of cars up and down 95 covered in snow, abandoned, the road closed. Rhode Islanders are filled with stories of where they were and what they did during the great blizzard of 1978 and how they struggled to get home to their loved ones.

Through all of that, Governor Garrahy marshaled resources from the Federal Government and from neighboring States and got Rhode Island back on its feet. In his frequent televised messages to Rhode Islanders during the crisis, his plaid flannel shirt became a trademark of his accessible, hard-working, easygoing style.

Governor Garrahy's righthand man throughout his political career was Bill Dugan, his chief of staff. As fate would have it, we are also mourning the loss of Bill, who passed away the day before we lost the Governor. It was often said that Governor Garrahy didn't know how to say no. He was too nice for that. Well, that job often fell to Bill Dugan.

Joe and Bill were lifelong friends, graduated in the same class at La Salle Academy, went into politics together, and made a memorable political team in Rhode Island history. Last Thursday, Joe Garrahy and his dear companion and political associate Bill Dugan were together one last time.

Bill's sons are friends of mine, David and Richard. At Bill's funeral I spoke to Richard, and I remarked on how extraordinary it was that this exceptional Rhode Island friendship and political alliance should end with these two men dying in the same week within virtually hours of each other.

Richard looked back at me and he said: Sheldon, you don't know the half of it. It was during my father's wake at Boyle's Funeral Home that the Governor was brought home from Florida, where he had been vacationing, by the State police to Rhode Island. And that night, the two old companions rested one last time, side by side, on Smith Hill at Boyle's Funeral Home.

On behalf of my wife Sandra and my family, I extend to the Garrahy family our deepest condolences. To Joe's loving wife Margherite, to their children Colleen, John, Maribeth, Sheila, Seana, and their 11 grandchildren and the entire Garrahy family, we have you in our hearts.

Joe Garrahy often spoke about the great joy his children and his 11 grandchildren gave him, especially in the years after his retirement. Our thoughts and prayers are with them all today.

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to join with Senator Reed and with so many Rhode Islanders who are still remembering, thinking of, praying for, and giving homage to Governor Garrahy. We will never forget his ready smile, his easy friendship, his distinguished service, his ability to remember every name, and his long and very loving marriage.

I join Senator Reed in saluting his legendary service to our State.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are in an age of tight budgets and tough choices, and I rise today to introduce legislation that would address some loopholes in the Tax Code that provide ways for Americans with superhigh incomes to pay lower tax rates than are paid by regular hardworking, middle-class families. These middle-class families feel they are struggling to get by but then find that some people with extremely high incomes are actually paying a lower, all-in federal tax rate than they are. To them, it defies common sense, and I think for all of us it defies common sense. Americans deserve a straight deal, and right now they are not getting one from our tax system.

To see the unfairness of our current tax system, we don't have to look much further than the national headlines. According to a Forbes magazine report last fall, billionaire Warren Buffet ``paid just 11.06 percent of his adjusted gross income in Federal income taxes'' in 2010. Mr. Buffet is the first to express his dismay at this circumstance and acknowledges that the rate he pays is lower than the tax rate paid by his own secretary. Mr. Buffet has called for a correction of this anomaly, and I agree with him. So does President Obama, who, in his State of the Union Address, said Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. I agree.

We should celebrate the success of people who are earning $1 million and more a year, but we don't--particularly in this time of tight budgets and hard choices--need to subsidize that. The legislation I have introduced today, the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, would ensure that those with extremely high incomes pay at least a minimum Federal tax rate of 30 percent. I thank Senators Akaka, Begich, Leahy, Harkin, Blumenthal, and Sanders for being initial cosponsors of this measure.

The structure of our bill is pretty simple. If your total income-- capital gains included--is over $1 million, you calculate your taxes under the regular system. If your effective tax rate turns out to be greater than 30 percent, you pay that rate. If, on the other hand, your effective tax rate is under 30 percent, like Warren Buffet's 11 percent, then you would pay the fair share tax rate.

After collecting input from some of my colleagues, I have also included a provision to allow the fair share tax to be gradually phased in for taxpayers earning between $1 million and $2 million per year. Taxpayers earning less than $1 million--which is 99.9 percent of all Americans--wouldn't be affected by this bill at all. Taxpayers earning over $2 million would be subject to the 30 percent minimum Federal tax rate, and those in between $1 million and $2 million would pay, on a phased-in basis, a portion of the extra tax required to get up to the 30-percent effective tax rate. This way we make sure no taxpayer faces a tax cliff where earning an additional $1 of income increases his or her taxes by more than $1.

