Floor Statements

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to address the Senate today. I second the words of my colleague from Texas of the concerns of this economy and question how we got here. It is pretty clear to me, with 8 years of Bush economics, with deregulation of Wall Street, more tax cuts for the rich, and a trade policy that Wall Street has pushed through the House and Senate, these job-killing trade agreements that have caused literally millions of manufacturing jobs to flee our country, combined with a tax policy that gives incentives for companies to go overseas, rather than passing Senator Obama's, Senator Durbin's, and my Patriot Corporation Act, which gives incentives for those companies that are staying right here in the United States, whether it is in Omaha or Cleveland, whether it is in Houston or Columbus, those companies that play by the rules, rewarding them with tax policy and others that those companies deserve.

Let me, for a moment, Mr. President, take the Senate around on a tour of my State. There are so many good things happening in Ohio. I was with Governor Strickland for a couple days on Friday and Saturday going through eastern and southern Ohio. We were talking with people we met and talking to each other about all that is happening in our State, all the good that is happening, particularly in the area of biomedical research and development and job creation and especially in alternative energy.

Ohio is on the precipice--as many of us have pushed for in my State for many years--Ohio is on the precipice of being the Silicon Valley of alternative energy. It started in Toledo, which has the largest solar energy manufacturer in the country. The research going on at the University of Toledo on wind turbines is the furthest reaching, furthest advanced research in the country.

Go around the State to Akron and you can see what the University of Akron is doing with polymers and the kind of spinoff of jobs replacing lost jobs in the auto industry.

Go to Dayton where we have the National Composite Center that is making major contributions with lighter, stronger, more durable materials that can help with more efficient, better mileage automobiles, not to mention what they are doing on alternative energy with wind turbine blades.

Go to Cleveland and look at what the Case Western Reserve University, in conjunction with the Cleveland Foundation, is doing with plans to be the first place in the world where there will be a wind turbine farm in fresh water off the coast of Cleveland in green Lake Erie, supplying much of the electricity needs of northern Ohio.

Go to Columbus and look at the Center for Automotive Research and the work they are doing for Ohio State. Look at the great university facilities at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and the University of Cincinnati and what they are doing on biomedical research and alternative energy too.

You can see in my State of Ohio, as many jobs as we have lost, this State is coming back.

Now, we can't do what we need to do--and the Governor was emphatic about that, as I am in the Chamber of the Senate--we can't do what we need to do unless we get a little more help from the Federal Government, not so much giving us things but just not standing in our way.

Instead, we have seen, for the last several years in our State and in our country, a betrayal of the middle class. The drug companies wrote the Medicare law, the insurance industry has written health care legislation in this Congress, the oil companies have dictated energy policy, and Wall Street has pushed through these job-killing trade agreements. On issue after issue after issue, the Republican majority in the House and in the Senate, for most of the last 8 years, and the Bush administration have betrayed the middle

class and the values that we as a nation and that we as a State find so important.

All you have to do is look at what happened yesterday in the Banking Committee when Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke testified. I have a lot of respect for Chairman Bernanke. I think he has moved as quickly as a Fed Chairman can in dealing with the housing crisis in most cases, certainly compared to his predecessor, who helped to set the table for a lot of these problems. I have a lot of respect for him. He and Secretary Paulson testified before our committee. They had some interesting ideas, as the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn, mentioned a moment ago. I don't buy their solution: Give me $700 billion and a blank check and I will try and figure out how to do it; buying these troubled assets, without any rules to it. It is dead on arrival in my belief.

But what my colleagues don't bring out, when we have this terrible problem on Wall Street, is how we got there. It is this betrayal of the middle class that has been brought to us by the Bush administration-- the deregulation of Wall Street. Wall Street people are always going to be aggressive. They are all going to look for money-making opportunities. They are all going to play on the edge sometimes and take risks. But until the Bush years, there have been rules in place that keep Wall Street from going over the line, that keep Wall Street in check, that still capture the energy and dynamism of capitalism but don't allow them to go overboard and do what they did. That is what has brought us to this today, coupled with the tax cuts and the incredible profits of Wall Street firms, the incredible bonuses, eight-figure bonuses. When I say eight figure, that means $10 million and up; bonuses that too many of these Wall Street executives had while they were inflicting damage in Maple Heights, in Garfield Heights, in Norwood, and in places all over my State that are suffering from the home foreclosure crisis.

So we got to this place where Wall Street overreached, where their greed overcame all other sentiments, and we got to this place because of the Bush deregulation of Wall Street, because of the tax cuts, because of this trade policy that has betrayed the middle class. As far as I am concerned, three strikes and you are out. This deregulation, the tax cuts, and trade policy clearly have put us in a place where my State has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since George Bush took the oath of office. I see the pain around my State, even though we are fighting back. Even in that initial trip around the State that I took my colleagues on, people in my State are hurting. In the last year and a half, since I was sworn into the Senate in January of 2007, I have held almost 120 roundtables in my State--from Ashtabula to Middletown, from Gallipolis to Toledo--and in these roundtables I will invite 15 or 20 people from the community or 15 or 20 veterans or 15 or 20 farmers, a cross-section of the community, and talk to them about their hopes and their dreams. Increasingly, I see fear. Increasingly, I see anxiety about the future because they know their Government simply hasn't been on their side.

So I think about this deregulation, the Bush-Cheney-McCain deregulation. We know that our colleague, Senator McCain--who has not been here very much in the last year and a half because of the Presidential campaign--has consistently pushed for deregulation. He has, in the last few months, become a raging populist. He almost sounds like some of the great populists who sat in this Senate over the last 100 years. He almost sounds like Paul Wellstone. He almost sounds like Senator LaGuardia from New York, people who fought for the common man. But this is sort of a new John McCain than before when he was for the tax cuts, when he was for deregulation. More importantly, Senator McCain has been one of the prominent cheerleaders for deregulation which got us into this position on Wall Street. Now he is saying the President should fire Chairman Cox. He is saying we should go after these Wall Street executives, things he never dreamed of saying until he decided it was good for his Presidential campaign.

In the past, Senator McCain has said he doesn't know much about economics, and what he does know he learned from one of our colleagues, Phil Gramm. Phil Gramm was the architect--John McCain's mentor in the Senate, particularly on economic issues--Phil Gramm was the prime architect of this deregulation scheme that has so pushed us behind the eight ball and that is so troubling, frankly, to the direction we are now going. I think if we hadn't had this deregulation of Wall Street, we wouldn't be in the position we are. I don't know that Senator Gramm gets it, still. Phil Gramm has said we are not in a recession; that Americans are in a mental recession. When people complained about that statement saying: Look around; all you have to do is look around, Phil Gramm said the American people ought to quit whining. It is easy for him to say. He is a major bank executive. He is a lobbyist--he is a major bank executive and he has made so much money. He is the Senator who supported Enron and all its problems. We know that following his economic advice is not the way the country should go.

