Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise to discuss the appointment by President Obama of Dr. Donald Berwick as Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

I disagree, respectfully, with my distinguished colleague from Arizona. I guess I agree that it is regrettable that this was a recess appointment, but I believe that on the part of the President it was both prudent and necessary to make this a recess appointment, given, A, the urgency of moving forward with health care reform and, B, the relentless blockade the Republicans have maintained.

Dr. Berwick is perhaps the most qualified person in the country to wield the vast apparatus of the Federal health care bureaucracy toward the comprehensive change we need, to lower the cost of health care, while improving the quality of health care.

In evaluating this urgency, I ask my colleague to consider the situation we are in right now. We are in the midst of an accelerating and unsustainable rise in health care expenditures in America. In 1955--the year I was born--we spent a little bit over $12 billion a year on health care. That was the annual health care expenditure in the United States in 1955--$12 billion. Last year, we spent more than $2.5 trillion. The increase over the previous year was $134 billion--from 2008 to 2009, an increase of $134 billion, which is the largest year- to-year increase in history, by the way, and 200 times what we spent in 1955--200 times. Anybody who is looking at this can see both the trend and the increasing acceleration of this curve. It is accelerating, it is unsustainable, and it adds up to, at this point, a stunning 17.3 percent of our national domestic product, our GDP, spent on health care every year. No other nation even comes close to spending that much of its annual domestic product on health care.

In my home State of Rhode Island, had we done nothing on health care, by 2016 a family of four would have faced more than $26,000 in premiums for family health insurance--$26,000 per year in 2016 average costs. Last year, premiums for Medicare Advantage plans jumped an average of 14.2 percent nationally--just in 1 year. So there is a clearly unmistakable case that our health care costs are out of control and we have to do something about it.

The escalation, as I pointed out, is unsustainable and accelerating, but it is not inevitable. Indeed, experts from across the ideological spectrum agree that a great deal of health care cost is simply waste-- waste resulting from an irrational, disorganized status quo that too often encourages the wrong choices by patients, payers, and by providers of health care services. That status quo has to change.

As you consider our health care system, set aside for a moment the problem of duplicative tests, the problem of lost medical records, the problem of unnecessary treatments, and the problem of uncoordinated care for patients working between multiple doctors. Set aside all those problems and look just at the administrative overhead of our private insurance market.

By way of reference, administrative costs for Medicare run about 3 to 5 percent. Overhead for private insurers is an astounding 20 to 27 percent. A Commonwealth Fund report indicates that the private insurer administrative costs more than doubled from just 2000 to 2006. In those 6 years, the overhead, the administrative costs of the private insurance industry, more than doubled, up 109 percent. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that Americans spend roughly $128 billion annually just on what the report called ``excess administrative overhead.'' There is $128 billion that we pay for every year in excess administrative overhead--not health care but administrative overhead-- in our health care system in the private health insurance market.

On top of that, you have the duplicative tests, lost medical records, unnecessary treatment, and the uncoordinated care for patients with multiple and chronic conditions. I won't dwell on those particular topics because I have spoken about them so often on the Senate floor in the past. My point is that because of all this waste in the system, the President's Council of Economic Advisers concludes that it should be possible to cut total health expenditures about 30 percent. Let me repeat that quote.

It should be possible to cut total health expenditures

about 30 percent without worsening outcomes . . . which would

suggest that savings on the order of 5 percent of GDP could

be feasible.

Five percent of GDP is over $700 billion a year, and other experts agree. The New England Healthcare Institute reports as much as $850 billion a year in excess cost ``can be eliminated without reducing the quality of care.'' Former Bush administration Treasury Secretary O'Neill has written that the excess cost is $1 trillion a year in our health care system. The Lewin Group, which is often cited in this Chamber on both sides of the aisle as a respectable organization that does authoritative work in this area, finds that we burn over $1 trillion a year through excess cost and waste.

So is it $700 billion a year in excess cost and waste, is it $850 billion a year, is it $1 trillion or over a year in excess cost and waste? Whatever it is, it is a big number, and we needed to do something about it. This Congress rose to the challenge in the health care reform

bill and passed what health economist David Cutler has called ``the most significant action on medical spending ever proposed in the United States.''

This isn't just a partisan view. Analysts of all stripes agree the reform law does more than any previous measure to begin to lift the dead weight of all this wasteful health care cost off our economy. The Commonwealth Fund has projected that the law will reduce the annual growth of national health expenditures--that is the amount that private and public sectors would otherwise spend on health care every year--by 0.6 percentage points annually and nearly $600 billion over the next 10 years. The Council of Economic Advisers writes that ``total slowing of private-sector cost growth'' will be approximately 1 percentage point per year--more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That is just what they can prognosticate, what they can anticipate, what they can project.

Here is something that is interesting. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes:

There are many cost-saving efforts in the proposed reform,

but nobody knows how well any one of these efforts will work.

And as a result, official estimates don't give the plan much

credit for any of them. Realistically, health reform is

likely to do much better at controlling costs than any of the

official projections suggest.

Health reform is likely to do much better at controlling costs than any of the official projections suggest.

He is not alone. Other respected health economists--Len Nichols of George Mason, Ken Thorpe of Emory, and Alan Garber of Stanford, described the bill's cost controls as vital, a significant improvement on the status quo. And MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, one of our leading health economists, said of the bill's cost control measures:

I can't think of a thing to try that they didn't try. They

really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything

is in here. You couldn't have done better than they are

doing.

So that frames the picture for the appointment of Dr. Berwick because the President's signature of our health care law was just the beginning of the reform project that lies ahead. This law gives those unprecedented tools to fight health care waste and inefficiency, but those tools are meaningless, they are useless unless they are applied both vigorously and wisely. Don Berwick is simply, hands down, the best person to do that. He has vast experience, proven expertise, and he has earned the respect of colleagues in the public and private sectors and on all sides of the ideological spectrum.

For instance, Dr. Nancy Nielsen, immediate past president of the American Medical Association, said Dr. Berwick is ``widely known and well-respected for his visionary leadership efforts that focus on optimizing the quality and safety of patient care in hospitals and across health care settings.''

Gail Wilensky, the Administrator of CMS under President George H.W. Bush, said Dr. Berwick ``has long-standing recognition for expertise and for not being a partisan individual, so I think that will assist him in his dealings with Congress, both with the majority and hopefully the minority, as well.''

Tom Scully, George W. Bush's CMS chief said:

You're not going to do any better than Don Berwick.

And Steven D. Findlay, health policy analyst at Consumers Union, has applauded what he calls ``a spectacular appointment.''

Don has been an intellectual force in health care for

decades. He helped forge many ideas incorporated in the new

health care law.

So given this chorus of praise from across the ideological spectrum and the urgency of the task at hand to control those costs, one might think that bipartisan support for Dr. Berwick's nomination would be strong and swift.

Well, you heard the Senator from Arizona. Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues, regrettably, threaten the familiar old Washington playbook of delay and obstruction.

I have spoken many times about how the Republican minority has delayed without substantive justification far too many of the President's executive branch nominees, jamming up the administration's ability to administer the government; usually not because they have any objection to the nominee but just to jam up the administration's ability to administer the government.

On our Executive Calendar right here we have the names of everybody who is waiting on the Senate floor languishing, waiting for a vote. That doesn't even count all the names that are stuck in committees. These are the people on the Senate floor waiting for a vote. Some have been on for months. Some of them have cleared committee unanimously with full Republican support in the committee. Yet they are jammed up here. That is the quagmire into which they were going to stick Dr. Berwick, notwithstanding the urgency of the need.

Since his nomination was first announced, the Republicans made clear they would subject Dr. Berwick to this treatment. There is no doubt about that. It was confirmed just now by the Senator from Arizona. A recess appointment was the only way for the President to ensure that CMS is fully equipped to handle the vital and voluminous and immediate tasks that we have asked CMS to perform.

So why do my colleagues on the other side of the aisle clamor in opposition to Dr. Berwick, the foremost expert in the field of reducing cost by improving quality of care? There are innumerable ways to reduce health care costs by improving quality. Reducing and eliminating hospital-acquired infections is a perfect example. The North Carolina Medicaid effort to provide coordinated care of a medical home for people who are high users of the health care system is another example.

My Republican colleagues, who so loudly championed cost control, now claim this reducing cost by improving quality is rationing--rationing. Well, here is my question: Whose side are they on? One trillion dollars a year in waste, and they are lining up to defend the waste and call efforts to restrain it rationing? Protecting you and your family from expensive and dangerous hospital-acquired infections, that is rationing? Organizing complex care of people who have multiple diagnoses and chronic conditions into coordinated medical homes, rationing? Whose side are they on when they attack the reforms, the quality improvement, cost-reducing reforms that are Dr. Berwick's signature expertise?

One Senator even stood in this Chamber and said Dr. Berwick endorsed an end-of-life pathway to death. Oh boy, looks like the death panels are back. Dr. Berwick is not just a pioneer in health care quality improvement, he is the pioneer. He was a lead author of the Institute of Medicine's watershed report, ``To Err Is Human,'' and the follow-on report, ``Crossing the Quality Chasm.'' ``To Err Is Human'' launched the quality movement in this country. That report exposed the breathtaking fact that 100,000 Americans die needlessly in this country every year from medical errors--100,000 Americans dead every year in this country because of needless medical errors. Is getting rid of the errors that killed those 100,000 Americans rationing? Don Berwick has devoted his life to saving those lives. Whose side are my colleagues on when they oppose Dr. Berwick?

The connection between quality improvement and cost savings which Don Berwick has spent his career exploring is demonstrated by global maternal mortality figures. Maternal mortality is a cold and statistical way of saying moms who die in childbirth. We in the United States are 39th in the world. Thirty-eight countries, including most of Europe, do a better job of keeping moms alive through childbirth. We would be willing to spend money to get better at that, I would bet. But the strange thing is the many medical errors and the process failures that cause those deaths--and that cause us to be 39th in the world at maternal mortality--also cause a lot of other complications which cost lots of money to treat and recover from. So if you make those quality improvements, you save money. That is the win-win connection between cost saving and quality reform.

That is the area where Don Berwick specializes and has specialized for years--improving care, eliminating process failures, and saving cost. But my Republican colleagues are standing against him and want to talk about rationing. When it improves care, when it lowers maternal mortality, that is the kind of reform I think we could use. If

you are against that, and if you are against Dr. Berwick, whose side are you on?

Dr. Berwick founded the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, one of the first organizations to promote systematic and sustainable health care quality improvement. He has worked on quality initiatives as a board member of the American Hospital Association, as chair of the Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and as a member of President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality. That is his work.

That is probably why Tom Scully, CMS Administrator under President George W. Bush, said:

You are not going to do any better than Don Berwick.