In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, President Obama called for legislation to ensure that the highest earning taxpayers pay at least a 30-percent tax rate. The Fair Share Act would do just that. To call our tax system fair, I believe the highest income Americans should pay a higher rate--not a lower one--than middle-income taxpayers. For more context, let's take a look again--because I have given this speech over and over on the floor--at how superhigh-income-tax payers fare under our current system.

This is the Helmsley Building in New York, as I have pointed out before. It is on Park Avenue, and it has a unique characteristic, which is that it is so big it has its own ZIP Code. Because the Internal Revenue Service publishes information about tax payment by ZIP Code, we can see what the tax payments are that come out of this building. What we find with the latest information that the IRS has published is that the average filer has an adjusted gross income of over $1 million in the Helmsley Building, but the average tax payment out of that building is only 14.7 percent.

To provide a little context for that, if we look at what the average New York City janitor or the average New York City security guard pays in terms of an effective all-in Federal tax rate, it is 28.3 percent for the security guard and 24.9 percent for the janitor. So at this point it looks as if the people who are the very successful occupants of the Helmsley Building pay an actual lower Federal tax rate than the people who come in and clean the building, and that does not seem fair or sensible.

One might say, well, maybe it is just something about the Helmsley Building that causes it, but it is not. Despite Leona Helmsley's infamous line that it is only the little people who pay the taxes, it is a broader issue than that. Take a look at the income tax information about the 400 highest earning Americans.

In the same way that the IRS aggregates information by ZIP Code, it also takes the highest income earners and reports on them in aggregate. The 400 top incomes for 2008--which is the last year the IRS has assembled--had an average income each of $270 million, which certainly is something to be proud of and to celebrate if one can achieve that kind of success. But the average tax rate paid by the 400 was only 18.2 percent, which is--apart from the discussions we have been having in the Senate--about what the top income tax rate should be.

We discuss often whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or should be 39.6 percent. It was 39.6 percent, for instance, during the booming Clinton economy. It is now 35 percent. Depending on where the tax cut discussion goes, it may go back up again. But that is not what a large number of these very high income earners pay. In fact, the top 400 aren't anywhere near that. They are at half that, at 18.2 percent. We are supposed to have a progressively graduated Tax Code, with people who earn more paying a higher rate.

Let's see who else pays at the 18.2-percent rate. We looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics information for a single filer earning $39,350. That is where you hit an 18.2-percent tax rate, just like the 400 who made $\1/4\ billion each, on average. They are in the same position as somebody who is earning a little less than 40,000 who pays 18.2 percent under our present system. If we look at the type of jobs that hit that area, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the Rhode Island labor market a truckdriver earns on average $40,200. So we have a truckdriver paying the same rate of Federal tax as somebody earning $\1/4\ billion in a year.

So I think there is plenty of room for correction and to bring our tax system in line to the principle that I think we all espouse theoretically, which is that it is a progressive tax system. The more you earn, the more you pay and indeed the higher rate you are supposed to pay. It is not supposed to be at the other way around where, at the other high extreme, you end up paying lower rates than regular Americans.

The Helmsley Building was one building that has a little story to tell all of us. Here is another building with a story to tell. This is a building that is called Ugland House, and it is in the tax haven Cayman Islands. It doesn't look like much, does it? I don't want to say it is a crummy little building, but it certainly doesn't compare to a lot of other business buildings. But it does have something remarkable happening within it. It has 18,000 corporations that claim to be doing business out of this location--18,000 corporations in this little five- story building. It gives a new meaning to the phrase ``small business.''

As our budget chairman Kent Conrad has pointed out, the only business going on in Ugland House is funny business with our Tax Code, shell companies that hide assets and dodge tax liabilities. It does not make sense that our tax system permits the highest income Americans to pay a lower tax rate than a truckdriver pays, and it doesn't make sense that we allow Americans and American companies by the thousands to hide income in offshore tax havens.