I come to the floor today for one more purpose, and that is to sound the alarm on what this privatization, deregulation scheme is all about. Imagine if we had followed what Senator McCain had said in 2005. In 2005, President Bush was sworn in for his second term on January 20. Two weeks before that, the House and Senate began their sessions. We were sworn in. I was sworn in as a Member of the House of Representatives in those days. Soon after our swearing in and soon after the President's swearing in, the President unveiled his major domestic policy initiative, which was to privatize Social Security, to set up these private accounts. Democrats opposed them in a unified way in the Congress. In the House and Senate, almost every single Democrat--maybe every single Democrat--opposed them. People in the country said no. Democrats said no. All over the country, citizens, Independents said no, Republicans said no, this was a bad idea.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 3 additional minutes.

I thank my colleague from Florida.

Imagine what would have happened if we had gone along and if the country hadn't said no to this Bush-Cheney-McCain privatization scheme: Americans now would find that these private accounts weren't quite what they were billed to be. They were, in fact, as risky as many of us said. Because of the promises of: Let's put our private accounts--let's put our hard-earned Social Security dollars in New York; let's have Wall Street manage our private Social Security accounts--we all know what would have happened with the vicissitudes and the volatility of the stock market.

My last point is Senator McCain has recently called himself fundamentally a deregulator and he is sort of the deregulator in chief in the Senate. But he has come up with something else. He wrote in this month's issue of Health Magazine that it would still be a good idea to deregulate the health insurance market: ``As we have done over the last decade in banking.''

I don't get it. I don't know how any Member of this body, if he ever goes home or she ever goes home and talks to voters, how they could think that deregulation of banking, deregulation of health care, let's give more power to Wall Street and deregulate banking; let's give more power to the health insurance industry and deregulate health insurance, it would make any sense at all. I think that, perhaps, more than anything, shows the fork in the road we are at in this country.

In this Senate and in the House and in the elections, we have a choice. Do we want to continue down this path of deregulation and betrayal of the middle class by a government that has turned this Government over to interest groups--the drug companies writing the Medicare law, the insurance companies writing the health care legislation, the oil companies writing energy policy, Wall Street pushing through these job-killing trade agreements--do we want to continue to go in that direction or do we want to go in a different direction that will put the middle class first. I think the choice is

clear, and I think we will see that in the upcoming weeks.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Florida.

Madam President, I congratulate the Benjamin Rose Institute on its 100th anniversary, an exciting milestone for this Northeast Ohio organization.

Established in 1908 with money donated by Cleveland industrialist Benjamin Rose, the institute has worked to advance the health, independence, and dignity of older adults by raising the standards of elder care.

Over its 100-year history, the institute has provided counseling and home care to those older Americans suffering from mental and physical illnesses; offered companionship, housing, and social workers to seniors in need; pursued research on applied gerontology; and advocated for the elderly at the local, state, and national levels of government.

In the days before Social Security, the Benjamin Rose Institute provided pensions to older adults who needed help staying in their homes and keeping food on their tables. And starting in the 1940s, the Benjamin Rose Institute began running group homes and, later, nursing homes, for seniors unable to live independently.

Over the years, tens of thousands of Ohioans living in the Cleveland area have been touched by the institute's work and have come to realize the critical role the institute plays in their community.

I commend the Benjamin Rose Institute for a century of charitable work on behalf of older Ohioans.

Thank you, Mr. President. I just have a few short remarks.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Montana, Senator Baucus, for the terrific work he did when I talked to him on the Senate floor in July and he made a point of speeding up and shepherding through the Improved Adoption Incentives and Relative Guardianship Support Act of 2008. It was his leadership that made such a difference. I am proud to be a cosponsor of that bill, which was introduced by Senator Grassley in May and passed the Finance Committee unanimously earlier this month.

Since its enactment in 1998, the Adoption Incentives Program has helped nearly 450,000 children in all 50 States and the District of Columbia move from foster care to permanent homes. In my State of Ohio, more than 18,000 adoptions have been finalized through this program. It has helped incredible people such as Joe and Becky Puckett of Conover, OH. After raising children of their own, the Pucketts adopted four children with special needs out of the foster care system. Without reauthorization, this important program would have expired on September 30. Thankfully, this bill passed last night by unanimous consent.

I commend the senior Senator from Montana and others for their tireless support and the hard work they have done on behalf of adopted children and families who adopt in our great country. I thank the Senator from Montana.

I yield the floor, Mr. President.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am always both amused and amazed to hear my friends on the other side of the aisle talk about taxes, because they are always talking about cutting the corporate tax rate. They always say our corporate taxes are higher than anyplace in the world. But that is on paper that they are the highest. The effective tax rate, what corporations are paying, is much lower. They know that and we know that.

It is so often a smokescreen. Senator McCain and my friends on the other side of the aisle always want to talk about tax cuts. It is always a smokescreen to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans while the middle class, again, bears the brunt. The Obama tax cuts are all about the middle class. He wants to cut taxes on people making $30,000 and $50,000 and $100,000 and $150,000 a year.

Certainly people making $300,000 a year can afford a little more, and that is exactly the way Senator Obama has looked at it, and the way so many of us have looked at it as well.

We want to get our fiscal house in order. We have seen what happens with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. We have seen what happens with the Federal budget. We are spending close to $3 billion every week on this war in Iraq. These tax cuts, which have gone overwhelmingly to the richest citizens, have put us behind the eight ball. And we have seen our budget surplus--the day George Bush was sworn in--go to more than a $1 billion a day budget deficit. That is because of tax cuts for the rich. Not for the middle class, tax cuts for the rich. We want to move some of that money to middle-class tax cuts. And as we exit the war in Iraq and we begin to free up money, we want to use that for the domestic needs many of us have talked about.

The real reason I came to the floor, though, was to talk about what has occurred this week, what has happened on Wall Street. I am fairly incredulous that some in this body would still be saying we have too much regulation. It is pretty clear the cowboys on Wall Street and the deregulation of the Bush era--the Bush years--have led us to these problems. Not that this leads us to a Great Depression. I don't believe that. But it has led us back to some of the same kinds of unparalleled

zealous greed on Wall Street which we haven't seen since the 1930s.

But what concerns me is that I remember 3 years ago, in early 2005, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain barnstormed the United States and campaigned all over the country for Social Security privatization. They worshipped at the mantle of how important it would be to have these private accounts; that if only people on Social Security invested in the stock market, think how much better off they would be. That was in 2005. Imagine if Bush and Cheney and McCain, and others around here, had succeeded in that endeavor. Imagine what people would be doing today if we had privatized Social Security. When people opened their statements--if they had private accounts--imagine what they would be feeling today with what has happened in the stock markets.

That, to me, is the biggest contrast between the direction the country is going in now, the direction John McCain and George Bush wanted to take also, and the direction so many senators, such as Senators Whitehouse, McCaskill, and others in this body want to take us. Do we want to privatize Social Security, put senior citizens at the mercy of Wall Street? What would happen to their solid, guaranteed Social Security payments? Do we want to do that or do we want to make sure we will protect those Social Security payments?

