Floor Statements

Mr. President, yesterday afternoon I spoke in this Chamber, and I quoted former Comptroller General David Walker saying that we as a country face ``large, known and growing structural deficits that could swamp our ship of state.'' To get our ship of state in trim, we need to make adjustments; we need to reduce the deficit and the debt.

I also discussed that when Republicans demand that all ``revenue raisers'' be taken off the table in our discussions about how we reduce that deficit and that debt, as the Republican leader has done just this week, what they are really defending is tax subsidies for profitable big oil companies; what they are really defending is corporations that dodge their U.S. taxes by setting up phony business locations in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere; what they are really defending is ultra- high-income individuals--the highest 400 income earners in the country--paying a lower actual tax rate than ordinary working Americans, in some years lower than truckdrivers, in some years as low as a hospital orderly.

Just last month, Republicans filibustered a measure that would have ended $21 billion in completely unnecessary subsidies for the largest oil companies. We know those oil companies are enjoying record multibillion-dollar profits, the highest, in some cases, profits any corporation has ever made, and they do not need continued support from the American taxpayer--they just do not, not when these other cuts are being thought of. But our Republican friends went to bat for the big oil companies, and they fought back our attempt and they protected that bill oil subsidy.

To keep our ship of state afloat, Republicans are willing to end Medicare, kick children out of Head Start early education, knock down Pell grants, and eliminate PBS. But they will fight to protect special subsidies and tax breaks for big corporations and billionaires.

Today, I rise to discuss one such unjustifiable tax giveaway--a tax break for private jets for the use of CEOs and other top corporate executives that has no public policy benefit whatsoever.

The way this works, under current law companies that buy private jets--planes which can cost upward of $50 million each--can deduct the value of that jet from their taxes over 5 years. There is a 5-year depreciation schedule. Airline carriers, on the other hand, the folks who carry 99 percent of the American public through the air, must depreciate the value of their planes over 7 years--2 years longer than for the private executive jets. Now, this may sound like a minor accounting anomaly, and I am sure that is what the corporate lobbyists who got this through and stuck into our Tax Code said when they got it done, but this is one that may cost the government $3 billion in lost tax revenue over the next decade.

The special treatment of corporate jets, its advantage relative to jets that regular people fly on when they take to the air, is just one more example of a Tax Code that is riddled with custom-made provisions, earmarks in the Tax Code that benefit corporations and the wealthy. While middle-class families struggle to make car payments and face ever higher prices at the gas pump, our Tax Code subsidizes the private jet travel of millionaires and billionaires.

In a time of austerity, when we are being asked to cut education, when we are being asked to cut science, when we are being asked to cut health care, it is no time to be protecting a private jet subsidy that ordinary taxpayers have to make up for through their own taxes, and we should repeal it as part of a package to lower our budget deficits. I was disappointed when Senate Republicans rejected our attempt to repeal Big Oil giveaways, and I hope they will not do the same when we bring up a corporate jet loophole repeal for a vote.

As we continue to debate ways to close the budget gap, I hope my Republican colleagues will rethink their determination to defend tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy while they are trying to get rid of Medicare. That is a terrible set of priorities. It is simply unconscionable for them to talk about cutting education and research and health programs while they are fighting on the floor to protect, at all costs, special interest tax subsidies that are on the books.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes.

Madam President, our Nation asks a lot of our troops. In return, we must give them the best possible equipment to fulfill their vital missions and come home safely. We have a powerful obligation to them to ensure the proper performance of weapons systems, body armor, aircraft parts, and countless other mission-critical products.

Today, however, America's military faces a significant and growing threat from counterfeit products entering the military supply chain.

I rise to speak about a bill I have introduced with Senator McCain, Senator Graham, and Senator Coons: the Combating Military Counterfeits Act of 2011. This bill will enhance the ability of prosecutors to keep counterfeit goods out of the military supply chain. In so doing it will help protect America's Armed Forces from the risk of defective equipment.

These counterfeit products do not meet military standards. As a result, they put troops' lives at risk, compromise military readiness, and cost the country enormous sums in replacement costs.

In the case of microelectronics, counterfeit parts also provide an avenue for cybersecurity threats to infiltrate military systems, possibly enabling hackers to track or even disable crucial national security applications.