If we look at the rates that are paid--Warren Buffet 11.6 percent, the occupants of the Helmsley Building on average 14.7 percent, and the 400 $\1/4\ billion-a-year earners on average 18.2 percent--and we look at the fact that we have multi-trillion-dollar budget deficits, it means the taxes they are not paying at the nominal 35-percent rate are taxes that somebody else ends up having to pay either through deficit or through additional taxation.

This is why the Fair Share Act makes a lot of common sense, and I hope Senators on both sides of the aisle will take a look at it. This bill would do a lot of good. It would simplify taxes. There is no point chasing loopholes if someone knows they are going to have to pay the 30-percent minimum. It will simplify that. It would discourage the exotic tax dodges that allow people to go down to 14 percent or whatever tax rates because they know they are going to get caught at 30 percent, so why do the effort. The exotic tax dodges will be discouraged. It will reduce the deficit. We don't have a number yet from the Joint Committee on Taxation, but the public reporting so far has suggested it is going to be in the $40 billion to $50 billion range per year. Of course, it will bring fairness, as well as common sense, to our tax system. It makes no sense for somebody earning $80,000 or $100,000 or $120,000 a year to be paying a substantially higher tax rate than somebody earning $\1/4\ billion a year.

There are a lot of advantages that come with enormous income, and that is a great thing because America thrives on capitalism, and we all love success. We celebrate success in America. We provide an economy and a culture in which people can accomplish remarkable things and create enormous fortunes and become enormously successful. That is part of what is good and what is right with America. They do it through hard work, they do it through being smarter than other people, they do it with a lot of good personal characteristics. But with all the advantages that do come with an enormous income, paying a lower tax rate than regular working families should not be one of those advantages.

I hope we can get together to correct this, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on this issue.

Mr. President, we are in an age of tight budgets and tough choices, and I rise today to introduce legislation that would address some loopholes in the Tax Code that provide ways for Americans with superhigh incomes to pay lower tax rates than are paid by regular hardworking, middle-class families. These middle-class families feel they are struggling to get by but then find that some people with extremely high incomes are actually paying a lower, all-in federal tax rate than they are. To them, it defies common sense, and I think for all of us it defies common sense. Americans deserve a straight deal, and right now they are not getting one from our tax system.

To see the unfairness of our current tax system, we don't have to look much further than the national headlines. According to a Forbes magazine report last fall, billionaire Warren Buffet ``paid just 11.06 percent of his adjusted gross income in Federal income taxes'' in 2010. Mr. Buffet is the first to express his dismay at this circumstance and acknowledges that the rate he pays is lower than the tax rate paid by his own secretary. Mr. Buffet has called for a correction of this anomaly, and I agree with him. So does President Obama, who, in his State of the Union Address, said Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. I agree.

We should celebrate the success of people who are earning $1 million and more a year, but we don't--particularly in this time of tight budgets and hard choices--need to subsidize that. The legislation I have introduced today, the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, would ensure that those with extremely high incomes pay at least a minimum Federal tax rate of 30 percent. I thank Senators Akaka, Begich, Leahy, Harkin, Blumenthal, and Sanders for being initial cosponsors of this measure.

The structure of our bill is pretty simple. If your total income-- capital gains included--is over $1 million, you calculate your taxes under the regular system. If your effective tax rate turns out to be greater than 30 percent, you pay that rate. If, on the other hand, your effective tax rate is under 30 percent, like Warren Buffet's 11 percent, then you would pay the fair share tax rate.

After collecting input from some of my colleagues, I have also included a provision to allow the fair share tax to be gradually phased in for taxpayers earning between $1 million and $2 million per year. Taxpayers earning less than $1 million--which is 99.9 percent of all Americans--wouldn't be affected by this bill at all. Taxpayers earning over $2 million would be subject to the 30 percent minimum Federal tax rate, and those in between $1 million and $2 million would pay, on a phased-in basis, a portion of the extra tax required to get up to the 30-percent effective tax rate. This way we make sure no taxpayer faces a tax cliff where earning an additional $1 of income increases his or her taxes by more than $1.

In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, President Obama called for legislation to ensure that the highest earning taxpayers pay at least a 30-percent tax rate. The Fair Share Act would do just that. To call our tax system fair, I believe the highest income Americans should pay a higher rate--not a lower one--than middle-income taxpayers. For more context, let's take a look again--because I have given this speech over and over on the floor--at how superhigh-income-tax payers fare under our current system.