I can't get Social Security out of my mind this week as I have seen what has happened with AIG, and what happened a few weeks ago with Bear Stearns, and what happened with Lehman Brothers and the stock market, and that we would possibly put people into private Social Security accounts. That is what John McCain wants to do. That is what they tried to do in 2005.

That is why I am so thankful that enough people in this body and in the House of Representatives, where I was in those days--and, more importantly, enough people in the United States, enough citizens-- pushed back and said no to the Bush-Cheney-McCain privatization of Social Security. It wouldn't have worked then, and it clearly won't work now. It is a bad idea. It is one of the major issues I think we will see in the fall campaign, this whole idea of privatizing: privatizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security, privatizing the military, and all these contracts that Halliburton-Bechtel have.

Senator McCaskill, who will speak in a few moments, has done a great deal of work in trying to root out all the waste and all the illegalities, if you will, in some of these private military contracts. This whole effort to privatize has clearly cost taxpayer money. It has caused great risk for far too many people in Medicare. Thank God we were able to stop the Social Security privatization. If they had had their way in 2005, seniors would be much more worried about the cuts and the decline and the disintegration and the disappearance of their dollars if we had instituted private accounts, coupled with higher gas prices and food prices, and all that we have seen.

So again, I remind my colleagues that they have not given up on their idea in 2005. We know they will try it again. If they have a majority, and if Senator McCain is elected, we know they will try privatization again. It was a bad idea then, it is a bad idea now.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I object on behalf of the leadership, as the Rules Committee needs time to look at this and digest this and figure this out to try to work something out. So I object.

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

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, in the last 18 or 19, 20 months since I have been a Member of the Senate, joined by my friend from Rhode Island, I have held, around my State, about 115 or so roundtables in most of Ohio, all of Ohio's 88 counties, from Mahoning County to Ashtabula to Williams County, from the southeast to the southwest, all over the State, listening to groups of 15 to 20 people for an hour and a half or so tell me about their hopes and their dreams and what we can do to build their communities and help strengthen the middle class in the State.

I hear regularly, in more emphatic terms almost every month, about the anxiety facing our State's middle-class families. They can be as rural as Fulton County or Highland County, they can be as urban as Cuyahoga or Franklin or Hamilton County, or they can be in between, places such as Mansfield and Lima and Zanesville and Chillicothe and Portsmouth. I hear people in Ohio who work hard, who play by the rules, and they are watching too many of their jobs or their neighbors' jobs move overseas. They are seeing their own health care and energy costs soar. In far too many cases, even in unionized plants, they are seeing their pensions disappear.

I hear this sense of betrayal. People understand--intuitively understand--that in most of the last 8 years, especially up until last year but even so,

still, how they feel this Government has betrayed the middle class. When President Bush had control of the House and Senate, with the Republican majority in the House and Republican control of the Senate and Bush and Cheney in the White House, they saw the drug companies writing the Medicare laws; they saw the insurance industry dictating health care policies; they saw the oil industry ramming through energy legislation; they saw Wall Street pushing these job-killing trade agreements through the House and through the Senate. They understand, again intuitively, that the Bush-Cheney-McCain ideology that markets can always police themselves is bankrupt.

Every year of the Bush administration and every year of Republican control of the House and Senate, we heard this mantra, this conservative orthodoxy that markets always do the right things; that markets can police themselves; that any regulation is evil; just open our country, no reason for environmental rules, no reason for worker safety rules, no reason for rules, period, governing financial institutions.

Let's take one issue. Imagine if George Bush and Dick Cheney and John McCain had gotten their way 3 years ago, in January 2005--I believe January or February. President Bush and John McCain and Dick Cheney authored their scheme, their legislation--call it legislation--to privatize Social Security. This risky, reckless privatization scheme they were trying to push through Congress met incredible opposition, not just from Democrats in Congress--because we believe strongly in a Social Security that works, not one that is privatized, that Wall Street gets its hands on--but the American people spoke resoundingly, loudly, clearly that they did not want this Social Security privatization.

But go back. Imagine if the voters of Rhode Island or the voters of my State of Ohio--if George Bush and John McCain had gotten their way 3 years ago with that risky scheme to privatize Social Security, imagine what American seniors would think today as their private Social Security accounts disintegrated before their eyes. Imagine the next Social Security statement they would get after we have had a week like this, when they opened up the envelope that was mailed to them that itemized how their private accounts were doing, their Bush-Cheney- McCain private accounts.

Imagine what choices they would face. Their food prices are already going up. Gas prices are through the roof. Heating prices, especially in States such as Rhode Island and Ohio--imagine what seniors in Dayton and Findley and Bowling Green and Akron and Canton would think when they opened their Social Security statements and saw what had happened, as they look forward to the winter and high energy prices.

Look at John McCain's economic advisers. I have not been privileged to serve in the Senate that many years. I was in the House then, and I was not here when Phil Gramm served as a Senator. Phil Gramm was John McCain's economics mentor. John McCain looked to Phil Gramm for advice about economics. Phil Gramm is the one who said we are not in a recession; we are in a mental recession. Americans should just get over this. Then he told Americans to quit whining. It is easy for Phil Gramm who, I assume, has a pretty good pension. I also know he is now an investment banker and adviser to large corporations. I am sure he is making a salary of several multiples of what he was making in the Senate. So, to him, recession doesn't much matter. He is still cashing his bonus checks. I am sure he doesn't whine about his economic situation. But I am equally sure he doesn't understand the economic woes of people in Galion and Cambridge and Bellaire, OH.

I am equally sure both John McCain and Phil Gramm probably own more homes each than almost anybody in any of those communities and don't face these kinds of economic problems. Phil Gramm said he wants to be Treasury Secretary if John McCain is elected.

Look at one of his other advisers, Carly Fiorina, ousted CEO of Hewlett Packard. She pretty much failed at her job, was ousted, and was given a huge golden parachute. She is John McCain's chief economic adviser in the campaign. Phil Gramm was the mentor. Now Carly Fiorina is his chief economic adviser. She said she doesn't think John McCain is capable of running a corporation, and she wanted to be Vice President.

I guess I should not be surprised that Ohio's middle-class families intuitively understand they can't afford four more of Bush, Cheney, and McCain, of deregulation and privatization, how so many in this institution--and unfortunately, Senator McCain--are so out of touch with the middle class of Ohio, the people he is going to ask to vote for him. I think none of us are fooled by this latest change in rhetoric where Senator McCain is all of a sudden showing an anger at what these companies and Wall Street have done.

As we know, John McCain was one of the cheerleaders not just for privatization of Social Security, he was also a cheerleader for deregulation, saying we have way too many regulations, too many environmental, worker safety, consumer product safety, and health regulations and rules on Wall Street.