With troops from Rhode Island and all over the United States serving overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, we cannot accept criminals selling fake versions of products used by our troops. Unfortunately, however, this unacceptable threat to troop safety and national security is growing.

A report by the Government Accountability Office provides examples that demand stiff criminal punishment. It explains that the Defense Department found out in testing that what it thought was Kevlar body armor was in fact nothing of the sort and could not protect our troops the way proper Kevlar can. Our troops going out on patrol in fake body armor is simply unacceptable.

In another example, a supplier sold the Defense Department a part that it falsely claimed was a $7,000 circuit that met the specifications of a missile guidance system. Military grade chips are called that for a reason: they are required to withstand extreme temperature, force, and vibration. Chips that don't meet those specifications are prone to fail; for example, when a jet is at high altitude, when a missile is launching, or when a GPS unit is out in the rugged field. The possible consequences of such equipment failing are dire.

A January 2010 study by the Commerce Department quoted a Defense Department official as estimating that counterfeit aircraft parts were ``leading to a 5 to 15 percent annual decrease in weapons system reliability.''

The Commerce Department study, which surveyed military manufacturers, contractors, and distributors, reported approximately 2\1/2\ times as many incidents of counterfeit electronics in 2008 as in 2005. The high price of military grade products is going to attract more and more counterfeiters.

On a related matter, one source of the problem has been the often illegal dumping of U.S. electronic waste in countries such as China. Business Week reported in 2010 that used computer chips from old personal computers are fraudulently remarked in China as ``military grade'' chips and sold to U.S. military suppliers. A bill I introduced last week, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act, would help address that issue by cracking down on the profligate dumping of electronic waste.

We should also evaluate this combating military counterfeits bill in the context of the relentless cyber attacks America weathers every day. The chip might not only be counterfeit, it might be the carrier for dangerous viruses and malware that may create windows our enemies can enter to sabotage our military equipment or to steal our military secrets.

I applaud those of my colleagues who have worked with the Department of Defense to ensure that it can keep counterfeits out of the supply chain.

I particularly appreciate the leadership of Chairman Carl Levin and Ranking Member John McCain of the Armed Services Committee. I am also pleased that the administration, and particularly its intellectual property enforcement coordinator, Victoria Espinel, is working hard to protect our military from counterfeits. I am also pleased that the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center recently began Operation Chain Reaction, a new initiative targeting counterfeit items entering the military supply chain.

I strongly believe that strengthened criminal provisions should be part of our strategy going forward. As a former U.S. attorney I know the significant deterrent effect criminal sanctions can provide.

The Department of Justice has a vital role to play in using criminal investigations and prosecutions to identify and deter trafficking in counterfeit military goods.

To that end, the administration has endorsed increasing penalties for trafficking in counterfeit military goods as part of recent recommendations to Congress for better protecting American intellectual property. I am glad the administration has recognized the need for legislation, and I look forward to working with them to see the necessary changes made.

Our laws currently do not impose any special punishment for trafficking in counterfeit military goods. 18 U.S.C, section 2320, the counterfeit trafficking statute, provides heightened penalties for trafficking and counterfeits that result in bodily injury or death. But out on the battlefield it is not clear that the part will ever be recovered, and it is impossible sometimes to tell them the counterfeit caused the bodily injury or death.

As a result, traffickers in military counterfeits are less likely to face penalties that reflect the unacceptable

risk their counterfeits impose on our soldiers, our military readiness, our cybersecurity, and our national security.

The legislation I am introducing today with Senators McCain, Graham, and Coons addresses this inadequacy in our laws. I urge my colleagues to join me in seeing it passed into law soon. Traffickers should pay a heavy price if they knowingly sell the military a piece of counterfeit body armor that could fail in combat, a counterfeit missile control system that could short-circuit at launch, or a counterfeit GPS that could fail on the battlefield. Our troops deserve Kevlar that is Kevlar, and military grade chips that are military grade.

By creating an enhanced offense for an individual who traffics in counterfeits and knows that the counterfeit product either is intended for military use or is identified as meeting military standards, this bill will help. It doubles the statutory maximum penalty for such offenses, and it directs the sentencing commission to update the sentencing guidelines as appropriate to reflect Congress's intent that trafficking in counterfeit military items be punished sufficiently to deter this wrongful endangerment of our servicemembers.

The bill targets only particularly malicious offenders--those who already are guilty of trafficking in counterfeit goods and know they are selling military counterfeits.