This is the Helmsley Building in New York, as I have pointed out before. It is on Park Avenue, and it has a unique characteristic, which is that it is so big it has its own ZIP Code. Because the Internal Revenue Service publishes information about tax payment by ZIP Code, we can see what the tax payments are that come out of this building. What we find with the latest information that the IRS has published is that the average filer has an adjusted gross income of over $1 million in the Helmsley Building, but the average tax payment out of that building is only 14.7 percent.

To provide a little context for that, if we look at what the average New York City janitor or the average New York City security guard pays in terms of an effective all-in Federal tax rate, it is 28.3 percent for the security guard and 24.9 percent for the janitor. So at this point it looks as if the people who are the very successful occupants of the Helmsley Building pay an actual lower Federal tax rate than the people who come in and clean the building, and that does not seem fair or sensible.

One might say, well, maybe it is just something about the Helmsley Building that causes it, but it is not. Despite Leona Helmsley's infamous line that it is only the little people who pay the taxes, it is a broader issue than that. Take a look at the income tax information about the 400 highest earning Americans.

In the same way that the IRS aggregates information by ZIP Code, it also takes the highest income earners and reports on them in aggregate. The 400 top incomes for 2008--which is the last year the IRS has assembled--had an average income each of $270 million, which certainly is something to be proud of and to celebrate if one can achieve that kind of success. But the average tax rate paid by the 400 was only 18.2 percent, which is--apart from the discussions we have been having in the Senate--about what the top income tax rate should be.

We discuss often whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or should be 39.6 percent. It was 39.6 percent, for instance, during the booming Clinton economy. It is now 35 percent. Depending on where the tax cut discussion goes, it may go back up again. But that is not what a large number of these very high income earners pay. In fact, the top 400 aren't anywhere near that. They are at half that, at 18.2 percent. We are supposed to have a progressively graduated Tax Code, with people who earn more paying a higher rate.

Let's see who else pays at the 18.2-percent rate. We looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics information for a single filer earning $39,350. That is where you hit an 18.2-percent tax rate, just like the 400 who made $\1/4\ billion each, on average. They are in the same position as somebody who is earning a little less than 40,000 who pays 18.2 percent under our present system. If we look at the type of jobs that hit that area, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the Rhode Island labor market a truckdriver earns on average $40,200. So we have a truckdriver paying the same rate of Federal tax as somebody earning $\1/4\ billion in a year.

So I think there is plenty of room for correction and to bring our tax system in line to the principle that I think we all espouse theoretically, which is that it is a progressive tax system. The more you earn, the more you pay and indeed the higher rate you are supposed to pay. It is not supposed to be at the other way around where, at the other high extreme, you end up paying lower rates than regular Americans.

The Helmsley Building was one building that has a little story to tell all of us. Here is another building with a story to tell. This is a building that is called Ugland House, and it is in the tax haven Cayman Islands. It doesn't look like much, does it? I don't want to say it is a crummy little building, but it certainly doesn't compare to a lot of other business buildings. But it does have something remarkable happening within it. It has 18,000 corporations that claim to be doing business out of this location--18,000 corporations in this little five- story building. It gives a new meaning to the phrase ``small business.''

As our budget chairman Kent Conrad has pointed out, the only business going on in Ugland House is funny business with our Tax Code, shell companies that hide assets and dodge tax liabilities. It does not make sense that our tax system permits the highest income Americans to pay a lower tax rate than a truckdriver pays, and it doesn't make sense that we allow Americans and American companies by the thousands to hide income in offshore tax havens.

If we look at the rates that are paid--Warren Buffet 11.6 percent, the occupants of the Helmsley Building on average 14.7 percent, and the 400 $\1/4\ billion-a-year earners on average 18.2 percent--and we look at the fact that we have multi-trillion-dollar budget deficits, it means the taxes they are not paying at the nominal 35-percent rate are taxes that somebody else ends up having to pay either through deficit or through additional taxation.