So I ask my colleagues: Do we really need to raise the phony scarecrows of rationing, of death panels, of socialized medicine?

Do we really need to go there against $1 trillion in waste and inefficiency every year? Do you really want reform efforts to fail against 100,000 American lives lost every year due to avoidable medical errors?

Do you really want reform efforts to fail against eliminating hospital-acquired infections and providing better coordinated care for patients who have multiple doctors and multiple conditions? Do you really want the reform effort to fail? Is this how far we have fallen?

There is a huge window where we could work together on a win-win path, where we could improve the quality of health care for Americans while reducing its cost by coordinating the care better, by coordinating electronic health records better, by avoiding hospital- acquired infections, by avoiding unnecessary care, by making sure doctors know what the best evidence is for treatment as they have to take on patients with multiple difficulties and symptoms. We could do this together. This is a win-win, and Dr. Berwick is an expert with bipartisan public/private--or Republican and Democratic support and recognition of his particular expertise in this area. I urge my colleagues to treat Dr. Berwick as the highly qualified individual he is, not as an opportunity for political grandstanding--we do enough of that around here--not as a way to wish failure on America in this vital task that lies before us. At long last, my friends and colleagues, are we not better than that?

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to our departed Senate Dean, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. Senator Byrd served in this Chamber longer than any Senator in history, 50\1/2\ years. Combined with 6 prior years in the House of Representatives, Senator Byrd's service spanned nearly a quarter of the history of the Republic, from the Truman administration to the Obama one, longer than the span of my life.

To serve with Senator Byrd, as was my privilege for too short a time, was to serve with a giant of the Senate, an apotheosis of a long-ago age when oratory was an art. How fortunate I was to sit on the Budget Committee several chairs away from the man who wrote the Budget Act. I will never forget a Budget Committee hearing last year at which, with 35 years of hindsight, Senator Byrd reviewed the very budget process that he had designed. On that February morning, Senator Byrd delighted in describing his crafting of the budget process and its implementation and evolution over three and a half decades.

Tomorrow, for the first time since 1959 when Robert C. Byrd was a 40- year-old first-year Senator, a departed Member of this body will lie in repose in its Chamber. The tribute will surely be fitting, as the Senate's most senior Member occupies the floor one final time.

The man will be missed, but his legacy will continue to guide this institution for generations to come, and the institution to whose principles and welfare he dedicated his life, the U.S. Senate, will endure with his lasting imprint upon it.

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

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

Madam President, I wish to say a few words about an amendment I had offered to the original tax extenders bill as No. 4324, which has also been offered as an amendment to the current package. It very much appears that in the crucible of the pressures the bill has had to go through in order to get to its present status, this amendment will not succeed.

The chairman of the Finance Committee is on the Senate floor. I thank him for his persistent efforts to try to get it into the agreed package and for his patience with my even more persistent efforts to try to get it into the agreed package.

It is a bipartisan amendment. I thank the five Republican colleagues who cosponsored it. I particularly thank Senator Sessions, who is the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. He was an early, initial cosponsor. We introduced it together in the Judiciary Committee. It passed out of the committee uneventfully. It was a pleasure to work with Senator Sessions. I was delighted he was willing to not only support it as a bill on the Senate floor but also to cosponsor it as an amendment to this tax extenders package. I extend a particular appreciation to him and to his staff for working with us on this legislation.

Let me say briefly what it is about. If you are an American business and you are doing business in a different State, in a State in which you are incorporated and domiciled, you would ordinarily have to file an agent for service of process in that State so that if your conduct or product injures somebody in that State, service can be achieved in the place of the injury.

We have a world economy, and we are undoubtedly the world's greatest importer of goods. Some of these goods are harmful. Most of them are good for Americans, good for the economy, good for our consumers, but some are not. The wallboard that came from China filled with sulfur so that when it was installed in houses, the sulfur leached, corroded piping, made the occupants unhealthy, required a complete stripout and rebuild not only of the walls but also of plumbing and other fixtures and air-conditioning--that was a disastrous imported product.

Toys with lead that children could absorb: We all know what damage lead will do to developing brains of young children, particularly Chinese toys with lead in them. Pharmaceutical products with unacceptable chemicals added to them: There have been a lot of products that have come in from overseas and have harmed Americans.

If you are a big, legitimate foreign manufacturer, you probably have an office here. If somebody is hurt, it is not too hard for the person representing you to find the office and file suit and seek recovery for whatever injury was sustained. Many foreign manufacturers even have manufacturing facilities in this country. That makes it very easy to locate them. But some do not. Some live in a shadowy world where they send their products into the United States, get the money out, but when their defective product injures an American, trying to find them is like trying to grasp a handful of fog. They have disappeared, and they hide behind complicated international treaties and foreign laws in their home countries, making both service of process, getting the papers on the lawsuit to them, and actually getting your hands on them legally under our due process--long-arm statutes--is very challenging and difficult.

We heard from people who spent literally tens of thousands of dollars trying to have their pleadings translated

into a foreign language, work their way through all the complex ministries in the foreign country, all trying to find a company that, in many cases, simply reforms itself in a new corporate form and leaves them with nothing at the end of the chase.

When that happens, it is a very unfortunate result for American people, and it is a very unfortunate result for American businesses. The unfortunate result for American people is that somebody who was injured, whose child was lead-poisoned, for instance, has no one from which to seek recovery, and they lose the opportunity we ordinarily enjoy as Americans when we are injured by a product to get compensation for the injury. It is the family who gets hurt in that circumstance. That is one way it is bad.

The other way it is bad is because commerce is often a chain. When the wrongdoing foreign manufacturer disappears, the other folks who are still in the chain are still around to be sued. Under our theory of joint and several liability, the American company has to pick up the liability for the foreign company that absconded after it created the injury.

We had a very good example in our committee of an Alabama contractor who had a very good reputation, who built developments and homes. He got caught with this Chinese drywall. There was no Chinese drywall manufacturer to sue, but both for purposes of protecting his own reputation with the people for whom he had built these houses and because the liability now fell on him as the joint and several liability party, he had to go in and clean it all up. He had to put up the people who were living in these houses. He had to rebuild their air-conditioning systems and their plumbing systems. He had to strip out all the drywall and rebuild it all back. It was an immense expense, and it fell on the American company because the Chinese company had absconded and was not amenable to service and, consequently, to our laws.

The very simple premise of this bill is, if you are a foreign manufacturer that exports goods into the United States of America, with your export has to come an agent for service of process. You have to file agent of service for process. When that Chinese drywall, when that defective pharmaceutical, when that lead-poisoned toy hits an American consumer, hits an American home, hits an American family, they can go to that agent for service of process and find the wrongdoer, and they are amenable to justice in our courts.

It is from a competitiveness point of view wrong that foreign manufacturers should be able to underprice American companies because they know they can dodge liability, dodge the consequences for their actions, and have an American company have to charge more, knowing they have to bear that liability.

Setting aside the whole public safety and consumer protection piece, it is a systemic disadvantage to American industry to not fill this loophole and make our workers' international competitors hit the same bar that American companies have to hit in terms of being available for suit when their products create an injury.

Obviously, the tax extenders legislation has not proven to be the vehicle for this legislation. My contention for my colleagues is that because this is a bipartisan bill, because Senator Sessions and I worked so hard on it, because all of the initial concerns that were raised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been cleared and it is now good to go with the Chamber of Commerce--which I know has a significant voice in the views of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--and because this is a simple mechanism that will treat foreign companies no differently than American companies are treated and put them on a level playing field and protect American jobs, as well as consumers, I look forward to continuing to pursue this legislation and look for further opportunities and further vehicles to find a way to remedy what is now an unjust situation for American consumers, an anticompetitive and unfair situation for American businesses, and a tilted situation against America's interests for the American economy.

I thank again the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee who I know is supportive of our efforts. As I said at the outset, the intensity of the crucible of the negotiations that finally appears to be moving this tax extenders bill forward in an unfortunately diminished way, but in the best way we have been able to do it, did not permit this particular amendment to proceed. But it was not for his lack of effort.

I appreciate his courtesy with my persistent lobbying and his support.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we lost this important vote today 57 to 41. For people who are watching who may not be familiar with the peculiarities of the Senate, you might think to yourself: How on Earth did you lose 57 to 41? It sounds to the ordinary person like you won by 16. What do you mean you lost 57 to 41? How could that have happened?

That happened because the other party, as it has done throughout the Obama administration, has used an arcane Senate procedure called the filibuster more times than ever in the history of this country to block progress for this administration.

The rule requires that the majority get to 60 when the minority so demands, and they have been demanding that 60 on everything over and over. There have been years when it was almost never used. There have been years when it was used two or three times. In really bad years, it might have been used 14, 15 times. This group of Republican colleagues has set the record. They use it on everything.

I think we are over 100 acts of obstruction and delay around this filibuster rule as a result. If one is wondering why we lost 57 to 41-- if that sounds strange--we got the 57 votes, they got the 41, and we lost--it is because they are pulling out of the rule book this procedural trick so that the majority does not rule, so they can block progress.

They are doing it for what they claim is concern about deficits. I have to say, being lectured by our Republican colleagues about deficits and debt is like being lectured by Evel Knievel about safe driving. They should have a little sense of, at minimum, irony about that.

They say the past is prologue. Let me review a little bit of the past.

When George Bush took office, President Clinton, a Democrat, and the Democratic Congress at the time had left an annual budget that was in surplus. It was returning more money to the Federal Government than we were spending. It was an annual budget in surplus. We had a national debt at the time, but with the annual budget in surplus, our Congressional Budget Office--the nonpartisan, not Republican, not Democratic, professional Congressional Budget Office--had estimated that, when George Bush took office, we would be a debt-free nation by 2009. We would be a debt-free nation by 2009. That was the trajectory that Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress left, along with those annual budget surpluses, when George Bush and the Republicans took office.

So 2009 came and went. How did we do? Did we get to a debt-free nation? Are we at zero debt? No. Something changed when the Republicans took power, and when the Bush administration left, it left $9 trillion in debt--not a debt-free nation but $9 trillion in debt and an economy in which Americans were losing 700,000 jobs a month. They left $9 trillion in debt and families losing 700,000 jobs a month. That is the situation President Obama inherited--a little different from what President Bush inherited.

So have we spent since then? Yes, because every economist worth their salt knows that when family spending is contracting, when business spending is contracting, when municipal and State spending is contracting, the entire economy can contract to the point that it seizes up unless the Federal Government does what an economist would call countercyclical spending. If the economy is dying for lack of spending, if it is seizing up, the Federal Government can put money back into it to try to bring it back to life. As Senator Stabenow's graph has shown, it has brought it back to life. We have gone from losing 700,000-plus jobs a month to losing no jobs a month--actually gaining a few. So it worked.