This approach means the bill will not affect legitimate military contractors who might be unaware that a counterfeit chip has been entered into one of their products. It will not apply to makers of products that unintentionally fall short of military specifications. This bill is intended to help military suppliers by deterring the criminals who sell counterfeits to them or to their subcontractors. Manufacturers, such as the many high-tech innovators in Rhode Island, will actually benefit from the protection of their intellectual property.

I am grateful to have the support of the Chamber of Commerce, the Semiconductor Industry Association, the International Anti- Counterfeiting Coalition, and others. I look forward to working with them and other interested stakeholders to make this legislation as effective as possible at deterring this particularly reprehensible form of criminal activity.

Let me close by thanking Senator Graham, Senator McCain, and Senator Coons for joining me in introducing this bill today. As my colleagues know, Senator McCain and Senator Graham both have long stood out as champions for our troops. Senator Coons has already become a staunch defender of our national security and our Nation's intellectual property.

I very much look forward to working with them and other colleagues on this important bill.

All of us in the Senate have the privilege of visiting with and supporting our troops. We all know the sacrifices they make for our country. We all want to do everything we can to ensure that their equipment functions properly and that counterfeits do not compromise our Nation's military readiness or security. Passing the Combating Military Counterfeits Act of 2011 will be a valuable step toward these important goals.

Mr. President, I rise today to join again in the debate occurring in Washington on bringing our Federal budget into balance and facing up to our looming debt limit.

Our Nation right now is like an overburdened ship wallowing in the seas. We are in danger as a nation of foundering if we don't sort this out. As former Comptroller General David Walker testified to us in the Budget Committee over a year ago, we face ``large, known and growing structural deficits that could swamp our ship of state.''

To get the ship in trim, we need to make adjustments. We need to reduce the deficits and ultimately reduce the debt.

We agree on a lot. We need to cut spending. Democrats and Republicans agree on that. We need to protect ordinary families who enjoy ordinary levels of income from tax increases. Democrats and Republicans agree.

The disagreement here in Washington is whether we also need to raise some revenues for our Nation in other areas to help balance our national budget--areas such as oil and gas and ethanol subsidies that we could close and contribute to fixing our budget deficit, closing corporate tax loopholes, bringing to an end high-income, tax-dodge schemes.

The Republicans are threatening that they would rather sink the boat than raise revenues in those areas. Just this week, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell called on President Obama to take any revenue raisers ``off the table'' and to focus only on spending cuts. In an opinion piece on CNN.com, the Republican Leader, Senator McConnell, proclaimed ``tax hikes can't pass the Congress.''

Let's start with the fact that, as I said a minute ago, we are not talking about tax hikes on ordinary Americans. When Leader McConnell is talking about tax hikes, he is talking about the rates that the wealthiest Americans pay in taxes, often lower than ordinary American families, believe it or not, gas and oil and other subsidies that go to big industries, and tax loopholes that generations of corporate lobbyists have wangled into the Tax Code. That is what they are talking about when they talk about tax hikes in this context.

Let's take a specific look at what the Republicans are fighting so hard to protect.

Last month, Republicans filibustered a measure that would have ended $21 billion in unnecessary tax subsidies for the largest oil companies in the Nation--companies that have enjoyed record multibillion-dollar profits and do not need continued support from the American taxpayer. When we tried to break the Republican filibuster, Republicans voted to protect those big oil subsidies, even though they add to the deficit. That happened right here on the Senate floor a short time ago.

To keep our American ship of state afloat, the Republicans are demanding that we cut early childhood education while at the same time they fight to protect big oil subsidies.

Here is a building in the Cayman Islands. It is called Ugland House. This nondescript building does not look like much, but over 18,000 corporations claim that this building is their place of business. Mr. President, 18,000 corporations claim this building is their place of business. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ``small business'' to imagine 18,000 corporations fitting into that little building.

As Budget Committee Chairman Conrad has pointed out, the only business going on down there in the Cayman Islands is funny business, monkey business with the Tax Code. It is corporations getting out of paying their responsibilities to this country by hiding behind phony shell corporations down in the Cayman Islands. It is estimated to cost us as much as $100 billion each year to put up with this offshoring tax shelter of income.