This is why the Fair Share Act makes a lot of common sense, and I hope Senators on both sides of the aisle will take a look at it. This bill would do a lot of good. It would simplify taxes. There is no point chasing loopholes if someone knows they are going to have to pay the 30-percent minimum. It will simplify that. It would discourage the exotic tax dodges that allow people to go down to 14 percent or whatever tax rates because they know they are going to get caught at 30 percent, so why do the effort. The exotic tax dodges will be discouraged. It will reduce the deficit. We don't have a number yet from the Joint Committee on Taxation, but the public reporting so far has suggested it is going to be in the $40 billion to $50 billion range per year. Of course, it will bring fairness, as well as common sense, to our tax system. It makes no sense for somebody earning $80,000 or $100,000 or $120,000 a year to be paying a substantially higher tax rate than somebody earning $\1/4\ billion a year.

There are a lot of advantages that come with enormous income, and that is a great thing because America thrives on capitalism, and we all love success. We celebrate success in America. We provide an economy and a culture in which people can accomplish remarkable things and create enormous fortunes and become enormously successful. That is part of what is good and what is right with America. They do it through hard work, they do it through being smarter than other people, they do it with a lot of good personal characteristics. But with all the advantages that do come with an enormous income, paying a lower tax rate than regular working families should not be one of those advantages.

I hope we can get together to correct this, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on this issue.

Mr. President, representing a State that is coming up on our 350th anniversary, I am delighted to salute the great State of Michigan on its 175th anniversary.

I rise to note the anniversary of an unfortunate event that is undermining the very core of our cherished democracy. This past Saturday marked the 2-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's disastrous 5-to-4 decision in a case called Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. With that feat of judicial activism, the conservative block of the Supreme Court gnawed a hole in the dike protecting our elections integrity, overturned the will of Congress and the American people, and allowed unlimited, anonymous corporate money to flood into our elections.

Senator McCain recently called this ``one of the worst decisions in history.'' Senator Schumer said, at the time, ``One thing is clear; the conservative block of the Supreme Court has predetermined the outcome of the next election; the winners will be the corporations.''

It is no secret around here that big corporate interests long have had oversized influence in the legislative and executive branches. But Citizens United supersizes that influence so it threatens to overrun our elections. Here is how my home State newspaper, the Providence Journal, explained it:

The ruling will mean that, more than ever, big-spending

economic interests will determine who gets elected. More

money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns.

Free speech for most individuals will suffer because their

voices will count for even less than they do now. They will

simply be drowned out by the big money.

This election year already confirms those fears. Senator McCain noted earlier this month--and I will quote him again:

I predicted when the United States Supreme Court, with

their absolute ignorance of what happens in politics, struck

down [the McCain-Feingold finance] law, that there would be a

flood of money into campaigns, not transparent, unaccounted

for, and this is exactly what is happening . . . and I

predict . . . that, in the future, there will be scandals

because there is too much money washing around political

campaigns now that nobody knows where it came from and nobody

knows where it's going.

Senator McCain got it right. Look at Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. This election cycle has been the coming-out party for the super-PACs, the so-called ``evil twins'' of candidates' campaigns.

Why evil twins? Because unlike candidates' campaigns, super-PACs can accept unlimited corporate cash. Unlike candidates' campaigns, super- PACs can hide the identities of who is funding them until long after the voting is over. Unlike candidate's campaigns, super-PACs can run vicious and misleading advertisements without anyone being accountable to the voters.

Super-PACs supposedly cannot coordinate their activities with the candidates' campaigns, but we all know this is pure fiction. In practice, they are run by close confederates of the candidates, fueled by the same donors and acting in perfect harmony with the campaigns and it is out of control. Through the date of the New Hampshire primary, super-PACs spent over $14 million, far more than the candidates' campaigns did themselves. Here is the problem: Corporations are not people. By refusing to acknowledge this, the Citizens United opinion has undermined the integrity of our democracy, allowing unlimited corporate money to drown out ordinary citizens' voices.

This is not just some unfortunate side effect of a longstanding right enshrined in our Constitution. This is new and novel. The Founders certainly did not consider corporations to be citizens of our democracy. Corporations are not even mentioned in the Constitution once. Indeed, private business corporations were actually rare at our Nation's founding.

As Justice Stevens noted in his dissent in Citizens United it is:

Implausible that the Framers believed `the freedom of

speech' would extend equally to all corporate speakers, much

less that it would preclude legislatures from taking limited

measures to guard against corporate capture of elections.

So there is no case to support the Citizens United decision if one is an ``originalist.''