In that context, to say to the people who are still out of work--the ones who lost their jobs back when 700,000 jobs a month were out the window and going overseas; the Bush legacy--to say that we can't help those people any longer, to say that we are cutting off their unemployment insurance, their lifeline, because we are concerned about the debt, I have to ask: Where was the concern about the debt when they were taking a trajectory toward a debt-free America and turning it into a $9 trillion debt? Where was the concern then? Where was the concern when it was tax breaks for billionaires?

We just had our first billion-plus-dollar estate pass under the Bush tax cuts, where the estate tax was eliminated. As a result, a $9 billion estate of a Texas tycoon went to his heirs tax free. How much tax? Zero dollars. Zero dollars. At the prevailing tax rate that has stood for most of this time, you would have paid $4 billion in estate taxes and your heirs would have had to suffer through with only $5 billion to divide amongst themselves. That $4 billion in lost revenue added to our debt and deficit doesn't bother our friends on the other side at all. They couldn't be happier. That is their plan. Those are the Bush tax cuts. America loses $4 billion, and they smile. It is their plan. But when we are talking about people who lost their jobs because of those very policies, because of letting Wall Street run unregulated and having that financial meltdown, and now regular families across this country who got hit by that tsunami of misery are out of work, now they are concerned about the debt. Now they are concerned about the deficit. They were OK with the billion-dollar family passing its estate tax free, but they can't have ordinary working Americans keep that unemployment insurance lifeline.

I think those are backward policies. I think those are upside-down policies, and they hit very hard in my home State. My home is Rhode Island. For over a year, we have had double-digit unemployment. We have been in the top three or four States every month for unemployment. I know Michigan has suffered immensely, and that is why Senator Stabenow and Senator Levin were here. But I have to say that my small State of Rhode Island, with only 1 million people, is not far behind. We have 70,000 families out of work, and because it has been a long recession in Rhode Island, those families--all their assets, everything they had salted away, they have gone through that. What is left is the unemployment insurance lifeline. It is the basic lifeline. To cut that off, frankly, I think it is disgraceful.

This is a low moment in this body--70,000 families missing a paycheck, 70,000 families with a provider who is out of work, 70,000 families with kids wondering where the income for mom and dad is coming from. This money would go right into the economy. It would be spent instantly. It would be spent on shoes. It would be spent on food. It would be spent on paying the electric bill. It would be spent on putting some gas in the car to get out to the job interviews. It would have been spent immediately on the necessities of life.

But that is not good enough. That is not good enough. Those are the families in the toughest circumstances whom our friends want to cut off because of the debt, because of the deficit. The billionaires can go untaxed, but the working families who have lost jobs through no fault of their own are the ones who have to bear the brunt of this. And it hits home to real people, real families, with real fears, who, late at night, sitting at the kitchen table, with the bills laid out in front of them and the kids asleep upstairs, are adding them up--adding up what they have and what is coming in--and realizing

they are not going to make it that month, that something is going to have to go. That is a cold and lonely moment for a family. When families are having that cold and lonely moment, that late night at the kitchen table with the bills they can't pay, that is the time when we are supposed to provide the insurance to protect them against unemployment. That is the policy of this Nation.

It is discouraging. It is discouraging to Dan, a Rhode Islander, in East Greenwich. He has worked in sales. He has been unemployed since April of 2009. His wife is disabled. He is looking for work, but in Rhode Island, as in Michigan, people can look as hard as they like and they are lucky to find a job because there are more people looking than there are jobs. The jobs just aren't there, and Dan has not been able to find one. Without unemployment insurance, he has let my office know that he and his wife are likely to be evicted from their apartment. That is the human consequence of today's decision for one person in Rhode Island--Dan.

Bill, from North Kingstown, contacted us. He is 56 years old. He has been unemployed for a while now--since January of 2009. This has been a persistent recession in Rhode Island. He used to work in the engineering field. He is a talented man, but he has been twice faced with eviction as his unemployment insurance has been put at risk. He received only $200 over the last 3-week period, as his benefits have expired. He is in that first leading group for whom the benefits have expired. He has lost his COBRA benefits. He needs heart medication. Without COBRA benefits, how can he pay for his health insurance that will provide the heart medication? The real cost of today's shameful decision comes home hard to somebody like Bill.

Nancy, in Portsmouth, RI, is 59 years old. She has been unemployed for a while, too--21 months. She has been looking for work for 21 months, looking through the classifieds, going online, reaching out to all her friends and contacts to try to find somebody who has a job for her. She has a bachelor's degree, she has several different industry certifications, and she has an extensive background in sales and marketing. She is somebody who, in an ordinary economy, would have no trouble finding a job. But after the Wall Street meltdown sent that tsunami of misery across our country, she got caught in it. For 15 years, she worked in the insurance industry, and now she can't find a job. She will soon lose her unemployment benefits if we don't continue to fight for it.

So behind all the big brave talk about how we have to fight the deficits--ironic talk coming from the people who were responsible for virtually all of these debts and deficits--are the human stories that are just being ignored here, and it is wrong. We have to change our direction and start putting people first instead of the big corporations.

Let me mention one other topic. There were winners today and there were losers today. The people who lost today were Dan and Bill and Nancy and many, many others like them in Rhode Island and across the country. The people who won today--among them--were the big Wall Street financiers, the hedge fund hotshots, the ones who have been earning millions of dollars every year and through clever legal tricks have got their million-plus-dollar salaries treated as if they were capital gains. So the hedge fund superstar out there in his private jet, getting ready to fly down for a weekend in the Caribbean in the private jet, looking out the window at the fellow stuffing his luggage into the hold of the private jet, the guy in the jet is paying a lower tax rate than the guy outside with the earmuffs on and the jumpsuit stuffing the luggage in the hold. The guy in the private jet is paying a lower tax rate than the guy outside working day-to-day and putting his luggage in the hold. The guy being driven around in his car is paying a lower tax rate than the man behind the wheel who is driving him around.

Who is the biggest, best, most prominent capitalist in America? I would submit that it is Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is a legendary investor, a spectacular investor. He is one of the great success stories of American capitalism. He has come to lobby us about this issue. He has come to lobby us about the fact that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. He has come to lobby us about it because it is wrong, because he finds it embarrassing that, in a country like ours, somebody who has been as successful as he has, who has received such remarkable benefit from his talent and his energy, ends up paying a lower tax rate than the secretary who does his mail and takes his phone calls. He knows that is wrong and we should know that is wrong.

We could have corrected that. That was one of the ways that the benefits for regular working folks in this bill could have been paid for.

That is who won and that is who lost: Dan and Bill and Nancy lost. Tonight when they get word about this they are going to sit in their homes and they are going to worry. They are going to be anxious. They are going to be heartsick. They are going to be looking at a future that is filled with uncertainty.

Our friends on the other side will say no, once they get off unemployment insurance that is just a spur, that is an incentive to get out and find a job; get off the dole and get back out in the workforce. Not in Rhode Island, not with a 12.3-percent unemployment rate. At a rate like that Dan, Bill, Nancy--the three of them might go out looking for a job, but there will only be one for the three. These are people who have been looking for work for over a year. These are people who have had a lifetime of work experience. These are people who want to be back to work. Their character, their sense of self is that they are people who work and support themselves. They want to be back to work. The argument that they are going to fritter away their time on unemployment insurance until it ends and then they will get serious and get back to work is nonsense. It is nonsense. The suffering they are going to face as a result of this is real.

Those are the people in the column who lost today. In the column of the people who won is Warren Buffett. Based on what he said when he has come here to lobby us, I will bet you dollars against Dunkin' Donuts that he is embarrassed to be in the winners column. But he knows that it is not right, in this great country of ours, for the people who have been most successful, who have earned financial rewards beyond what ordinary people can dream of, to be able to pay a lower tax rate than the regular working people who come to their offices everyday and serve in their businesses. It is wrong. It is topsy-turvy.

I cannot tell you how discouraging a day it is. First in the real regular world you would have thought we had won today, 57 votes to 41. But, no, there is this procedural trick. So because we did not get to 60, we lost. Because we lost, Dan and Bill and Nancy lost. And the wealthiest people in our country won in a way that embarrasses probably America's greatest capitalist, Warren Buffett.

I see the majority leader is on the floor. I will inquire to see if the majority leader desires the floor? If so, I will gladly yield.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, let me thank the Senator from Maryland for his comments about the Ledbetter decision.

What we are gathering on the floor today to discuss is whether American corporations are getting something more than a fair shake from Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, whether there is a bit of a systemic lean in favor of corporate interests on the part of those judges to the point where we really now need to call that out because it is beyond what statistics could possibly justify.

Certainly, the Ledbetter decision helps prove that point. We have at a company a woman who does not know she is being discriminated against; that for the same work as her male colleagues, she is being paid less. She has no way to know that. She does not know that. The fact that she does not know that is held against her rather than against the company which discriminated against her. The company was able to get off scot- free for all those months and years of discrimination before she found out what they were doing to her. The law did not require that particular answer. As the dissenting Justices pointed out, it was, in fact, the wrong answer. But it certainly served the interests of corporations across America to limit their liability when they discriminate against their employees.

The case I wish to talk about is the Exxon decision where the Supreme Court threw out a jury verdict after the Exxon Valdez oilspill, a jury verdict for punitive damages in the amount of $5 billion. Sounds like a lot of money. It is a lot of money, but at the time, it was just 1 year of profits for Exxon.

Remember what they did in this case. They took this gigantic tanker, the Exxon Valdez, and they allowed the captain, a known alcoholic, to get on board drunk, to continue drinking heavily while on board, and to steer the Valdez aground in Prince William Sound, creating what was then, in 1989, the biggest oilspill in American history.

Prince William Sound is still recovering from that. Our colleagues from Alaska will tell us that one can still pick up rocks on the seashore and see the oil on the underside of the rocks. We all remember the images we first saw there--and are now seeing tragically echoed in the gulf--of birds, marine mammals covered in oil, poisoned by oil, dying on the shores and beaches or, if they can be found, being recovered by human volunteers who try to clean them up and save their lives. It was a very significant error by Exxon.

Everybody knows corporations are all about their bottom line. That is not me saying that; that is the law of corporations. They actually have a duty, a legal duty to their shareholders to maximize their economic self-interest. It is what they do. It is why they were set up. It makes them a very important economic engine for society. But it does mean we have to control that motivation through the law. One of the ways we control that motivation through the law is with punitive damages-- punitive damages assessed through the jury.

Let me say a quick word about the jury. The jury is an American institution of government. It is mentioned three times in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is there for a reason. It is there for a very important reason. When de Tocqueville wrote ``Democracy in America,'' he wrote about the jury that it is ``an institution of the sovereignty of the people.'' He wrote that in a chapter whose heading was about protecting against the tyranny of the majority.