To keep our ship of state afloat, the Republicans are asking us to cut investments in science and technology that will cure disease for Americans and for mankind, and at the same time they are fighting to protect corporations that hide in offshore tax havens so the honest American taxpayer has to carry the burden in their place.

Here is another building with a story to tell. This is the Helmsley Building on Park Avenue in New York City. We remember Leona Helmsley who famously said: Taxes are for the little people to pay. Well, we know something about the Helmsley Building and its taxes because this building is large enough to have its own ZIP Code. The IRS compiles tax information by ZIP Code. So we know from IRS actual information what the wealthy and successful individuals and corporations that call this building home pay in Federal tax each year.

Guess what we know. We know that in the last year that was recorded, for which this has been pulled out--which was 2007--the occupants, together, of this building--the Helmsley Building--paid a 14.7-percent total Federal tax rate. They actually paid 14.7 percent. The average American taxpayer, the average middle-class American, pays far higher than that.

We hear a lot of talk about how high tax rates are for wealthy Americans. In real life, when you go to actual examples--14.7 percent, how does that compare, for instance, to the people who work in that building, the average New

York City janitor or doorman or security guard? Well, far, far lower. They all pay tax rates in the 20 to 25-percent range, even higher in some cases, on average--far higher than the high-income occupants of the building.

It is not just because this is the Helmsley Building that this is true. This is not some anomaly. Each year, the Internal Revenue Service publishes a report that details the taxes paid by the highest earning 400 Americans. I spoke earlier this year on last year's report, which was based on that same year's data, 2007. In that year, these superhigh income earners, earning nearly a third of a billion dollars--with a ``B''--in income in 1 year, 2007, on average--all 400 of them in that year--the superhigh income earners paid a lower tax rate than an average hospital orderly, who is a single filer, pushing a cart down the hallways at midnight, of a Rhode Island hospital. They paid a lower tax rate on their income than that hospital orderly.

In May, the IRS published data on the top 400 taxpayers for 2008. Let's take a look at what happened in this most recent year they have categorized.

In 2008, the top 400 took home an average of $270 million each--more than a quarter of a billion dollars each. We can and do applaud the success of these individuals. It is the American dream to make more than a quarter of a billion dollars in a single year. But, on average, these 400 extremely wealthy Americans paid an average Federal tax rate of 18.2 percent.

We spend a lot of time around here debating whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent. Folks, that is not what they paid. The Tax Code is filled with special provisions that tend to exclusively or disproportionately benefit the wealthy, so the top 400 income earners paid an average of 18.2 percent.

A single filer, at $39,350 of income, pays the same tax rate. Mr. President, $39,350, that is where you hit 18.2 percent and match the rate people making a quarter of a billion dollars pay. Those of us who are in between the truckdriver and those ``uber'' billionaires pay far, far higher rates. The average truckdriver in Rhode Island, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is paid $40,200, which means the average truckdriver is paying as high or higher rate than these top 400 income earners earning over a quarter of a billion dollars.

To keep our ship of state afloat, the Republicans are asking us to cut employment and training support at a time of record joblessness while they continue to fight to make sure people making a quarter of a billion dollars a year pay lower Federal tax rates than middle-class American families.

When all is said and done, everyone agrees that there needs to be cuts, and everyone agrees there should be no tax increases on middle- class American families making up to $250,000 a year. That is already agreed to. Those concerns are not an issue.

What is at issue is that the Republicans are willing to sink the ship of state to defend tax rates for billionaires that are lower than those paid by regular, hard-working Americans.

The Republicans are willing to sink the ship of state to defend special interest loopholes in the Tax Code won by big corporate lobbyists, in effect earmarks--earmarks that happen to be in the tax side of the budget rather than in the spending side of the budget.

The Republicans are willing to sink the ship of state to defend offshore havens for corporations and high-income earners to dodge taxes. That is where they have chosen to stand and fight. That is where the disagreement is--not for the middle class that is the backbone of our Nation but for the special interests, the big corporations and the ultrarich. When you say that revenues cannot be on the table, that is who you are protecting. That is just a fact.

They say it is tax increases they are protecting against. The question Americans should ask, when they hear that, is: Tax increases for whom? For the corporate lobbyists who drove down corporate taxes to the point where significant numbers of American corporations do not pay a dollar in taxes? Yes, there should be tax increases there. We should close those loopholes. Tax increases for people making more than a quarter of a billion dollars, who pay less than the average working- class family as a rate? Yes, there should be tax increases there. But that is just in the spirit of fairness.