We know when you relax regulation of consumer product safety, you get toxic toys coming from China. When you relax regulation on food safety, you get too many cases of E. coli. You get too many contaminated ingredients that end up in drugs such as Heparin that killed several people in Toledo, contaminating prescription drugs. When you weaken environmental laws, we know what happens. When you weaken food safety laws, consumer product safety, all the things that Americans care about, and when you deregulate Wall Street, we know what happens. It is pretty clear but nowhere is it clearer than it is on Social Security. I know the Senator from Rhode Island and I and the majority of people in this Senate want to protect Social Security, don't want to privatize it. John McCain, George Bush, and Dick Cheney tried to privatize it back in 2005. We know if they get a majority in the House and Senate, they will try to privatize Social Security again. It is bad for the American people.

We saw this week the best illustration yet of what happens if this crowd in Washington, the people who are so out of touch with the middle class--John McCain, George Bush, Dick Cheney--if they get their chance ever to privatize Social Security, far too many of my constituents will be hurt.

Yes.

The first thing Senator McCain would do is tax those health care policies that tens of millions of Americans have. In my State there are an awful lot of still pretty good health care policies, health care coverage, often negotiated by unions, often extended voluntarily by employers. Senator McCain wants to tax the worth of those policies. So if you have a policy worth $6,000 for your family, then that would be taxed under the McCain plan. He turns around then and gives some tax breaks in their place. But the net effect simply means it isn't going to work.

It goes to the heart of our philosophy as a people, the values we hold. The values that we hold, in my view, are about communities. We really are in this together. Our country works best when we are cooperating, working together. We pulled together after September 11. We pulled together during

World War II. When we pull together and work together, things work for everybody so much better.

Senator McCain is taking up where George Bush and Dick Cheney left off. They think it is every man and woman for himself or herself: privatization of Social Security, messing with employer-based health benefits as they are, without replacing them with anything that makes any sense. The ``you are on your own'' attitude makes no sense for the American people. The more people know about this, the more upset they are going to be.

There is no question. Earlier we were talking about Phil Gramm, who says we are in the middle of a recession and Americans should quit whining; Phil Gramm, whose income is many times what it was in the Senate, and we are paid very generously in this body. John McCain has followed the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration, but he gets his advice, if he ever strays, from Phil Gramm. Phil Gramm was his mentor on his economic views.

If you remember John McCain said several times in the last couple years, I don't know much about economics. He may or may not. Apparently, he doesn't know much. But what he does know comes from this very corporate, very privatized way of thinking that Phil Gramm has taught him. He has carried that into the campaign as Phil Gramm continues to advise him on economic matters. Just because John McCain is saying some things today that you and I agree with about going after Wall Street and that I want regulation, his whole history is deregulation, fighting for deregulation, doing Wall Street's bidding, doing the oil industry's bidding, doing the health insurance companies' bidding.

I think he was against it before he was for it. He was for the head of SEC, Chris Cox, and now he is against him. Maybe tomorrow he will want Secretary Paulson fired. I don't know. He has been for a lot of things before he has been against them, unfortunately. I thank the Senator from Illinois.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, since I took office last year, I have held more than 115 roundtables in nearly all of Ohio's 88 counties--from Ashtabula to Cincinnati, from Bryan the Gallipolis--as I bring together 15 or 20 people from a community and listen to them talk about their hopes and their dreams and what we can do together to make Ohio a better place and to move this country

forward. But more than anything else, as I listen to people in communities such as Bucyrus and Mansfield and Wauseon, I hear about widespread economic anxiety and a betrayed middle class.

Ohioans have understood that for years, especially in the first 6 years of the Bush administration, this government allowed the drug companies to write the Medicare laws, allowed the oil industry to dictate energy policy, had allowed Wall Street to push through job- killing trade agreements through the House and the Senate.

They feel the middle class was betrayed by our Government. I hear from Ohioans worried about record high gas prices, worried about food prices, worried about good-paying jobs continuing to move overseas, worried about health insurance that costs more and covers less.

Some of these worries can be blamed in part on our current recession, but that misses the larger point. For the last 7 years, the labor force workers have worked harder and harder, leading to huge gains in productivity. The productivity of workers in our economy has gone up like this. Yet CEOs' salaries and bonuses went through the roof while middle class Americans' wages stagnated and more families slipped below the poverty line. Again, productivity has gone up like this, meaning workers are creating more wealth for their employers, but wages have been stagnant for 80 or 90 percent of the workforce.

In other words, as workers have produced more, as workers have been more productive, as workers have made more money for their bosses, if you will, they simply have not shared in the wealth they created. They are not getting raises. They are paying more for health insurance, they are seeing their pensions begin to disintegrate, as they are making more and more money for their employer.

At the same time, while China manipulated its currency and ignored labor and environmental standards, corporations took the bait and abandoned American communities. While hedge fund managers irresponsibly leveraged real estate holdings, millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosures. In other words, while Wall Street enjoyed an inflated stock market and a so-called economic expansion, most Americans actually became worse off.

In the last few weeks, we know things have gotten worse. The Government has been forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lehman Brothers, an institution on Wall Street for 150 years, filed for bankruptcy on Monday. It is also reported that for the 8th straight month, our Nation has lost jobs. The national unemployment rate is now 6.1 percent--a 5-year high. We know what happened to AIG today.

Mr. President, 9.4 million Americans are officially unemployed, 2.2 million more than a year ago--tens of thousands in my State of Ohio. In fact, you have to go back more than 15 years, to December 1992, to find a time when more Americans were forced to rely on the Government for their income.

In my State of Ohio, middle class workers are facing even more bad news. DHL, the cargo express carrier, has announced that more than 8,000 workers at Wilmington Air Park, the largest privately owned airport in the United States, will lose their jobs. Norwalk Furniture halted operations earlier this month, sending 500 employees home. General Motors is closing its plant in Moraine, a decision that will cost 1,200 Ohioans their livelihoods.

Do you know what. The worst part is this: The administration is proud of this record. They are proud of the free trade agreements that have protected corporate interests, that have eliminated good-paying manufacturing jobs, that have brought unsafe food, drugs, and toys into American homes. They are proud of these free trade agreements, and they want more of them.

They are proud of the tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the wealthy and ignored the plight of the middle class. We know what that has meant. It has meant budget deficits as far as the eye can see. It has meant more money for the wealthiest people in this society, paid for by the middle class, and paid for by our children and our grandchildren of the future. Yet they are proud of these tax cuts that go overwhelmingly to the rich. The administration is proud of the financial deregulation that allowed greed on Wall Street to run amok.

These days, Republicans respond to critics by saying: Things aren't so bad. John McCain, our colleague from Arizona, said: The foundations of the economy are strong. Former Senator Phil Gramm, the mentor of Senator McCain, the chief economic adviser to Senator McCain, said: The recession is in our heads. It is a mental recession, he said.