The Founding Fathers saw it that way because they saw corrupt colonial Governors. They saw legislatures that had panicked in that period between independence and the Constitution. Remember Thomas Jefferson talking about the Virginia Legislature, saying: We have turned out 1 tyrant, and now we have 270 tyrants--or whatever the number was--of the Virginia Assembly. They had to go back, and Madison had to rethink the balance of powers. They adopted what is now the American system of government. They had an experience that there needed to be a place where one could go to get a clean decision from a jury of one's peers. And it didn't matter who the Governor was, who the general assembly was, what the power structure was; there was some place in American Government where power did not count, where the powerful and the powerless had the same shot. That is why it is in the Constitution. That is why it is described as a mode of the sovereignty of the people.

When the Supreme Court takes away from the jury what seems to me to be a reasonable punitive damage assessment--if they had really been whacked for $5 billion, who knows what message that might have sent through the oil industry. Conceivably, it might have prevented the oilspill in the gulf if it really rattled their cages enough. But, no, it interfered with the predictability corporations want. So the Supreme Court threw out the $5 billion punitive damage assessment--just 1 year's profit for that company--and knocked it down 90 percent. They adopted a rule that it couldn't be more than one-to-one with damages. It is not in the Constitution. It is not statutory. They just decided that the interests of corporations in predictability were so important that paying back Alaskans for the damage done and putting a punitive assessment on top of it that would prevent this from happening again was less important. Predictability was more important; deterring misconduct

was less important. That is a value judgment. It is a value judgment these Justices bring to this Court.

Jeffrey Toobin is an authoritative writer about the Supreme Court. He studies it carefully. He tracks it carefully. Here is what he wrote last year about our Chief Justice:

In every major case since he became the nation's

seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the

prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned,

the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate

defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than

Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a

generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has

served the interests and reflected the values of the

contemporary Republican Party.

Remember, this is the one who, when being confirmed, said he was only going to call balls and strikes, as if that was even an apt metaphor. Well, it seems that the strike zone for individual plaintiffs is a lot smaller in this Court than the strike zone for the big corporations. I will pick out a part of the sentence:

In every major case since he became the Nation's

seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the

corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.

That is as of May 25, 2009.

If you take a look at the decision that came down today in Rent-A- Center v. Jackson, an employee challenges a contract saying, Wait a minute. I should not have to be a party to that contract because the circumstances that caused me to enter into that contract were unconscionable. I should be protected from that contract because it was unconscionable to force me to sign it. The contract requires that you go and arbitrate instead of having access to--guess what--the jury.

The Supreme Court said the decision over whether it is unconscionable should go to the arbitrator. You wouldn't even be at the arbitrator if the contract weren't valid. It is topsy-turvy logic. But, once again, it reflects the fact that the strike zone for corporations is a lot bigger with the Republican appointees of this Court than the strike zone for regular people.

I see Senator Franken from Minnesota here waiting to speak, and I will yield the floor so he may do so.

As we face this question of Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court, we need to be clear that when the opponents talk about rule of law, when they talk about not having activist judges, when they talk about making sure corporations get a fair shake, there is actually a little bit more going on here. There is a little bit more going on here, and what is going on here is that over and over and over again the Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, when they have the chance, will rule in favor of the corporation and against the individual defendant. It is not surprising, since the Republicans are the party of the corporations, that the judges they appoint want to help the corporations. We should not forget that fact as we look at a nominee who will hold the strike zone the same; who won't give that benefit any longer to the corporations that now, apparently, are beginning to feel they are entitled to at the U.S. Supreme Court.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we continue in morning business and that Senator Brown of Ohio and myself be allowed to engage in a colloquy for the next 15 minutes.

Mr. President, Senator Brown and I have come to the

floor today to talk about the estate tax. Today's discussion was prompted by a recent New York Times report that an estate of a Texas natural gas tycoon--Mr. Duncan of Houston--is worth $9 billion. That is a nine with nine zeros after it. It is a big number, and it is going to go without tax to his heirs. Without any tax at all. It is hard to know what his tax planning is, but if the ordinary rates applied, the tax that would be paid by this estate might be as much as $4 billion.

I think it is important to put that in counterpoint with the discussion we have been having on the floor today, where our friends on the other side of the aisle are blocking unemployment insurance for Americans who, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs. Because of what Wall Street did to wipe out the economy, they are out there on their own. They can't find work. In Rhode Island, we have 70,000 people unemployed in our small State. Our unemployment rate is 12.3 percent. And if you don't have unemployment insurance to protect you at a time such as that, you are stuck. Unemployment insurance goes to pay for food. It goes to pay for gas in the tank, to look for the next job. It goes to pay for shoes for your children. It goes to pay for clothing and rent and heat or electricity--all the basics. They are blocking it. They are blocking it because it is not paid for, as if this were not an emergency.

But they are perfectly happy--in fact, we haven't heard a peep out of them--with the Duncan estate going tax free to his heirs. I don't know how many of them there are, but if there are any less than nine, they all just became billionaires, tax free. That is the kind of contrast that is so remarkable about this building. We have an entire party that is dedicated to preventing working people, who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own as a result of this economic meltdown, from getting unemployment insurance, and that has actually already expired and we are trying to backfill it for that period, but they are completely satisfied with an oil tycoon worth $9 billion having his estate go completely tax free to his heirs. That situation is happening because of a glitch in the Tax Code that we could not fix. It is part of the Bush tax cuts having run to their conclusion.

The estate tax goes back to 1789 in its first incarnation. It has been permanent since 1916. John D. Rockefeller paid estate taxes in 1937 when he died. He was taxed at a 70-percent rate. Today, we are having a debate about whether we should continue at a rate of only 45 percent. The Duncan estate went through at zero percent.

This cut, which took $4 billion out of the economy to pay this one family with a tax-free estate, was pushed through by the Republicans using reconciliation. If you have been listening on the floor, you have heard a lot of critique about what a terrible procedure reconciliation is when it is used to do anything to help regular Americans. But when it comes to cutting the estate tax so that the Duncan family can have a $9 billion estate pass tax free, well, that is a perfectly fine use of reconciliation, according to our Republican friends.

At this point, at exemption levels of $3.5 million per individual, $7 million per couple, only a few thousand estates each year pay any estate tax at all. It is a tax that only hits not the rich but the superrich--the billionaires, such as the Duncan family. And while we are in this period of economic turmoil, while we are in this period where one party is trying to keep regular workers from getting access to unemployment insurance in the middle of this economic disaster, they are all for an unpaid-for zeroing out of the estate tax so that a $9 billion estate passes completely tax free.

I think that is wrong. I think it shows priorities that are completely topsy-turvy--completely upside-down. I know that Senator Brown wanted to join me, and I have gone on for a bit, so I will quiet down for a second so he can be heard. But it is immensely frustrating that that is the priority around here--let the working family lose the basic paycheck that holds the family together but have the billionaires get $9 billion tax free.

Two points I would like to make. One is echoing what Senator Brown just said. We always hear about the debt and the pay-for from the other side when it is convenient, when they are trying to stop something the administration wants to do. When it helps regular people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, then it becomes an international incident if it is not paid for. But when an estate of $9 billion is allowed to pass tax free because of a loophole, that is OK. That is a $4 billion unpaid-for loss to the government, through its revenues. That is just fine.

There is a disconnect there. If you are serious about the deficit, you have to be serious about it when it is billionaires and not just serious about it when it is regular working families. There is a one- sidedness and a convenience for their concern about the deficit. When it is their President in the White House, Katey, bar the door. By my calculation they blew $9 trillion during the Bush administration. Now they suddenly have had an epiphany about debt, but it does not quite extend to billionaires who are allowed to pass their estates through tax free. So much for the debt and the pay-for concern.

The other group they are very concerned about all the time is corporations. In this year, corporations have paid less tax compared to humans than ever before, since 1983, where there was a glitch and corporations paid less taxes relative to what humans pay than now. But other than that, 1 year, 1983, more than a quarter of a century ago, corporations are paying an all-time low in taxes compared to what humans pay.

If you go back, it is 70 years--1983 was just a 1-year exemption. So all this battle has driven down tax rates for corporations, tax rates for billionaires, and here we are with a deficit and they do not care about the billionaires.

I will close. I see the majority leader on the Senate floor, and I do not want to take time. I will close. America is a place of which we are very proud. It is the greatest country ever. It is a place where people can get fabulously rich. Not only is it a place where you can get fabulously rich, when you get fabulously rich you can still live a relatively normal life. You don't have to live like some Third World thug behind armed guards driving around in convoys with armed SUVs. You can live a normal life as a very rich person.

Everybody has a chance to get rich. Everybody has a chance to become a millionaire, a multimillionaire, a billionaire. But when they do, they have to pay their share.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I am delighted to be here with Senator Stabenow. I know from the experience of Rhode Island how difficult things are in Michigan. I have seen over and over the passion and energy with which she comes to the floor to argue on behalf of the people of Michigan. I join her this evening on behalf of the people of Rhode Island.

The unemployment insurance obstruction we are getting is simply cruel under the circumstances in Rhode Island. I know my friends on the Republican side like to argue that if we cut off people's unemployment insurance, that will motivate them to get back out there in the workforce where they should be, as if they were just idling around, as if they were not out looking for work.

In Rhode Island, we are at 12.3 percent unemployment. We have been the third or fourth highest unemployment State in the country for months and months now. This is not some sudden glitch in the accounting. This is a persistent economic nightmare in Rhode Island. We have been 15 straight months--more than a year--with double-digit unemployment. If we go back to 8 percent unemployment, we go back 22 months, nearly 2 years. This is a persistent problem. The notion that we will cut off somebody's unemployment insurance and have them go out and find a job is plain nuts in a State such as Rhode Island or a State such as Michigan, because the job just isn't there to be found.

As Senator Stabenow said about Michigan, her folks are hard workers. Rhode Islanders are hard workers. We have a tradition of working hard in a whole variety of industries. There aren't a lot of people lying around enjoying the luxury of unemployment insurance payments. They want to be out getting work. Unemployment insurance payments let them search for work and feed their family, pay the rent, put gas in the car, buy shoes for the kids, put food on the table, all in the meantime. Our colleagues want to take that away.