It is simply inexcusable that our tax system permits billionaires to pay lower tax rates than truckdrivers and allows some of the most profitable companies in the world to pay little or no taxes to support our Nation. Even if we had no budget deficits, fairness and equality would demand that we address these inexcusable discrepancies.

Our budget crisis, however, brings new urgency to the problem. As we continue to debate ways to close the budget gap, I hope the Republican leadership and the Republican Conference will revisit the potential to significantly cut the deficit by addressing the tax loopholes, tax gimmicks, and, frankly, outright injustice to the ordinary taxpayer that they are now defending.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, with the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent nationwide, and at almost 11 percent in my home State of Rhode Island, job creation must continue to be our No. 1 priority as lawmakers.

It disappoints me that Republicans chose politics over job creation yesterday when they filibustered legislation that would have reauthorized the Economic Development Administration, an agency dedicated to restoring economically distressed regions to prosperity. In the past, this bill has been reauthorized and supported broadly, indeed, by unanimous consent. It is the fourth jobs bill the minority has chosen to obstruct, and I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will reconsider their tactics. If not, we may have to reconsider ours and force some votes on job creation measures without this litany of irrelevant amendments that have bogged down and obstructed the previous jobs bill we have tried to get action on. Out- of-work Americans are hurting right now, and they want us to act to help create jobs.

I rise today to introduce a measure that will do just that. I have heard from dozens of Rhode Island business owners that business is picking up a bit, but they are still concerned the recovery may be temporary and that discourages them from hiring additional workers. I spoke with one such small business owner on Monday. I visited Dona Vincent during a tour of her Cranston, RI company, Tedco. Tedco makes and stamps metal components for the automotive, aerospace, and communications industry. It employed 13 people before the recession struck in 2008. Now it is down to eight employees. Dona and Ted's co- general manager Barbara Galonio wishes to start hiring more workers, but they worry that business could slow down again. They told me they have been waiting to hire, wanting to hire, and for months saying to themselves: Well, what if this? What if that? They have been on the border of hiring.

The legislation I have introduced today, the Job Creation Tax Credit Act of 2011, would give Dona and thousands of other business owners nationwide greater security as they look forward to building their workforces. The bill would provide refundable tax credits for employers to hire new workers now. The way it would work is that for each qualified hire made in 2011, the business would receive a tax credit equal to 15 percent of the wages paid to the new employee. If the new employee remains employed or if the business were to hire additional employees in 2012, the business would be eligible for a 10-percent tax credit on those employees' wages next year. Because these tax credits would be refundable, businesses would benefit from them even if they are not currently profitable.

One of the problems with struggling businesses that are not sure how much profit they are going to make if they are right on the edge is giving them a tax credit doesn't help because they have no tax against which to take the credit. A refundable tax credit comes to the business in spite of that. The higher credit in 2011 I expect would encourage employers to hire new workers as soon as possible, and the additional credit in 2012 would encourage retaining those employees and additional workforce expansion. To help those Americans who are struggling to find work, qualified hires would be defined as new employees who have been unemployed for at least 60 days prior to getting hired.

The Job Creation Tax Credit Act would continue the job creations sparked by the HIRE Act of 2010 which included somewhat different tax incentives for new hiring. Economist Mark Zandi has estimated that the HIRE Act created 250,000 new jobs, a quarter of a million families with a paycheck coming in. The larger financial incentives in this new bill would continue to dent the unemployment numbers in Rhode Island and nationwide.

The previous HIRE Act, sponsored by Senator Schumer and Senator Hatch, received wide bipartisan support, and I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support the Job Creation Tax Credit Act as well because right now we cannot forget that too many unemployed Americans are hurting. Too many are out of work. Too many are out of work through no fault of their own. Indeed, too many of them are still out of work because of the cascade of misery that washed across this country from the Wall Street meltdown. There may be a lot of blame to go around on that, but none of it attaches to the workers who got caught in that cascade of misery. Of course, too many families are struggling to make ends meet week to week. We must continue fighting for them by using every tool at our disposal, including these new tax incentives, to get our economy moving and to help businesses start hiring.

Again, this is a bill with a proven successful strategy, that has been approved by this body in the past, that has had bipartisan support in the past, and that addresses the most important issue facing our country right now, and that is putting people back to work, rekindling our economy, and getting folks into jobs.