I guess if you think things are going well, you advocate for more of the same, which is why Republicans continue to push for more tax cuts for corporations that outsource jobs overseas, pushing more energy policies that enrich oil companies and reinforce our dependence on foreign oil, pushing for more subsidies for private HMOs participating in Medicare, pushing more antiunion policies that undercut workers' power to bargain collectively and join the middle class, pushing for more hypocrisy that says we can afford to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq; we just cannot find the money to help uninsured children in Columbus or Zanesville or Dayton or Chillicothe or Springfield or Xenia.

In fact, since we had our last vote, about an hour ago, we have spent some $19 million on the war in Iraq. In the last hour, we have spent about $19 million on the war in Iraq. Think what that could do for health care, for education, for rebuilding our infrastructure in Lima and in Portsmouth and in Chillicothe. Perhaps most troubling of all, Republicans are still, unbelievably enough, pushing for the privatization of Social Security. Can my colleagues imagine--Senator Sanders and I were talking about this a moment ago--if 3 years ago, when George Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain were fighting to privatize Social Security, and people in this institution, including Leader Reid and Senator Sanders, when he was in the House of Representatives, and many of us fought against that privatization of Social Security--can my colleagues imagine if that had passed in early 2005? If the President and Senator McCain had had their way on the privatization of Social Security, can my colleagues imagine what this week would look like? Can my colleagues imagine, if 50 million retired Americans had had their entire life savings locked up in the stock market--can my colleagues imagine 50 million Americans opening their Social Security records, their mailing they get from Social Security and looking at what happened to their private accounts; money they had put in the stock market because George Bush and John McCain insisted on this risky scheme to privatize Social Security? Can my colleagues imagine what that would do to seniors in our society? Can my colleagues imagine what that would do to their future--if you are 65 and already on Social Security, if you are 50 and your mother is on Social Security, if you are about to join the ranks of Social Security? Can my colleagues imagine what one would think with food prices going up, with gas prices going up and all of a sudden, because you have these John McCain-George Bush privatized Social Security accounts, can my colleagues imagine what would be happening to their lives this week and the weeks ahead?

Despite 7 years of this tired thinking and of the wrong-headed economic policies that betray our middle class, American workers are standing strong and continuing to fight for a better future.

At my roundtables--as I mentioned, I have done some 1,500 roundtables in most of Ohio's 88 counties, in Cambridge and in Steubenville and in Defiance and in Miami County, all over--I still hear the hope and determination that defines this great Nation. I hear from community leaders. I hear from entrepreneurs with exciting plans for the future. What is happening with the incubator in Youngstown? What is happening with small business in Delaware? I hear about what people in Mansfield, my hometown, are doing to fight back. I hear from small business owners who are continuing to do the right thing. I hear from their loyal workers who take pride in their work and are valued by their employers. They tell us we need a government that similarly values loyalty and work ethic.

For too long, those in power have simply turned their back on American workers. They have ignored their needs and their dreams--the dreams of the middle class. They have instead catered to the wealthiest Americans. We know that a strong middle class builds a prosperous society and is the engine that makes this country go. But it doesn't have to be the way we have seen in the last few years where this Government in Washington--that allowed the drug companies to write the Medicare law; that allowed the oil industry to write energy policy; that allows Wall Street to push through job-killing trade agreements-- all of this betrayal of the middle class from George Bush to Dick Cheney to John McCain, to far too many of my colleagues in this body and down the hall in the House of Representatives--people have had enough of this betrayal of the middle class. It doesn't have to be that way. The sooner we change direction, the sooner our economic woes will be behind us.

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 that following my remarks, the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan, be given time to speak.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Fighting for Middle-Class Families

Mr. President, last week, our Nation celebrated Labor Day for the 114th year. We have come a long way since 1894.

On my lapel, I wear a pendent that is a depiction of a canary in a bird cage. Some 100 years ago, around the time Labor Day began, mine workers used to take a canary down into the mines. If the canary died from toxic gas or a lack of oxygen, the mine worker knew he had to immediately get out of the mine. He had no union in those days strong enough to protect him and no government in those days that cared enough to protect him.

In those days, a child born around that time in our country--100 or so years ago--had a life expectancy of 46, 47, 48 years. A child born today in our great country has a life expectancy about three decades longer than that. Much of that is not just high-tech medicine and chemotherapy and heart transplants, that kind of thing; most of the increased life expectancy in this country is about Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and workers' compensation, protections for workers, a prohibition on child labor, safe drinking laws, clean air and pure food and drug laws--that kind of progress that has been made in this country that helps people live longer, happier, healthier lives.

Thanks to the workers' rights movement, employees today, especially, enjoy better wages, better working conditions, better protections against discrimination.

But as I travel around my State--I have held almost 120 community roundtables, inviting a cross section of 15, 20, 25 people, to listen to their concerns and to tell me of their dreams, and what we can do in my office, and to help them locally in their communities--it is clear our Nation's recent economic policies have not adequately benefited workers.

The American dream--the promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, your economic future will be bright--should be the rule, but too often it is the exception.

As I travel the State, I hear about widespread economic anxiety and a betrayed middle class. I hear from Ohioans worried about record high gas prices and food prices. I hear from people from Galion to Gallipolis worried about good-paying jobs continuing to move overseas. I hear people from Ashtabula to Lima worried about health insurance that costs more and covers less.

I hear from food bank administrators from Hocking County and from Lucas County struggling to keep up with demand, like Mike from the Warren County United Way, who estimates that some 90 percent of local food bank patrons are working people, many holding more than one job.

I hear from Ohioans who have, without complaint, dedicated their lives to hard work, only to see their financial security pulled out from under them, like Richard Wyers of Lorain in northern Ohio, a steelworker whose pension was slashed because his now-bankrupt employer had simply not set enough money aside for payouts to that pension.

The Government agency administering the defunct firm's assets has told Richard he cannot even keep the money he has already received. In all, he owes more than $50,000. It is not a mistake he made but a mistake they made. Unfortunately, Richard is not alone. Nearly 2,500 former employees of the same bankrupt steel company have been notified by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation that they have received overpayments this year.

In other parts of the State, workers are facing more bad news. Bruce of Wilmington has worked for ABX--the air cargo provider for DHL--for 24 years. He is married with five children, two of whom are in college. So you can imagine Bruce's anger when, earlier this year, DHL announced it will pull its business from ABX and that more than 8,000 workers at Bruce's Wilmington Air Park will lose their jobs. Bruce is not looking for a Government handout. He wants to work so he can support his family and send his kids to college.

In Norwalk last week, 20 miles from where I grew up, in Mansfield, 500 employees were sent home from their jobs at Norwalk Furniture when executives had to halt operations. That is 500 more people who want to work but can't.

In Tiffin, more than 100 workers are looking for jobs after the American Standard plant there--a local institution for almost 125 years--closed its doors in December.