Let's scroll back for a minute to why we are here in the first place. We are here in the first place because the people who were supposed to be regulating Wall Street were asleep at the switch. The people who were supposed to be regulating Wall Street were asleep at the switch because they were told to be asleep at the switch. It is the Republican theory of governance that regulation should have a light hand and that corporations know better and should really run the show. So the folks who were supposed to be regulating Wall Street were the captives of the big Wall Street financiers. They took all the breaks off. They let them run with crazy leverage ratios, new instruments such as derivatives and collateralized debt obligations, and they went right to sleep, the way they were supposed to. The result was a catastrophic Wall Street meltdown that could have been prevented if there had been a different theory of governance and not the theory of governance that we let the corporations run the show and that is the best thing for Americans.

But that is what happened. They let the corporations run the show. That theory of governance prevailed. There was a massive meltdown. That massive meltdown sent a tsunami of misery across this country into places miles from Wall Street, completely different from Wall Street, including States such as Rhode Island and Michigan. We have 71,000 people unemployed in my little State of Rhode Island. Those people need to get unemployment insurance while the economy recovers. We are not a 4-percent unemployment State or a 6-percent unemployment State. We are not even an 8-percent unemployment State. We are over 12 percent unemployment. There is not a job for these people. To take away the bread and butter, to take basic sustenance off the table is, frankly, unfair. We have even tried to get an extra 25 bucks added to the benefit. Republicans have objected to that.

Mr. President, 25 bucks does not seem like much, and indeed it is not much, but if you are just getting by with unemployment insurance because your State has been in recession for so long, as ours has, that extra 25 bucks is a meal the family does not have to skip; that is a trip to the doctor they do not have to duck because they cannot afford the copay; it is an important

little thing; and it is just symbolic of the attitude on the other side of the aisle that: Sorry, not interested. Tough bounce. We don't care.

We were on the floor earlier talking about how when it is a $9 billion family and there is no estate tax on that because of the way the Republicans have driven this and $4 billion in revenue is lost to the government as a result of this colossal estate being exempted from the estate tax, that is OK. But when it is 25 bucks for a working family to buy a pair of shoes for their daughter, no, that is too much. Now we have to get serious about the recession. Now we have to get serious about the debt. But when it is a $9 billion family with a huge estate, no, different rules apply when it is very rich people.

Well, I am here for people like Dan of East Greenwich. He worked in sales. He has been unemployed since April 2009. His wife is disabled. He is out looking for work, but the jobs are not there, and he has not been able to find one. If he loses his unemployment insurance, Dan has let us know he will be evicted from their apartment. He and his disabled wife will be evicted from their apartment. That should not be happening. That is just bluntly wrong.

Bill of North Kingstown contacted me. He is 56 years old. He has been unemployed since January of 2009. He used to work in engineering. He has now been faced twice with eviction when the unemployment insurance has lapsed, and he is looking at eviction again. It is staring him in the face if we do not act. He has received only $200 over the last 3- week period as his benefits have expired, and he has lost his COBRA benefits, but he needs medication. So he is stuck because we have not acted.

Nancy, from Portsmouth, is 59 years old. She has been unemployed for 21 months. She has a bachelor's degree. She has a whole variety of industry certifications. She has a background in sales and marketing. She is a talented woman who has worked all her life. Until she got swamped by the tsunami of misery that originated on Wall Street and has washed through all of our States, she was fine. But now, after 15 years of working in insurance, she cannot find a job, and she will soon lose her unemployment insurance benefits as the Republicans continue to block the extension.

So I would urge them to reconsider. I understand the point about the debt and the deficit and the spending. But, to me, that does not have an enormous amount of credibility because when President Clinton left office, he left an annual surplus and he left a budget trajectory that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said was going to have us be a debt-free nation by 2008, I believe it was--a debt-free nation.

On the day George Bush was sworn into office, we were on a trajectory to be a debt-free nation during his term. There was even discussion in economic texts about whether that was really a good idea. He solved that; at the end of his term, we were $9 trillion in debt. We were not debt free. He were $9 trillion in debt, and we had this economic meltdown that required government intervention to protect people, and that made it even bigger. But we would have none of this if it had not been for the Republican debt orgy they went through--fair-weather debt, I would add, an orgy of fair-weather debt--and then a huge hole because of their theory of governance and their theory of economics that has had to be filled in because of that tsunami of misery. That is why we are here. So it is a little late in the game and a little disingenuous to hear lectures from that side of the aisle about economic sobriety after that wild spending through those Bush years and the cleanup we have had to do since then. And these guys who are out of work and who need the help--folks such as Ron, Bill, Dan, and Nancy--should not be paying the price. We should take care of the people who are out of work through no fault of their own.

I thank Senator Stabenow.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, we have watched with horror the unfolding disaster in the gulf. We have seen precious lives lost, hard- earned livelihoods hammered, treasured ways of life imperiled. We have seen the largest deployment of resources ever against an environmental disaster. We have seen astonishing corporate negligence.

But we have seen something else too--something that ought to be a lasting lesson from this catastrophe. We have seen the revolting specter of an agency of government subservient to--captive to--the industry it is supposed to regulate.

From the Minerals Management Service, which is supposed to regulate deep sea oil drilling, here is what we have seen.

From the 2008 inspector general's report on MMS's Royalty in Kind Program, based in Colorado: senior executives steering lucrative contracts to an outside company created by the executives; staff failing to collect millions of dollars in royalties owed to the American people and allowing oil and gas companies to revise their own multimillion-dollar bids; staff accepting gifts and money from oil and gas companies with whom the office was conducting official business; and staff participating in social events with industry representatives that included illegal drug use and sex.

From the IG report, the inspector general's report, released last month on the MMS office in Lake Charles, LA: the district manager telling investigators: ``obviously we're all oil industry,'' employees accepting numerous gifts from companies doing business with MMS, including a trip to the 2005 Peach Bowl on a private airplane, skeet shooting contests, hunting and fishing trips, and gulf tournaments; an MMS inspector conducted four inspections while negotiating a job for himself with the company that owned those platforms, and finding--guess what--no violations during those inspections.

A 2007 inspector general report into the Minerals Revenue Management Office of MMS cited ``significant issues worthy of separate investigation, including ethical lapses, program mismanagement, and process failures.''

As my hometown Providence Journal wrote in a recent editorial:

The Deepwater Horizon accident has made it painfully clear

that, in its current form, MMS is a pathetic public guardian.

Neither it nor BP was prepared for a disaster of this

magnitude, and MMS's cozy relationship with industry is a big

reason why.

I agree with the Providence Journal.

The scope, the extent, the insidious nature of corporate influence in regulatory agencies of government--this question of regulatory capture--is something we should attend to here. It is the lesson, and it raises the question beyond the Minerals Management Service: How far does this corporate influence reach into our agencies of government?

The wealth of the international corporate world is staggering. The five biggest oil companies just this quarter posted profits of $23 billion--that is a 23 with 12 zeroes behind it--in just one quarter. The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court just overturned decades of precedent and 100 years of practice to give these big corporations freedom to spend unlimited funds in our American elections. Put it to scale. Consider $23 billion of pure profits just in one quarter by big oil, and compare: The Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math. For 5 percent of one quarter's profits, big oil could outspend both American Presidential campaigns. That may be some politician's idea of a happy day because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and it needs to be stopped.

But think, if that is what corporate influence could do in a national election, think of what those vast, powerful tentacles of corporate influence can do to a little government agency such as the Minerals Management Service: Revolving doors to lucrative jobs in the industry so you are set for life; sports tickets, gifts, drugs; constant, relentless lobbying pressure and threats of litigation; steadily inserting operatives in regulatory positions. Inch by inch, the tentacles of industry reach further and further into the regulator, until it silently and invisibly comes under industry control and becomes the industry's puppet, until it is serving the special interests and not the public interest.

This is no new phenomenon. Marver Bernstein wrote about regulatory capture more than 50 years ago. He explained that a regulator tends over time to ``become more concerned with the general health of the industry and tries to prevent changes which will adversely affect it,'' to become ``passive toward the public interest.'' This, he said, ``is a problem of ethics and morality as well as administrative method,'' and he called it ``a blow to democratic government and responsible political institutions.'' Ultimately, this leads to what he called ``surrender: the commission finally becomes a captive of the regulated groups.''

If you don't want to go back half a century for a discussion of regulatory capture, look to last week's Wall Street Journal editorial page where a senior fellow at the Cato Institute writes:

By all accounts, MMS operated as a rubber stamp for BP. It

is a striking example of regulatory capture: Agencies tasked

with protecting the public interest come to identify with the

regulated industry and protect its interests against that of

the public. The result: Government fails to protect the

public.

There is plenty of evidence that the oil and gas industry had captured MMS. When you have a captive agency, you get what we have seen: altering, deleting, or ignoring recommendations from government scientists.

A draft environmental analysis for drilling in the gulf from May of 2000 included the haunting prediction that ``the oil industry's experience base in deep-water well control is limited,'' and a massive oilspill, ``could easily turn out to be a potential showstopper for the'' Outer Continental Shelf ``program if the industry and MMS do not come together as a whole to prevent such an incident.''

This unwelcome observation was deleted from the final analysis published.

Oil and gas company employees filling out official inspection forms in pencil for the MMS inspectors to trace over in pen; nearly 400 categorical exclusions, shielding even deepwater drilling from thorough environmental review. Cut-and-paste Environmental Assessments were provided by the oil and gas companies. BP's Environmental Assessment listed walruses as a species of concern in the Gulf of Mexico. There are not, and never have been in the memory of man, walruses in the Gulf of Mexico. When they are writing about walruses in the Gulf of Mexico, you know, No. 1, they are cutting and pasting out of documents in Alaska; No. 2, they are paying no attention to what they write because they know it doesn't matter; and, No. 3, they know perfectly well that MMS will never catch the fact that they have cut and pasted because they are not looking at it either.

MMS adopted wholesale for its oil and gas drilling ``best practices'' proposals of the American Petroleum Institute, and then they made most of those best practices only suggestions.

There has been virtually no enforcement. According to the MMS Web site, between 2000 and 2009, civil penalties averaged less than $130 per well per year on our Outer Continental Shelf, and only three criminal referrals were made to the Department since 1990 in the last 20 years. Add it all up and

there is no real question: MMS was a captive regulator.

So the question is, After all those years of corporate control of government in the Bush years, how far-reaching is the insinuation of corporate influence? We know big PhRMA wrote the Bush pharmacy benefit legislation. We know big oil and big coal sat down in secret with Dick Cheney to write their energy policy. But down below the decks, down in the guts of the administration's agencies, how far were the tentacles of corporate influence allowed to reach? How many industry plants are stealthily embedded in the government, there to serve the industry, not the administration or the public?

Well, how is it looking? It is not looking good. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, gave up its watchdog role years ago and became the lapdog of the big Wall Street financiers, raising leverage limits, refusing to investigate Bernie Madoff, and helping to precipitate the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression.