Mr. President, with the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent nationwide, and at almost 11 percent in my home State of Rhode Island, job creation must continue to be our No. 1 priority as lawmakers.

It disappoints me that Republicans chose politics over job creation yesterday when they filibustered legislation that would have reauthorized the Economic Development Administration, an agency dedicated to restoring economically distressed regions to prosperity. In the past, this bill has been reauthorized and supported broadly, indeed, by unanimous consent. It is the fourth jobs bill the minority has chosen to obstruct, and I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will reconsider their tactics. If not, we may have to reconsider ours and force some votes on job creation measures without this litany of irrelevant amendments that have bogged down and obstructed the previous jobs bill we have tried to get action on. Out- of-work Americans are hurting right now, and they want us to act to help create jobs.

I rise today to introduce a measure that will do just that. I have heard from dozens of Rhode Island business owners that business is picking up a bit, but they are still concerned the recovery may be temporary and that discourages them from hiring additional workers. I spoke with one such small business owner on Monday. I visited Dona Vincent during a tour of her Cranston, RI company, Tedco. Tedco makes and stamps metal components for the automotive, aerospace, and communications industry. It employed 13 people before the recession struck in 2008. Now it is down to eight employees. Dona and Ted's co- general manager Barbara Galonio wishes to start hiring more workers, but they worry that business could slow down again. They told me they have been waiting to hire, wanting to hire, and for months saying to themselves: Well, what if this? What if that? They have been on the border of hiring.

The legislation I have introduced today, the Job Creation Tax Credit Act of 2011, would give Dona and thousands of other business owners nationwide greater security as they look forward to building their workforces. The bill would provide refundable tax credits for employers to hire new workers now. The way it would work is that for each qualified hire made in 2011, the business would receive a tax credit equal to 15 percent of the wages paid to the new employee. If the new employee remains employed or if the business were to hire additional employees in 2012, the business would be eligible for a 10-percent tax credit on those employees' wages next year. Because these tax credits would be refundable, businesses would benefit from them even if they are not currently profitable.

One of the problems with struggling businesses that are not sure how much profit they are going to make if they are right on the edge is giving them a tax credit doesn't help because they have no tax against which to take the credit. A refundable tax credit comes to the business in spite of that. The higher credit in 2011 I expect would encourage employers to hire new workers as soon as possible, and the additional credit in 2012 would encourage retaining those employees and additional workforce expansion. To help those Americans who are struggling to find work, qualified hires would be defined as new employees who have been unemployed for at least 60 days prior to getting hired.

The Job Creation Tax Credit Act would continue the job creations sparked by the HIRE Act of 2010 which included somewhat different tax incentives for new hiring. Economist Mark Zandi has estimated that the HIRE Act created 250,000 new jobs, a quarter of a million families with a paycheck coming in. The larger financial incentives in this new bill would continue to dent the unemployment numbers in Rhode Island and nationwide.

The previous HIRE Act, sponsored by Senator Schumer and Senator Hatch, received wide bipartisan support, and I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support the Job Creation Tax Credit Act as well because right now we cannot forget that too many unemployed Americans are hurting. Too many are out of work. Too many are out of work through no fault of their own. Indeed, too many of them are still out of work because of the cascade of misery that washed across this country from the Wall Street meltdown. There may be a lot of blame to go around on that, but none of it attaches to the workers who got caught in that cascade of misery. Of course, too many families are struggling to make ends meet week to week. We must continue fighting for them by using every tool at our disposal, including these new tax incentives, to get our economy moving and to help businesses start hiring.

Again, this is a bill with a proven successful strategy, that has been approved by this body in the past, that has had bipartisan support in the past, and that addresses the most important issue facing our country right now, and that is putting people back to work, rekindling our economy, and getting folks into jobs.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 17 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about a serious issue that touches on our national security, our economic well-being, the safety of our families, and our privacy; that is, America's cybersecurity.

I look forward to conducting an in-depth examination of the aspects of this issue that falls within the Senate Judiciary Committee's jurisdiction during the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism's June 21, 2011, hearing, ``Cybersecurity: Evaluating the Administration's Proposals.'' However, because of the importance of improving our cybersecurity, as demonstrated by the recent Gmail spear-fishing attacks and hacks at Sony, Epsilon, Lockheed Martin, and even the Senate itself, I rise to make some initial remarks today.

American technological innovation ushered in the Internet age, bringing with it Facebook, YouTube, and the rest of the World Wide Web. It set off an explosion of new commerce, freedom of expression, and economic opportunity even in the smallest details of our lives-- allowing a car company, for instance, to unlock your car doors remotely if you have locked yourself out of your car.

However, this increased connectivity allows criminals, terrorists, and hostile nations to exploit cyberspace, to attack America, to invade our privacy, to loot our intellectual property, and to expose America's core critical infrastructure to cyber sabotage. Entire online communities are dedicated to stealing and selling American credit card numbers. Consider the disturbing fact that the price of your credit card number stolen online actually goes up if the criminal also is selling your mother's maiden name. Some criminals have learned how to spy on Americans, hacking into our home computers and looking out through the video camera attached to the screen. Others run Web sites selling stolen entertainment without paying the American companies that created it. And millions of American computers--millions of American computers--have been compromised by malware slaved to botnets that can record your every keystroke and send it instantaneously across the world to a criminal's laptop.

I firmly believe that cyber crime has put our country on the losing end of the largest illicit transfer of wealth in world history. Whether by copying source code, by industrial espionage of military product designs, by identity theft, by online piracy, or by outright old- fashioned stealing from banks--just doing it the electronic way--cyber crime cripples American innovation, kills jobs here at home, and undermines our economic and national security.

Congress must act to protect Americans from these Internet dangers and to protect our civil liberties. Let me say at the outset that the government must not be allowed to snoop indiscriminately into our online activity, to read our e-mail, or to watch us online. There simply is no need for such an invasion of privacy, and we must move forward with that firmly in mind.

The majority leader has introduced a leadership bill that will be a vehicle for our work. The Commerce Committee, led by Chairman Rockefeller and Ranking Member Snowe, both of whom I had the privilege to serve with on the Intelligence Committee, and the Homeland Security Committee, led by Chairman Lieberman and Ranking Member Collins, reported key bills last year. Chairman Leahy and the Judiciary Committee have reported important legislation on data breach and other issues central to cybersecurity. The Armed Services, Energy, and other committees have studied the issue from the perspective of their particular jurisdictions and expertise, and under the leadership of Chairman Feinstein, the Intelligence Committee Cybersecurity Task Force completed its classified report last July, authored by me, Senator Mikulski, and Senator Snowe. So we have been ready in Congress.

The administration has now weighed in with its own proposal, recognizing that we need cybersecurity legislation to make our Nation safer and launching in earnest our legislative process.

We have hard work ahead to find the best possible solutions to this complex and grave challenge to our national and economic security. As we begin, I would like to flag five issues that I believe must be addressed as this legislation goes forward.

First, we need to build greater public awareness of cybersecurity threats going forward.

What is the problem? The problem is that information affecting the dot.gov and the dot.mil domains--the government domains--is largely classified. And in the dot.com, dot.net, and dot.org domains, threat information is often kept proprietary by the victim business so as not to worry shareholders, customers, and regulators, or give ammunition to competitors. The result is that Americans are left in the dark about the level of danger that is actually out there on the Internet.

The administration's proposal would require covered businesses to notify customers if their personal information is stolen, expand reporting of cybersecurity threats, and require some public assessments of cyber readiness.

I believe more can still be done on these fronts. I have had the pleasure of working with Senator Kyl to introduce S. 931, the Cyber Security Public Awareness Act. I would like to urge interested colleagues to review it and consider including it as part of our larger cybersecurity legislation. That is first.

Second, the Senate needs to ensure that we give private industry the tools necessary for self-defense against cyber attacks.

Proper sharing among and within industries of cybersecurity threat information is vital. The administration took an important step by recommending, subject to various safeguards, enhanced sharing of cybersecurity threat information by the government with private industry. But we may also need to remove legal impediments that unnecessarily limit the sharing of threat information within industries, and we should be prepared to listen here to the private sector's needs as they set up those areas for safe communications about the cyber threats they share.

Third, our Nation does not have basic rules of the road for end users, ISPs, and software and hardware suppliers.