In Van Wert, auto workers such as Sarah Sargent have seen their lives turned upside down since management locked them out of their plant earlier this year. The reason for the lockout: Sarah and her 330 coworkers simply would not accept a substantial wage cut and a benefits freeze, so the company is contemplating a move to Mexico.

General Motors is closing its plant in Moraine, a decision that will cost 1,200 Ohioans their livelihoods.

This string of bad news in Ohio can be blamed in part on our current recession. But that misses the larger point. For the last 7 years, the labor force has worked harder than ever, leading to huge gains in productivity. Yet CEO salaries and bonuses, as we know, went through the roof, middle-class Americans' wages stagnated, and more families slipped below the poverty line.

While China manipulated its currency and ignored labor and environmental standards, corporations took the bait and abandoned American communities. And while hedge fund managers irresponsibly leveraged real estate holdings, millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. In other words, while Wall Street enjoyed an inflated stock market and a so-called economic expansion, most Americans actually became worse off.

Despite these struggles wrought by 7 years of wrongheaded economic policies, American workers are standing strong and fighting for a better future. At my roundtables in Ohio, I still hear the hope and the determination that defines my State and defines this great Nation. I hear from community leaders and entrepreneurs with exciting plans for the future, such as George Ward of Kirtland, in northeast Ohio, the president of his local firefighters' union and a small business owner. George's grandfather was a coal miner and his father was a United Auto worker. It is this working class background that has motivated him to fight for expanded health care access--not just for his fellow firefighters but for his employees and their families.

He is, in his own words, ``trying to live the American Dream,'' ``trying to make a difference'' in his community.

I hear from loyal workers who take pride in their work and are valued by their employers, such as Richard Ade, a security guard in Cleveland, who, after more than 5 years of stagnant wages, worked with his employer and outside groups to ensure that he and his coworkers got the raises they deserved--which, ultimately, they did. Or there is the story I heard about four long-serving employees of Miba Bearings in McConnelsville. These four employees have been with the company for 55 years. They have worked everywhere in the plant: from the production line, to final inspection, to shipping. When I asked if they were still productive, the company's human capital manager answered with obvious pride: ``All of our employees are productive.''

We need a government that similarly values loyalty and work ethic. For too long, those in power have ignored hard-working Americans, have ignored the needs and dreams of the middle class, and have instead catered to the wealthiest Americans, and this is in a country where always in the past we rewarded work.

But it does not have to be that way. In Ohio, Governor Ted Strickland--elected 2 short years ago--already is doing great work to attract new business, to improve educational opportunities, and to revitalize the economy.

Here in Washington we can adopt measures right now--in honor of Labor Day--that would make a difference in working people's lives, like extending unemployment insurance. If Congress does not act before early October, 800,000 unemployed Americans will stop getting their much- needed checks, including 330,000 from high unemployment States such as Ohio. We must expand insurance for those vulnerable citizens.

We should make sick leave a right of employment, not a privilege. Employees should not have to choose between attending to their health and losing their job. We should pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow more workers to bargain collectively. We know that means higher wages, better benefits, a stronger middle class, a more prosperous America.

We should provide tax credits for alternative energy investment, which would help wean us off foreign oil and create new green collar jobs. In my State, the Governor and I talk about making Ohio the ``Silicon Valley'' of alternative energy. We can do that with some help from the Federal Government. We can do what we need to do in our State.

Simply put, we need to celebrate Labor Day by turning our attention to revamping our economic policies and changing the direction of this country. The best way we can honor our Nation's workers is to set our Nation on that new path--a path that fights for middle-class families everywhere and strengthens our country.

Mr. President, I yield back.

Mr. President, following leader remarks, there will be a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each, with the Republicans controlling the first 30 minutes, and the majority controlling the next 30 minutes. Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of S. 3001, the Department of Defense Authorization Act.

Today, there are a number of events to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. There will be a bipartisan, bicameral congressional ceremony at 11:45 on the west front steps of the U.S. Capitol and there will be a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. in the Senate Chamber.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, 7 years ago today 19 people conspired to kill nearly 3,000 people in our country. It was by far, as we know, the most deadly civilian attack ever carried out on American soil. The images and sounds from that fateful morning continue to haunt us. As we continue to mourn those lost that day, today flags fly at half-staff in their honor. They were men, they were women, they were children, they were people of various nationalities and faiths. They were firefighters and police officers and emergency medical services personnel. They were investment bankers and convenience store clerks. They were attendants and pilots.

Four of the victims were Ohioans: Wendy Faulkner from Mason; William David Moskal from Brecksville; Christina Ryook from Cleveland; LTC David Scales from Cleveland.

We should remember these names represent lives cut needlessly short. We should remember the families who will forever miss them. We should remember the EMS personnel, the police officers and firefighters who responded to the attack when these names represented perfect strangers--perfect strangers whose circumstances met the simple criteria first responders use to determine when to take action: Someone needs help.

Hundreds of first responders risked and, in many cases, sacrificed their own lives to save others. So many of them died, so many of them were injured, so many of them have suffered illnesses as a result of their actions.

First responders in Ohio and all across this country continue to stand at the ready every day, ready to protect our families, ready to protect our communities at a moment's notice, and every day in this country they are there when buildings burn, when accident victims need treatment, when expectant mothers go into labor unexpectedly, when citizens need rescue. When other civilians are running away, they are running in.

It is nearly impossible to see today's date and not think back on the attacks of 7 years ago. But let's be sure to do more than to recount the images, the sounds, and the conversations that define our own personal experience of September 11.

Let's also remember and honor the heroic first responders, the innocent victims, and the victims' families left behind. Let's never, Mr. President, forget.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I have been in the House of Representatives and the Senate now for about a little over 15 years. One thing you can count on that I have seen over and over is you can always count on Republicans to stand up for Big Oil. We can look in recent memory. We can look at the Energy bill 3 years ago--earlier than that. We can look at the plan Vice President Cheney wrote in the White House bringing in all the energy executives, not bringing in consumer groups, not bringing in environmentalists, not bringing in small businesses that are hit so hard by high energy costs, not bringing in truckers, not bringing in people who are paying the bills, but bringing in the producers, writing an energy plan, that legislation then written by Big Oil and other big energy producers, pushed through a Republican House of Representatives 3 years ago and a Republican Senate, having given the President everything he wanted on an energy policy.

That is obviously the best example of how always in my 15 years here I have seen Republicans protecting Big Oil. Most recently in the last year and a half, as the Senator from Pennsylvania said so well earlier, we have seen eight filibusters blocking any proposals we have had on energy--short-term proposals, medium-term proposals, long-term proposals.

As the Presiding Officer, Senator Casey from Pennsylvania, talked about, there is no silver bullet, but there are things we can do immediately. We can open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, sell 10 percent of the oil from that Reserve, bringing down prices pretty quickly. We can go after the speculators. I am not sure Senator Casey said this, but the President's Justice Department could go after the oil industry for some of the price gouging that many of us in this body, and probably most of the American public--certainly people in Steubenville and Lima and Zanesville, OH--think the oil companies are engaged in. We can do those things.