Twenty-nine miners were killed in a West Virginia mine with a safety record that President Obama called ``troubled.'' The Mine Safety and Health Administration has been described as a ``revolving door'' with industry, staffed by people with mining companies' interests at heart, even at the expense of worker safety.

The Bush head of MHSA, for instance, oversaw the rewriting of regulations in 2004 that allowed conveyor belt tunnels to double as ventilation shafts, a practice that contributed to a fatal 2006 Massey mine disaster.

Who knows how far it leads? Think of the timber rights the taxpayer gives up every year, the grazing rights, the multibillion-dollar contracts to big government contractors, the oil and coal leases on land, the carnival of public wealth at which these big corporations feed.

The vital question is this: Are these assets of our Nation still in the hands of servants of the Nation or have the servants of the Nation quietly and insidiously become the servants of the big private corporations that want to profit from that public wealth--corporations for whom every dollar of a sweet deal, every avoided expense allowed by a cozy regulator, every corner cut in safety or environmental protection, goes straight to their bottom line and right into their pockets. The big multibillion-dollar corporations, is this who we want safeguarding our national assets? Is this who we want controlling agencies of the U.S. Government?

Winston Churchill once said in a phrase I like that history turns on sharp agate points. What is the sharp agate point on which the history of this gulf catastrophe should turn? What lesson of history, if left unlearned after this disaster, are we condemned to repeat?

I hope the lesson we learn is this one: that we can never, never again let agencies of the Government of the United States of America fall so under the influence of the corporations they are supposed to regulate.

This government of ours, founded in a revolution pledging the lives and fortune and sacred honor of those early patriots; this government of ours, which has raised for more than two centuries the promise of freedom in human hearts; this government that lifts its lamp aloft to brighten the darkness of chaos and despair in far distant corners of the globe; this government, whose finely tuned balance, crafted by the Founders, has seen us through Civil War and World War, through westward expansion and Great Depression, through the light bulb and the Model T and the Boeing 747 and the iPod; this government of ours, formed by Washington and Madison, Jefferson and Adams, and led by each of them, and later led by Abraham Lincoln and by Harry Truman and by Theodore Roosevelt and by Franklin Roosevelt and by John Fitzgerald Kennedy; this American Government of ours should never be on its knees before corporate power, no matter how strong. It should never be in the thrall of corporate wealth, no matter how vast.

This American Government of ours should never give the American citizen reason to question whose interests are being served. Never.

In this complex world of ours, government must protect us in remote and specialized precincts of the economy. In those remote precincts, few people are watching, but big money is made. We must be able to trust our government, both in plain view in front of us, and in corners far from sight, to be serving always the public interest, not doing the secret bidding of special interests, of corporate interests because that is where the big money is at stake.

Have we now learned, have we now finally learned, with the financial meltdown and the gulf disaster, the terrible price of all those quietly cut corners? Have we now learned what price must be paid when the stealthy tentacles of corporate influence are allowed to reach into and capture our agencies of government? I pray let us have learned this. Let us have learned that lesson. I sincerely pray we have learned our lesson and that this will never happen again. But let's not just pray.

In this troubled world, God works through our human hands, grows a more perfect union through our human hearts, creates a beloved community through our human thoughts and ideas. So it is not enough to pray. We must act. We must act in defense of the integrity of this great government of ours, which has brought such light to the world, such freedom and equality to our country.

We cannot allow this government that is a model around the world, that inspires people to risk their lives and fortunes to come to our shores--we cannot allow any element of this government to become the tool of corporate power, the avenue of corporate influence, the puppet of corporate tentacles.

I propose a simple device in this country of laws--not men, of rule of law--and that is to allow our top national law officer, the Attorney General of the United States, to step in and clean house whenever an agency or element of government is no longer credibly independent of the industries and businesses it is intended to regulate.

When a component of government is deemed no longer credibly independent of the corporations or industry it is supposed to regulate, I suggest that the Attorney General be allowed to come in and clean up, hire and fire and take personnel action to ensure the integrity of the personnel; to establish interim regulations and procedures to ensure the integrity of the process; to audit permits and contracts and ensure they were not affected by improper corporate influence, and if they were, to rescind them where they are not in the public interest due to that improper corporate influence; to establish an integrity plan for that component of government, all subject to appropriate judicial review where private rights are affected. Then the Attorney General can get back out, with his or her job done, sort of like an ethics trusteeship or receivership.

I will conclude by saying that the damage to America from the corporate takeover of the SEC was nothing short of catastrophic. Just in my State of Rhode Island, 70,000 Rhode Islanders are unemployed. Many have lost their homes, retirement, health insurance. The toll is devastating. The damage from the corporate takeover of the Minerals Management Service has also been catastrophic. Who knows what potentially catastrophic damage lurks in whatever other agencies of government that have silently succumbed to corporate takeover but just have not yet exploded in disaster.

If the financial catastrophe and the gulf catastrophe and whatever other catastrophes lurk have any meaning at all, it is that business as usual is no longer enough to stem the tide of corporate influence-- insidious, secret corporate influence--in agencies of the U.S. Government. It is an institutional problem--relentless, remorseless, constantly grasping and insinuating corporate influence. It will never go away. It will only worsen as corporations get bigger and richer and more global, and there has to be an institutional mechanism in place to resist it so that it no longer takes a catastrophe to call the failure of governance of an American regulator to proper attention.

I think this is the right way. If a colleague has a better idea, I am more than willing to listen. But one thing I know is that after an economic catastrophe and this environmental catastrophe, this much, at least, is clear: We can no longer wait for catastrophes to

root out improper corporate influence in our government, in this government of our United States. We have to, at long last, address the problem of insidious regulatory capture of agencies of our government, captive to the industries they are supposed to regulate.

I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.

First of all, Mr. President, let me thank the distinguished assistant majority leader for his continuing work on this issue. It protects small businesses and consumers from gouging by the credit card companies and the monolithic monopoly power they bring to bear. I was pleased to vote for and support this amendment on the floor, and I wish the assistant majority leader much success in the conference committee to get that in the final bill.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act, which I have filed as amendment No. 4324 to the package currently under consideration by the Senate. This amendment would close a loophole in Federal law that allows foreign manufacturers to evade accountability when their products injure Americans here at home. It would do so by requiring foreign manufacturers to meet the same standards as domestic manufacturers. It is a simple reform. It is much needed. It will protect American industry against unfair competition or having to, in effect, subsidize dangerous foreign products. It will foster American jobs for that reason. It will keep

American consumers safe, and it will help Americans who are injured make sure they get an adequate recovery for their injuries from the foreign manufacturer who caused them the harm.

What happens here in America when a foreign manufacturer is able to avoid responsibility for a defective product that causes an injury to an American? When they are able to avoid responsibility, one of two bad things happen. One or the other has to be. One is that the injured American gets no recovery. Their injury goes unredressed. They cannot find the accountable company, and they just have to suffer without compensation. The second alternative is that an American company, under the theory of joint and several liability, has to make good for the harm caused by the foreign company. It becomes a cost to the American company.

This actually came up in the hearing on the bill when an Alabama contractor explained how he had to make good on the claims of homeowners whose homes he built when, without knowing it, he had used defective Chinese wallboard in the homes and they emitted sulfur that was bad for the health of the home occupants, that corroded piping, and that caused an immense amount of work that had to be redone to have his customers be satisfied customers. It became his problem when the Chinese wallboard company was nowhere to be found when their defective product caused all this harm down in Alabama. These are things that should not happen, and they are bipartisan concerns.

I want to say I am proud and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Senator Sessions and Senator Durbin to achieve these goals. Both Senator Sessions and Senator Durbin were original cosponsors when I first introduced this bill on a stand-alone basis. Thirteen other bipartisan cosponsors have since signed on to that bill, and I am very grateful for all their support.

Let me describe for a few minutes the specifics of this particular amendment.

There are two legal hurdles that currently face an American harmed by one of these foreign manufacturers. As my lawyer colleagues know, someone who gets injured and brings a lawsuit must bring the responsible party into the proper court. This requires the injured party, one, to serve process on the defendant, to file the papers in the lawsuit with the defendant, and two, to establish personal jurisdiction over the defendant, consistent with the due process clause of the Constitution. No service of process, no jurisdiction, no lawsuit, no recovery, no assistance for the injured American.

The problem is that service of process on a foreign manufacturer is often extremely costly and extremely slow because it often must be done abroad rather than here in the United States. For instance, when an American seeks to serve a defendant in a country that is a signatory to what is called the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extra Judicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters, the complaint must be translated into the foreign language, transmitted to the central authority in the foreign country, and then delivered according to the rules of service in the home country of the defendant, which may not be hospitable to foreign litigants. Even more complex procedural hurdles face an American seeking to serve a defendant in a country that has not signed the Hague Convention.

But let's say you get through all that expense and all that hassle and all that delay. Even when an American does serve process successfully on a foreign manufacturer, personal jurisdiction then can prove an insurmountable hurdle. This is because Supreme Court decisions interpreting the due process clause make it hard to exercise jurisdiction over foreign companies, even those whose products have injured Americans.

So something clearly needs to be done to bring the way we treat foreign manufacturers into line with the liability and responsibility of domestic manufacturers. They should not have this advantage over our domestic industry.

This amendment provides a simple solution to both of these problems. It requires a foreign manufacturer that wants to import products into the United States for our consumers to use to register an agent in the United States who will accept service of process for cases in the United States. By designating such an agent, the manufacturer would consent to the personal jurisdiction of the courts in the State where the agent is located, and no further complicated service of process would be required. This is not dissimilar, for example, to the way a corporation from outside my home State of Rhode Island must register to transact business in our State--a requirement that exists in many States around the country. I suspect it exists in the distinguished Presiding Officer's home State of Colorado.

Finally, let me make clear to whom this applies and how. The big foreign manufacturers that ship billions of dollars of products into the United States and whose names we would all instantly recognize already can be held accountable somewhere in the United States by virtue of their having American operations or by virtue of the size of their imports. They can usually be found. And for companies such as that, complying with the new law will be as simple as designating someone in their U.S. headquarters to be that agent for service process. It will be a 5-minute task to comply with this law.

For foreign companies that have set up manufacturing operations somewhere in the United States, they will get the same treatment as domestic companies under this bill. Their domestic operation will be a location where they can be served. It is the foreign manufacturers that take advantage of our marketplace, but when their defective product injures someone and can't be found, that are the real targets of this amendment, they don't want to be held responsible anywhere.

Who are they? Well, to give a few examples, they are the ones who make the drywall I talked about, full of sulfur, that corrodes wiring and makes the residents sick. They are the companies that make cheap toys with lead paint on them that is poisonous to children or metal plumbing fittings that rupture under routine use because they are so shoddy or those that contaminate medical supplies that are sold into the United States with unthinkable chemicals. These companies may look perfectly legitimate when they sell their products, but when you try to find them once you have been injured by them, it is like grasping smoke. They disappear, and they avoid all accountability when their products hurt our fellow Americans.