Federal laws have restricted corporate spending on campaigns since 1907. The principle that an inanimate business corporation is not allowed to spend unlimited dollars to influence political campaigns is a long-established cornerstone of our political system from Teddy Roosevelt, a century ago, to Senators McCain and Feingold in our time, who won that bruising legislative battle for the 2002 bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Citizens United overturned not just all that legislation but also overturned a long line of judicial decisions upholding those restrictions on corporate cash and elections. So there is no case based on precedent either.

Justice Stevens noted that ``the only relevant thing that has changed [since those prior precedents] . . . is the composition of this Court.''

The conservatives got a majority of five and they ran with it-- judicial activism pure, plain, and simple. The activism appears pretty nakedly in the majority's finding of fact.

For starters, a Supreme Court is not supposed to make findings of fact. Its role is to review the factual record presented to it and interpret the law. But the Supreme Court's conservative bloc nevertheless made findings of fact in Citizens United. Here is one:

We now conclude that independent expenditures, including

those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or

the appearance of corruption.

They just declared that to be true. So a company comes in, drops a couple million dollars to smear one candidate on behalf of the other in a closely contested race, and you don't think that other candidate is in the company's pocket? Please.

Say a year later that company comes back and it sits down quietly with the Congressman and says: Remember that ad we ran smearing your opponent last year that helped you win the election? Well, here is one we are going to run against you through a different, phony shell organization unless you vote with us on this bill. No possibility of corruption or the appearance of corruption? Please. It is ludicrous. It is patently false.

Here is another finding of fact by this bloc of judges:

The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will

not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.

If all we are doing is listening to the corporations, people are going to be fine with that. Please. Anyone in politics knows how phony that statement is. There are hundreds of thousands of pages to the contrary in the records of the previous Supreme Court decisions that were overturned and from legislative hearings.

Here is what the Senate said 100 years ago, speaking about corporate money in elections:

The evils of the use of [this] money in connection with

political elections are so generally recognized that the

committee deems it unnecessary to make any argument in favor

of the general purpose of this measure. It is in the interest

of good government and calculated to promote purity in the

selection of public officials.

This finding of the Senate was magically overturned by the Citizens United Five. Other courts are having trouble swallowing this phony factfinding.

The Montana Supreme Court recently rejected this false premise that underlies Citizens United. Here is what they said:

Clearly the impact of unlimited corporate donations creates

a dominating impact on the political process and inevitably

minimizes the impact of individual citizens.

Now, that is true. But the conservative justices comprising the Citizens United Five had to make these unsupported findings of fact. They are the analytical linchpin of the Citizens United decision. Without the pretense that corporate money could never corrupt or appear to corrupt elections, the rest of their analysis falls to pieces, and they would never have been able to open the floodgates for the big corporations.

So they had to make these findings, even though the findings were contrary to precedent, contrary to common sense, contrary to fact.

Americans of all political stripes are disgusted by the influence of unlimited, anonymous corporate cash in our elections. Rhode Islander Charles--I will just use his first name--in Little Compton wrote to me:

[i]t is wrong that someone who shouts louder or further, in

this instance solely because they have more money, should

drown out another person . . . [C]orporations have no

problems getting their views aired.

Hope-Whitney in Bristol wrote to me:

[j]ust the idea that a corporation is considered an

individual in regards to politics goes against everything

American to me . . . [T]hey have become the Emperors as they

have the financial ability to be heard everywhere . . . I'd

be willing to bet that a majority of their own employees do

not agree with their political representation.

Elizabeth in Wakefield, RI, wrote:

Big business should not control our elections. It is bad

enough that they deeply influence our politicians through

lobbyists.

Rhode Islanders, like Americans across the country, have had enough. In 2010, we came within one vote in this Chamber of passing the DISCLOSE Act, which would have at least kept the corporate cash from flooding our elections anonymously. This year, let's redouble our efforts to limit the damage done by Citizens United. We must if we are to preserve democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people from this tide of unlimited, unaccountable, and anonymous corporate money polluting the power of elections.

Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in the Senate we come at the war in Iraq from many different points of view, but in one respect I believe we are united and unanimous, and that is an appreciation for our troops who fought and bled and died in Iraq. So before we return to our home States, I ask unanimous consent that we proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 349, a resolution commemorating and honoring the service and sacrifice of members of the United States Armed Forces who served in Iraq, and their families, and we do so as a unified Senate.