A few minutes ago, when I was the Presiding Officer, I heard the minority leader say that the Democrats are offering legislation claiming it is only speculation that is driving up prices. We have never done that. We have said: Yes, speculation is a big part of it. Senator Dorgan said speculation is like a washcloth: you wring it out and you will get an immediate 20, 30, or 40 percent price decrease overall just by wringing out the speculation.

But what the other side never talks about is that it is not just that we want to deal with speculation and open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and have the Justice Department go after the increasingly, immensely profitable oil industry on price gouging, but we also have a very specific long-term energy plan.

As Senator Dorgan said, President Kennedy didn't say: Let's think about going to the Moon. He said: We are going to put a man on the Moon. It was the early 1960s, and he said we could do it by the end of the decade. And he did it. It happened by July 1969. I was 16 then. We had just gotten our first color television, I remember. My brother had convinced my parents that because of the Moon landing, we should get a color television. My parents didn't really know this wasn't going to be in color, but it was a good move by my brother, I must admit. But I remember looking up in the sky and not seeing anything other than the big white Moon, but how exciting it was that we could do this.

The same thing could be true with the President on alternative energy. That is what the Democratic majority has been trying repeatedly to do, to take the money President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the Republican majorities in each U.S. House gave to big oil in 2005 in the Energy bill and put it into alternative energy development.

Senator Whitehouse, speaking earlier this morning, mentioned that for every $10,000 in profits Exxon has made, only $1 of the $10,000 has gone to research and development for alternative energy and $3 has gone into advertising how green they are and how much they are doing on alternative energy. Senator Casey talked about the incredible increase in oil drilling in the last few years; that the oil companies are drilling plenty, but they understand how to keep prices up.

So I am for more drilling, but I am not for drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. I am for the oil companies drilling on the 68 million acres of Federal lands on which they already have leases. Let's do that first, and let's see where we are on that discussion of drilling. We can't drill ourselves out of this, it is clear.

Last point, Mr. President, and then I wish to speak for a moment about something related to energy; that is, throughout my time in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the last 15 or so years, I have always noticed that oil prices go up when one of four things happens: Either there is a refinery fire or there is a pipeline outage or there is a major catastrophe, such as Katrina, or there is an international incident that disrupts the flow of oil to our country. It is either a major refinery fire, a major pipeline outage, a major disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, or a major international incident that disrupts the flow of oil to our country.

None of those things has happened in the last couple of years. Sure, China and India are using more oil, and that is a long-term, huge issue in terms of the oil crisis, but to see the kinds of oil spikes we have seen in the last year and to look at what we have seen, frankly, in the 8 years of two oilmen in the White House--we know that story--nothing has happened that should have caused oil prices to go up that dramatically. If anything, that absolutely shows it is all, in large part, about speculation, and it is about the price gaming of the system that the oil industry and Wall Street have done.

As we talk about energy, we often talk about what that means to our Nation's infrastructure. Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Our freshman colleague, Senator Klobuchar, has spoken eloquently about that and what we need to do about that. It took the lives, as we remember, of 13 people and injured nearly 100.

The Minnesota bridge collapse was a rude awakening to Americans about the current state of our critical infrastructure and the importance of improving all aspects of bridge safety.

Corrosion, for example, which causes metal in bridges to rust and ultimately weaken, is a significant problem for our Nation's bridges but one that is resolvable if addressed by Congress.

In 1998, there was an amendment to ISTEA, the highway bill. Congress commissioned a report about the cost of corrosion--a report from the Federal Highway Administration--and that report to Congress, conducted by CC Technologies of Dublin, OH, a community near Columbus, has estimated that corrosion costs the Nation an unbelievable 3-plus percent of gross domestic product annually, or $442 billion last year. In my State alone, corrosion ultimately cost Ohio taxpayers, in damage to bridges and highways and other infrastructure, $15.1 billion. For bridges alone, this country spent $13 billion and $500 million in Ohio in 2007. In that same report, the FHA estimated a third of that cost could be prevented through existing corrosion-control technologies.

There are many bills pending before this Congress that would lessen or prevent future corrosion of our Nation's infrastructure.

S. 3319 requires that any proposal to the Department of Transportation for bridge construction or modification or renovation include a corrosion mitigation and prevention plan. When a State highway department submits a proposal to the Department of Transportation about this, under this legislation--there is no demand or other mandate--it must include a corrosion mitigation and prevention plan that looks at how much money it will cost to do the corrosion prevention and mitigation and see how much money over the next 10, 20, or 30 years the taxpayers will save because these bridges will last longer and will be safer in the ensuing years. This plan would incorporate existing technologies to enhance the safety of bridges and save Ohio and the Nation billions of dollars a year at a time when highway funding is suffering severely from a dramatic rise in construction cost.

The reason I talked earlier about energy and connected it to these highway issues and bridge issues and water and sewer issues is that the gas tax--which certainly funds much of our highway and bridge infrastructure, the construction and maintenance--the tax dollars are not increasing, and it is because it is not a percentage of the cost of oil, of the cost of gas, it is the cost per gallon of gas purchased. So as people are using less, revenues are down, and obviously construction costs are up as asphalt and other oil-based materials are included in the construction.

S. 3316, a separate piece of legislation I have introduced, would provide a 50-percent tax credit to companies for the design, materials, and installation of corrosion-mitigation technology. The tax credits would encourage further work in corrosion mitigation, expanding beyond bridges to include all kinds of infrastructure affected by corrosion, including drinking water and sewer systems, motor vehicles, pipelines, and defense infrastructure.

I know that the Senator from Pennsylvania, when he is in Erie or Sharon, close to my State, or when he is in eastern or central Pennsylvania, hears over and over from mayors, as I do, about the problems with infrastructure and what that means to the cost of people's water and sewer bills. Mayor Coleman of Columbus told me months ago what he was facing--more importantly, what consumers, what homeowners and renters in Columbus are facing--with the increased cost of water and sewer bills because of demands from the Federal Government on what we need to do to guarantee safe drinking water, demands local governments want to meet but at costs which they simply can't bear. So homeowners see double-digit increases in the cost of their water and sewer.

I met recently with the mayor of Defiance, Mayor Armstrong, in northwest Ohio at a roundtable--one of the hundred or so roundtables I have conducted in most of Ohio's 88 counties--and I talked to him about what these costs are meaning to him in terms of sewer and water bills for residents of Defiance and Defiance County.

A few months before that, I had a roundtable with the mayors of Fremont, Paulding, and Perrysburg, again in northwestern Ohio. Mayor Overmyer of Fremont, Mayor White of Paulding, and Mayor Evans of Perrysburg, where the meeting was conducted--Perrysburg City Hall in Wood County--were all telling me about the immense costs they were facing and, again, more importantly, their constituents were facing with the high cost of water and sewer.