It is these companies that this amendment will fully bring within the scope of the American legal system. It is important that we do this, because they should play by the same rules our American companies do with respect to service of process and availability for redress.

The Foreign Manufacturers Legal Accountability Act applies to major product categories including consumer goods, drugs, cosmetics, and chemicals through the Federal agencies that already regulate those product categories and through the components of the Department of Homeland Security that oversee our Nation's imports. The amendment empowers those agencies to use their expertise in these fields to set appropriate thresholds; for instance, to exempt small foreign manufacturers from having to register an agent, and allows a working period to ensure that no disruptions in imports occur during the implementation period of this amendment.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I think it is important. By leveling the economic playing field, it will allow American manufacturers to compete fairly with foreign manufacturers, thereby protecting American jobs. By holding foreign manufacturers to the same standards as American manufacturers, it will protect our consumers and American businesses without raising any trade issues. It will eliminate this terrible situation of a foreign product causing an injury to an American for which that American can get no relief or a foreign company causing an injury to an American but because they can't be found, having an American company that worked on the installation of the product, that sold the product, that is for some reason jointly and severally liable for that injury having to carry the cost that belongs on the foreign manufacturer and would be their cost if only they could be found and served and brought to account in an American court. Both of

those things are rankly unfair, and this is the best solution to put an end to those two injustices.

I think it is an important and a much needed fix to a quirk in our laws. We should pass it as soon as possible. I hope very much it can become a part of the legislation to which it is now a pending amendment.

I thank you very much.

I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I stand in opposition to the resolution offered by the Senator from Alaska. The text of the resolution asks Senators to second-guess scientists and public health officials by voiding the scientific finding that carbon pollution may endanger public health or welfare--like there is any legitimate dispute about that question. The text of this resolution would halt all efforts by EPA to address carbon pollution, including the necessary and long- overdue fuel efficiency standards that EPA negotiated with States and the automobile industry, to everyone's satisfaction.

Mr. President, that is the text of the resolution. But the point of the resolution is far simpler: to delay--delay action on energy legislation, delay action by EPA to protect public health and, more importantly, to delay action in this Congress on energy reform and to preserve the status quo by taking off the pressure of facts and science and law that is now driving the process. They want to trump that with pure politics.

What you will hear from many colleagues who support this resolution is that they want Congress to act to address carbon pollution and not the EPA. But with all due respect, many of the resolution's supporters want nothing to do with comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. What they want is for EPA to go away. If they can delay EPA's work to address carbon pollution or stop it in its tracks altogether, they take the pressure off of anybody to do anything serious

about a new energy policy or our addiction to fossil fuel. This is about delay on change in our energy policy.

Congress could be spending its time now setting the country on a new energy course by placing a price on carbon and investing in low-energy and clean-energy alternatives. Transforming our energy base will not happen overnight, but the longer we delay, the harder it will be.

That is what Congress could be doing. Instead, we are spending time arguing about whether the Clean Air Act should be used to fight air pollution. Outside these walls, in the real world, this question has to seem absurd. What else would the Clean Air Act be used for?

This issue has been all the way to the Supreme Court, and it is established law that the Clean Air Act applies. Then why are we debating this legislation? We are debating this because the big polluters--the same industries that brought us the April 5, 2010, mine disaster in West Virginia and the explosion on the rig in the Gulf of Mexico--like things the way they are. They like the status quo.

Under the status quo, while the rest of America was struggling to pull out of a recession earlier this year, big oil raked in record profits--$23 billion in just the first quarter of 2010. Under the status quo, when workers pay the costs of mining and drilling with their lives, when our environment pays for devastating oilspills, when our children pay the cost of dirty air with childhood asthma, big polluters don't have to pay the full cost of the pollution they have caused. That is the status quo they want to preserve.

In 2009, the polluters spent $290 million lobbying Congress or 10 times what the clean energy companies spent. This year, they have lobbied Members of the Senate to support this Murkowski resolution. They will keep on lobbying for delay and against energy reform, that is clear.

The question is, How will we respond to that big oil industry pressure? Will we fold before these big companies and their corporate lobbyists and delay again action on energy and climate change or will we stand up to the special interests and work to enact comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation?

This is not the first time I have spoken on the Senate floor in opposition to an effort to delay EPA action. But it is the first time I have done so against the backdrop of an environmental catastrophe.

This time, when I say polluters want to delay action on climate change and energy reform, we understand in a very real way the risk that delay poses. Despite the multimillion-dollar ad campaign by BP telling us not to worry because they are ``beyond petroleum,'' hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil now pour into the Gulf of Mexico from a BP well that exploded 2 months ago because they were big polluters and badly prepared.

Polluters have a powerful voice in Congress. Make no mistake about it; if they are successful in getting Congress to keep EPA from addressing carbon pollution, they will take all the pressure off for clean energy jobs legislation. But the tragedy along the gulf coast makes clear that we must do something. Today's vote will make clear who in this Chamber is on the side of delaying action on real energy reform and who is fighting for the American people, for jobs, and for the environment.

America is already years, if not decades, behind in the race to lead the global clean energy revolution. As far back as the 1890s, scientists documented the ``greenhouse effect'' of increased carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The first congressional hearings on climate change were held three decades ago.

In 1994, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change recognized human-caused climate change. The issue has been out there for decades, and now it is time to take action. We have to move swiftly to address climate change and to have America in front in the global race for clean energy jobs.

In the meantime, we have to allow EPA to use its legal authority to reduce carbon pollution and encourage the deployment of clean energy. The EPA isn't just inventing this authority, it is following the law of the land. Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970 under a Republican President. For four decades, EPA has used the Clean Air Act to make our air safer to breathe. Over that same time, guess what. Our economy grew--many times over.

Some argue that the Clean Air Act isn't meant to clean up carbon pollution. Well, the Supreme Court disagreed. Congress wrote a very broad definition of ``air pollutant'' and specifically, in 1990, defined carbon dioxide as a pollutant in the Clean Air Act amendments.

Despite this broad authority, EPA was indeed idle for many years, but not of its own accord, and not when it was sued. In fact, the Bush EPA fought the application of the Clean Air Act to carbon dioxide every step of the way and to the bitter end, right up to the doors of the Supreme Court, where they lost. Despite the heavy hand of the Bush administration holding EPA back from doing its legal duty, the Supreme Court--one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in generations-- ruled in 2007 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions were ``pollutants'' under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court held that if the Agency thought this pollutant could ``reasonably be anticipated'' to endanger public health or welfare, the EPA had to act.

Yet here we are, and some Senators still want delay. For delay, they are willing to vote for a resolution that disregards science. For delay, they are willing to vote for a resolution that undermines the Clean Air Act. For delay, they are willing to vote for a resolution that tosses aside a Supreme Court decision. And for delay, they are willing to vote for a resolution that ignores the will of the American people, largely for the benefit of big oil and other corporate polluters.

Should we have a national discussion on how to control carbon? Yes. Should we debate how to move to cleaner sources of energy? Absolutely. But rather than have an honest discussion about how to do this, supporters of this resolution want to delay doing anything at all.

The attorney general of my State of Rhode Island, Patrick Lynch, with 10 other attorneys general and the corporation counsel of New York City, sent a letter to the Senate leadership yesterday urging us not to vote for the Murkowski resolution because it ``would be a step backwards undoing the settled expectations of States, industry, and environmentalists alike.''

In closing, that is exactly the point of this resolution. It is a deliberate step backward. It is a delay tactic. It is a last attempt by polluters to hold onto the dirty energy economy that has treated them so well--$23 billion well so far this year.

Under this dirty energy economy, we spend $1 billion a day on foreign oil from countries that do not wish us well. Companies such as BP can cut corners on worker safety and the environment and then expect the government to come in and clean up their $30 billion mess. Twelve percent of our children in New England downwind from the polluters suffer from asthma and pulmonary disease. These kids matter. This issue matters. We can delay no longer.

I urge my colleagues to say no to delay, say no to taking all the pressure off the polluters, and vote against the Murkowski resolution so we can get to work to forge clean energy reform in America.

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

Madam President, here in this historic Chamber it is appropriate to recall those who came before us and risked their lives to create the great Republic we serve in this Senate.

Today, I would like to talk about a group of men who, 238 years ago, on this date, engaged in a daring act of defiance against the British Crown--the first bloody act of defiance in the conflict that became the American Revolution.

For many, the Boston Tea Party is considered a first act of defiance. Growing up, we were taught how, on December 16, 1773, Bostonians poured shipments of tea overboard into Boston Harbor to defend the principle, ``no taxation without representation.'' I think almost every schoolchild in America has heard of the Boston Tea Party.

Conspicuously missing from those children's education is the story of the brave Rhode Islanders who dared to challenge the British Crown more than a year before those Bostonians threw tea into the Boston Harbor. Today I would like to take us back to the real beginning of America's fight for independence and share with all of you the story of the British vessel, the HMS Gaspee, and to introduce some little known names, heroes from history, who seem now to be lost in history's footnotes.

In 1772, amidst growing tensions with American Colonies, King George, III, stationed the HMS Gaspee in Rhode Island to prevent smuggling and enforce the payment of taxes to the Crown. But to Rhode Islanders, the Gaspee quickly became a symbol of oppression.

The patronizing presence of the Gaspee was matched by the patronizing and domineering manner of its captain, LT William Dudingston. Lieutenant Dudingston was known for destroying fishing vessels and confiscating their contents and flagging down ships only to harass, humiliate, and interrogate their sailors. But on June 9, 1772, an audacious Rhode Islander named Captain Benjamin Lindsey took a stand.

Aboard his boat, the Hannah, Captain Lindsey set sail from Newport to Providence. When he was hailed by Lieutenant Dudingston to stop for a search by the Gaspee, the defiant Captain Lindsey continued on his course. Gunshots were fired, and the Hannah sped north up Narragansett Bay with the Gaspee in full chase behind.

Outsized and outgunned, Captain Lindsey drew courage and confidence from his and his crew's keen familiarity with Rhode Island waters. He led

the Gaspee into the shallow waters of Pawtuxet Cove, where the smaller Hannah cruised over the sandbars and the heavier Gaspee ran aground. The Gaspee was stranded in a falling tide, and it would be hours before high tide would again set her free.

Captain Lindsey took advantage of this favorable situation. Arriving triumphantly in Providence, Captain Lindsey visited John Brown, whose family helped found Brown University. Knowing the Gaspee's helpless state, the two men rallied a group of patriots at Sabin's Tavern--one daren't speculate on the form of refreshment they took there--in what is now the east side of Providence.

The Gaspee was universally despised by colonists who had been bullied in their own waters, and the vulnerability now of this once powerful vessel presented these patriots an irresistible opportunity. On that dark night, 60 men in longboats with muffled oars, led by Captain Lindsey and Abraham Whipple, moved quietly down the dark waters of Narragansett Bay.

As they encircled the Gaspee, Brown shouted a demand for Lieutenant Dudingston to surrender his ship. Dudingston refused and instead ordered his men to fire upon anyone who tried to board. The fearless Rhode Islanders took this as a cue to force their way onto the Gaspee and forward they charged in a raging uproar of screams, gunshots, powder smoke, and clashing swords. It was amidst this violent struggle that Lieutenant Dudingston was shot by a musket ball. Right there in Rhode Island, right then, the very first blood of the conflict that would lead to the American Revolution was drawn. Victory was soon in the hands of the Rhode Islanders.

Brown and Whipple took the captive Englishmen back to shore and returned to set the abandoned Gaspee afire. She burned prodigiously through the night, until the flames reached her powder magazine. Then, with a convulsive explosion, she was flung in pieces across the bay. The site of this historic victory would later be named Gaspee Point.

Too few people know of this bold undertaking which occurred 16 full months before the heroes of Boston painted their faces and threw tea into the Boston Harbor in the event that became known as the Boston Tea Party. I hope the tale of the Gaspee will work its way into the history books. It preceded the Tea Party. It was more significant than the Tea Party. It was more violent than the Tea Party. And I think it set the stage of conflict that led to our independence and the freedoms we enjoy today.

So I hope Americans will think not just of the date of the Boston Tea Party but will remember June 9, the day the Hannah led the Gaspee across the sandbars of Pawtuxet Cove, stranding her, and those 60 Rhode Islanders came down by oar to attack, burn, and destroy the Gaspee and engage in armed conflict with her crew.

I do know these events are not forgotten in my home State. Over the years, I have often had the chance to march in the annual Gaspee Day's parade through Warwick, RI, as every year we recall the courage and the zeal of these men who risked it all for the freedoms we enjoy today, drawing the first blood of our later Revolutionary conflict.

I hope the young pages I see in the Chamber who, I assume, have all heard of the Boston Tea Party--I see heads nodding, yes, they have--and may not have heard of the Gaspee--I see heads shaking, they have not heard of the Gaspee--at least a small audience of young people today has been educated that it was Rhode Islanders first, Rhode Islanders more energetically, Rhode Islanders more aggressively, and Rhode Islanders more defiantly than anyone else at the early stages of the Revolution.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak about important funding in the supplemental appropriations act that will help my State of Rhode Island recover and rebuild from the recent devastating flood which left homes destroyed, businesses closed, and thousands and thousands out of work. The help in this bill is very important to us. Residents of our Ocean State were in a tough spot long before the rain started to fall. Our economy had been in severe recession for 28 months. Unemployment has remained over 12 percent, putting us in the top 5 States for unemployment for 12 months. Homelessness is on the rise. We are in the top 10 States for foreclosures, and our State budget is simply a disaster. The historic back-to-back floods in March hit an already hard-hit State. Rhode Island saw more rain during this disaster than any month on record ever, over 16 inches, with over 5 inches of rain falling on March 30 alone.

The devastation wrought by these storms exceeds anything in living memory. Meteorologists who have reviewed it are calling this the most damaging storm to hit the Ocean State since 1815. It is too soon to estimate the full economic impact of the March flooding, but it is clear that the economic damage to Rhode Island will be prolonged and severe. The peak storms of March 30 and 31 brought commerce not only in Rhode Island but in the region to a halt. Route I-95, the main artery that connects the major cities of New England and the middle Atlantic States, was closed for 2 full days. It flooded out following a surge of the Pawtuxet River. The river, which has a flood level of 9 feet, crested at its all-time high, almost 21 feet, on March 31.

It is hard to overstate the importance of I-95 to Rhode Island's economy because not only is it a regional artery, it is probably the single most heavily traveled local commuter and commercial artery for our State. Similarly, even Amtrak service through Rhode Island was suspended for 5 days due to the flooding out of the Amtrak rails.

At the height of the rains, Providence Street, a main road in West Warwick, looked more like a river than a road. This picture shows local emergency workers rescuing people who have been flooded into their homes and apartments, driving them through the flood in a boat with jet skis. It is not often that one sees local emergency workers driving down the roads of Rhode Island towns on boats and jet skis. But that is what it took to get residents out who had been trapped by rising flood waters.

A few days later, this was the scene at Angelo Padula & Sons auto salvage yard in West Warwick. The waters have receded, but we can clearly see the damage left behind. All of these cars were covered and filled with water. We can see the mud from the river heaped all over them. I don't know whether it can be seen on television, but hanging in the fencing is leaves and grass and other bits of trash, because the river was over all of this. This fence was a strainer, picking leaves, trash, and other debris out of the flow. This was completely under water when the river was at its height. When it came back, it left the devastation of this auto and salvage yard. According to local news reports, the floods destroyed 1,200 cars in this salvage yard as well as 16 cars in a sales lot and thousands of dollars worth of car parts. The damage to the surrounding neighborhood and the other businesses near Councilman Padula's yard was equally severe and devastating.

This legislation will enable the Army Corps of Engineers to examine the factors that led to the severe flooding in our State. It will help Rhode Island apply effective mitigation measures to forecast the risk of and prevent future flooding. Our communities are now hesitant to rebuild for fear of another flood. We must take steps to prevent a disaster such as this from happening again. People have to know where the danger area is. When you get two back-to-back floods in a matter of weeks that both blow through the 100-year flood line, one of which blows through the 500-year flood line in places, something is wrong with the measurement of the flood risk. The people who have been subjected to these floods know that. As one local business owner said in a recent report on WRNI, our local NPR station: What happens if it floods again in 2 months?

We need this knowledge. We need the support from the Army Corps to get in there and tell us what the real present flood risk is. Clearly, the previous estimates were badly wrong.

This bill also contains funding for community development block grants and economic development assistance grants for long-term recovery efforts that will help restore and rebuild Rhode Island communities. As I traveled around the State for days following the flood, the sheer magnitude of the damage was unprecedented. The Federal response came quickly. The President issued a disaster declaration almost immediately. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano was on the ground within days. FEMA quickly came in to set up emergency assistance centers and begin processing disaster assistance applications. They set up offices all across the State. They did a phenomenal job of getting people into the State, of reaching out across the State and making sure they were widely spread and available to victims of the flood. So far FEMA has processed more than 25,000 claims and, in a State of a million people, that is a big number. I thank them for their hard work. Of course, FEMA delivers a particular specified product that is defined by law and regulation. They haven't been able to help everyone. People have fallen through the cracks, and so many Rhode Islanders remain frustrated.

I recently held one of my community dinners in Cranston for people to come and ask questions about flood aid. I heard from a number of people who feel as though they have fallen through the cracks in the wake of this disaster or feel that the help they have received is not enough.

Small business owners, for instance, have been limited to receiving low-interest loans from the SBA to recover from their flood damage. But for many of the small businesses which were already struggling through the terrible economy I described before the floods even came, the prospect of taking on more debt in order to repair flood damage is not feasible. They need grant support.

What is important about this legislation is that CDBG and EDA will allow the local municipalities to design appropriate programs to catch the people who were not those 25,000 satisfied customers of FEMA but are the people who, because of the nature of the program and the nature of their flood damage somehow managed to fall through the cracks.

For our towns and cities in Rhode Island, again, this could not have come at a worse time. I have already shown you some of the damage that was sustained in West Warwick. That is a town that was already experiencing hard economic times. Now the town's already stretched budget has been pushed to the limit by the overtime shifts and the emergency repairs and all of the extra effort required to deal with the flood and its aftermath. By lowering the State and municipal cost share from 25 percent to 10 percent, this appropriations package will be a big relief to the people of West Warwick. Frankly, the city of West Warwick and others will have the ability now to design packages to help their residents and their small businesses that were not adequately compensated by FEMA to try to get them back on their feet. So it is two good things for the municipalities: It is a reduction from 25 percent to 10 percent in their share, and it is an opportunity to create a plan that will help serve their constituents.

In Cumberland, RI, Hope Global, one of the town's largest employers, was completely washed out by the flood. This is a picture of Hope Global I have in the Chamber. This is their loading dock. Normally, there would be no water there at all. There would only be a parking lot there, and a truck would back up to this level. This would be several feet off the ground. As it was, I floated through those loading docks in an inflatable boat at Hope Global.

They are an enterprising company. Cheryl Merchant, who is their CEO, is an astonishing woman. She had all of the equipment in that factory jacked up on temporary pallets of one kind or another, so when the flood came in, it did not damage the machinery because it had been jacked up. When the floodwater went back down, they put the machinery back down on the ground. They got their electricity going again. They plugged back in, and they were

running in no time. Before their executive offices were cleaned up, while everything was still a wreck, the machinery was already spinning and the Rhode Islanders at Hope Global were already back at work. That was a great thing. But now they face the problem of, do we stay? Should we go on? Should we find a location where we do not face this kind of a risk?

One of the important decisions Hope Global needs us to make is to reduce the threat of future flood damage. Can there be a berm that protects them from the river overflowing, as it did here? They would like to see that berm constructed along the riverbank for their protection, and we are hopeful the funding in this appropriations package will help Cumberland to assist the Army Corps in getting that done quickly.

I will close by pointing out that the motto on the Rhode Island State flag is ``hope.'' That is our symbol. That is the phrase, the word that has seen us through tough times in the past. The flooding has destroyed homes. It has closed businesses. It has put careers on hold. But the people of Rhode Island have stood up remarkably well. However, the job of rebuilding roads, rebuilding bridges, rebuilding sewage treatment plants, rebuilding public facilities, homes, and businesses is a colossal and daunting task for a State already 28 months into severe recession. Rhode Islanders are a resilient bunch. We will recover and rebuild. But this will certainly help us to get there.

Since this appropriations package was passed unanimously in committee, I hope for quick passage on the floor.

I see the very distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Cochran of Mississippi, who represents a State that has seen its own share of flooding and difficulty recently. I know how sympathetic he is to our concerns and how effectively and helpfully he has worked with Jack Reed, my senior Senator, who is also on the Appropriations Committee, who has worked to see that this gets done. So I want to take this moment, as I conclude my remarks, to pass on my gratitude to the chairman, Senator Inouye; the ranking member, the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran; and my senior Senator, Jack Reed, for all of their work in pushing this funding through the Appropriations Committee to where it is now on the floor. Our State is lucky to have had their support, and I look forward to continuing my work with Senator Reed to make sure Rhode Island rebuilds.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.