The administration proposal includes important provisions that would move us in the right direction. Assuming that ISPs--Verizon and Comcast and the companies that are actually providing the service--assuming that these companies qualify as critical infrastructure, which is an assumption we should clarify before getting too far down this path, the administration's proposal would require them to develop a standardized framework to address cybersecurity.

Sensible laws and regulations have made our highways safe, and we need similarly to make our information highways safe. Federal procurement can encourage effective cybersecurity standards with appropriate supply chain security so as to improve cybersecurity across the hardware and software industries. These improvements will benefit the government directly, but it will also improve the security of all products on which business and consumers rely.

Americans are too often unaware of dangerous malware that has been surreptitiously inserted into our own computers, and we do not take readily available measures to protect ourselves and those with whom we link.

One leading ISP, Comcast, deserves credit for developing a new mechanism to notify and assist its customers when their computers have been compromised by malicious software or botnets. All other ISPs should work together to join, strengthen, and standardize this program. In Australia, ISPs have developed a code of conduct that may be a model for their American counterparts in this regard.

The fourth point: It is vital that the government have an instant response plan that clearly allocates responsibilities for responding to a major cyber attack or breach. The administration proposal puts the responsibility for such incident response with the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Center envisioned by the proposal. I look forward to working with the administration and my colleagues on that aspect of the proposal.

More generally, the administration proposal, like bills that have been reported in the Senate, gives the Department of Homeland Security a leadership role in our Nation's cybersecurity. We have to remember this is a relatively new role for the Department of Homeland Security. It is one of a great many different responsibilities that the Department of Homeland Security bears, and it is a role in which much of the government's expertise resides in other agencies than the Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Homeland Security's role must be configured to attract sufficiently high-caliber cybersecurity professionals to ensure that DHS properly leverages the cybersecurity expertise at those other agencies and to assure sufficient independence and credibility of the Cybersecurity Center to perform this vital mission, even as administration change and attention to cybersecurity waxes and wanes. Cybersecurity is a real and present danger, so we must also plan for and minimize the interim period in which DHS builds up its cybersecurity expertise, promulgates necessary regulations, and otherwise grows into any new role with which it is tasked.

Cyber attacks happen at the speed of light, so the best defense requires that we preposition some of our defensive capabilities. Many of our Nation's leading experts who have seen the dark heart of the Internet's dangers and understand the cyber threat in its dimensions recommend rapidly creating secure domains for our most critical infrastructure--our electric grid being the most obvious example. These would be domains in which our Nation's best cybersecurity defenses could be both lawful and effective. Obviously, this would need to be done in a very transparent manner, subject to strict oversight. But we as a country have impressive capabilities in this area, and we need to make sure those impressive capabilities protect our critical infrastructure as soon as possible. They are not deployed to protect critical infrastructure now.

Fifth, countries around the world, including countries that dedicate significant resources to exploiting our cyber vulnerabilities, are working hard to build their cyber workforces. We must not fall behind.

This means enabling our colleges and universities, in partnership with private companies, government agencies, and other cybersecurity innovators, to research the next great cybersecurity technology and to build the cyber human capital our Nation needs to defend itself and continue to flourish on the Internet.

Academic and technological leaders in my State, such as the University of Rhode Island and Brown University, have been hard at work developing new cybersecurity technologies and strengthening our Nation's cyber expertise. I look forward to working with them as we go forward.

There are other vital issues we must address, many of which I have spoken about previously on this floor. We must work, for example, to scale up our Nation's cybersecurity and law enforcement resources to match the seriousness of the threat posed by cyber criminals, by terrorist organizations, and by hostile nation states using cyberspace to attack our Nation.

The bottom line is we have a lot of important work to do. I am glad there is every indication that it will be bipartisan work, undertaken with the country's best interests in mind. I look forward to taking on this task with my colleagues in the months ahead.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 209, which was submitted earlier today.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent--with considerable happiness and pride--that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 210, celebrating the Boston Bruins' victory, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, it would be unimaginable there be objection to such good news.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until 2 p.m. on Monday, June 20; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business until 5 p.m. with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; and that the filing deadline for first-degree amendments to S. 782, the Economic Development Revitalization Act, be 3:30 p.m. on Monday, June 20.

Mr. President, I am advised there will be no rollcall votes on Monday. The next rollcall vote will begin at approximately noon on Tuesday, June 21, on confirmation of the Simon nomination.

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

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

I now yield back all time.

I ask for the yeas and nays.