Corrosion protection plans of this type can make a big difference in relieving the cost of all kinds of infrastructure. The new I-35 bridge project is under heightened scrutiny from everybody--public officials, the media, and obviously Minnesotans who travel that bridge regularly to and from work. Their new bridge will be equipped with the best technology available, including built-in sensors to measure corrosion.

With all these bridge projects in other places, we should have this level of attention and they should be outfitted with robust safety technology and anticorrosion technology. The technology is pretty far down the road. We are able to do an awful lot of things to arrest and almost stop corrosion and the aging of these bridges. Our legislation will not just utilize the technology that is available now, but it will spur on new technologies to arrest bridge corrosion.

Anticorrosion and corrosion-detection measures save money and lives. It is nothing but shortsighted to bypass such measures. For too long, we have governed in a way that has sort of gotten us through the day, thinking that we have to figure out how to get through today and not looking ahead. Business doesn't look often enough beyond the next quarter, and government doesn't look often enough beyond the next election cycle. This is an opportunity for the Nation to use its research and development talent to address the unnecessary and enormously costly burden we bear as our infrastructure rusts away and needs to be replaced.

We remember the Minnesota bridge collapse of 1 year ago. This body can honor the memory of those who died there and learn our lesson from looking ahead and helping local and State governments adopt these anticorrosion measures. It will ultimately save lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. It is something we can do, and it is something we should begin today.

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

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

Madam President, a few days ago the Birmingham, AL, airport announced plans to rename the Birmingham International Airport after Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

I rise to honor the work of activist, legendary civil rights leader, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. For more than 60 years, Reverend Shuttlesworth has fought passionately for racial equality and social justice in our great country.

Born in Birmingham, AL, Reverend Shuttlesworth became involved in the civil rights movement as a young pastor. He organized sit-ins and boycotts. He challenged the injustice for decades of Birmingham's Jim Crow laws, despite attempts on his life, and there were many by the Ku Klux Klan.

In spite of repeated arrests, attacks by police dogs and firehoses, Reverend Shuttlesworth simply refused to back down. In 1957, Reverend Shuttlesworth joined the efforts with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Members of the SCLC fought side by side to increase educational opportunities, to promote voter registration, and to promoting equality of opportunity for African Americans throughout the country.

In 1961, Reverend Shuttlesworth took up the pastorate of Revelation Baptist Church in Cincinnati, OH, and continued his campaign for racial justice.

Bringing the same fearless opposition to segregation he had displayed in Birmingham, he joined forces with other Black ministers to make William Lovelace the city's first African-American judge.

For greater than a half century, Reverend Shuttlesworth spoke out against injustice. He has worked to increase minority representation in city government, he has expanded minority hiring by the local police department, and worked to improve access to housing in Over-the-Rhine, an area of Cincinnati, for needy families and throughout Hamilton County.

Reverend Shuttlesworth has made great personal sacrifice, risking his life, risking his own health and the health of his family, so every American, without regard to race, would have access to equal opportunity to succeed.

I announced my campaign for the Senate in 2005 at the church of Reverend Shuttlesworth in Cincinnati. I consider him a friend. I have met him many times over the last 15 or so years. He took me one day to a small room in his church, a room he called a museum. It was a room dedicated to the civil rights movement. It had so many wonderful examples of his courage, his bravery, his accomplishments, and the accomplishments of so many people he worked with to promote social justice, to promote economic justice, to promote civil and human rights.

For that, I am especially proud of Reverend Shuttlesworth. I am especially proud of the role he plays in Cincinnati, always battling for racial justice. I am proud the Birmingham, AL, airport has named their international airport after the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

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

I wish to thank Chairman Kennedy, Ranking Member Enzi, and especially Senator Mikulski for her terrific work, and their staffs. J.D. LaRock was especially helpful; Erin Renner, Carmel Martin, and Missy Rohrbach. I wish to give special thanks to Will Jawando in my office for his terrific success on this legislation. He celebrated the success of the full conference committee, which was earlier this week, by taking the Maryland bar for those 2 days during the actual passage of the conference committee.

The conference report before us takes important steps toward breaking down the barriers to higher education by addressing affordability and access. With college costs at alltime highs, family income and student aid simply have not kept up.

In my home State of Ohio, between 2001 and 2006, the cost of attendance has increased 53 percent at 4-year public colleges. Yet the median income in Ohio, household income, increased only 3 percent. We know the purchasing power of the Pell grant has fallen dramatically. Students and parents are finding it harder and harder to figure out a way to finance their education. But our bill, as we know, increases Pell grants to $8,000 by 2014, enabling thousands of low-income and first-time students to attend institutions of higher education. For the first time, low-income students can receive Pell grants year-round, allowing them to accelerate the completion of their degrees.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid required for the receipt of Federal student aid is currently seven pages long and acts too often as a barrier for students seeking college aid. We have begun the process of taking care of the complexities and the bureaucracy of that.

In the last 2 years, I have held about 110 roundtables around my State, in 75 of the 88 counties, listening to people telling me what we should do with higher education and other issues.

Last Memorial Day, I met with veterans who were also students at Cleveland State University. I met with them at a veterans hospital and heard directly about their experiences transitioning from the battlefield to the classroom.

This bill takes steps to ensure student veterans get the assistance they need. It authorizes funds for campuses to create Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success. It is modeled after a program at Cleveland State University. It will allow schools to provide student veterans with a one-stop shop for assistance with financial aid, with class selection, with VA benefits, and with other transitional issues.

In addition to the unique challenges many student veterans face, others have their academic career interrupted by deployments. When students head

off to war, they know they will be given the time and support they need now, because of this legislation, without falling unnecessarily behind academically or financially when they return to their life as a college student.

By allowing servicemembers to defer payments, interest free, on Federal student loans while serving on Active Duty, we have removed a financial penalty for student veterans.

I would also like to thank the committee and the chairman for working with me to include several other provisions in the conference report. Among them is a program that creates an early childhood educator workforce development system to ensure that all children are taught by great teachers in their developmental years. I spoke with the head of Ohio Head Start today in Dayton, who is very excited about what this will mean for Head Start students in all of Ohio.

Also included was a program that helps increase the enrollment rates of rural students at institutions of higher education.

Finally, provisions are included that will reauthorize the Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural Program and establish a Perkins loan forgiveness program for our nation's firefighters. We did it for the nurses, teachers, and police officers. We inadvertently left out firefighters in the bill last year. This takes care of that.

While there are many other issues we must address in higher education, including the rise in private student loans, this bill makes important progress on assisting needy students, increasing affordability for all, and enhancing protections for our servicemembers because of this legislation, because of Chairman Mikulski's work. It means a whole lot of working-class kids, a whole lot of poor kids, a whole lot of middle-class kids will be able to go to college. It will be easier for them to finish their college degrees, not drop out with huge student loans. It will enable most of these students to graduate without the onerous burden of huge student loans.

I thank Chairman Kennedy and I thank Ranking Member Enzi for their work. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation.