Floor Statements

Mr. President, I wish to honor John Lanigan, the longtime northeast Ohio radio personality, who will broadcast his final show on WMJI/Cleveland on March 31, 2014.

John and I haven't always agreed on all of the issues, but he has always been well-read and outspoken, and his at times sharp-witted, controversial personality captured the attention of Cleveland listeners, whether you agreed with him or not.

John grew up in Ogallala, NE, and got his start in radio broadcasting while still in high school. He worked in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado--where he would work the overnight shift in Denver and then travel to Colorado Springs for the dayshift--before coming to Cleveland in 1970.

He was hired at WGAR to replace Don Imus, and, within a year, the show's ratings had nearly doubled, no doubt thanks to his trademark style of interjecting jokes in between songs.

John would go on to Tampa for 2 years, but returned to Cleveland and WMJI in 1985, where he made his mark.

In 1989, comedian Jimmy Malone appeared on the show, and the ``Lanigan and Malone Show'' was created soon after. No topic was off limits for John--politics, sports, music, and entertainment--he covered it all. And, if you were a guest, you had better come prepared because John was always ready to fire off the tough questions.

John would occasionally take the show on the road to DC and broadcast live from my office in the Senate. I would arrange for guests like then-Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, to come on and be interviewed with me.

While John cemented his loyal following on the radio, they came with him when he took his skills to the silver screen, hosting a weekly TV show named ``Prize Movie'' on WUAB.

While he is not on the air, John dedicates his time to benefitting his adopted city. He volunteers for the Our Lady of the Wayside, an organization that serves hundreds of children and adults with developmental disabilities throughout northeast Ohio, even winning their Starlight Guardian Humanitarian Award in 2012.

John came to Cleveland nearly 40 years ago, and though his talents could have taken him to any big city in the country, he chose to stay in Cleveland. He won the ear of his listeners and viewers because they could trust him.

It is that admirable trait that we will miss with his retirement, but it is also what has earned him this retirement--and no more early morning wake-up calls.

John, I wish you all the best in your retirement. Thank you for all you have done for your listeners, viewers, and for the city of Cleveland.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss one of the most concerning issues our country faces today, an issue that Chairman Harkin particularly has been outspoken on, and that is the growing retirement crisis.

A couple weeks ago I chaired in the Finance Committee the first congressional hearing on the MyRA retirement plan for low- and middle- income workers that President Obama proposed in his 2014 State of the Union Address. We will explore some of the issues, especially the Harkin legislation, later. But I want to talk for a moment about that hearing.

We know for many Americans, the traditional three-legged retirement system--Social Security, defined pension benefit, and personal retirement savings--that three-legged stool is simply no longer working. For many, two of those legs are gone, and the third leg--the Social Security monthly payment for low-income workers--is, frankly, way too short.

We know that Social Security remains the safeguard of retirement security for working-class families. But, as I said, it was never meant to be the only method of saving for retirement.

As we emerge from the greatest recession since the Great Depression, the private retirement system is not working.

Over the last 30 years, the defined pension benefit has, for far too many people, disappeared. The new system of tax incentives for 401(k)s and IRAs only works if you are middle income, typically, or wealthier. The top fifth--the top quintile, if you will--of households hold three- quarters of all 401(k) and IRA assets. The average worker nearing retirement--believe this--has $12,000 in savings.

So the question our subcommittee asked was: What do we do?

One point of bipartisan agreement is that Social Security works. Witnesses from Vanguard to senior advocates agree on that point. We heard testimony from the left and from the right, from the private sector and from the Treasury Department. Everyone agreed that for low- income workers, Social Security is the most important and the most reliable way to guarantee a secure retirement. But it is not enough.

An upper income worker, once receiving Social Security, may get as much as $2,000 or more a month in Social Security earned benefits, while a low-income worker, who is used to receiving $9 or $10 or $11 an hour or less--even though working as many as 25 or 30 years--may get less than $1,000 a month in Social Security. That is the only wealth, that is the only income, so often, those in the bottom half have.

The only question, obviously, is whether the benefit is adequate. Too often it is not.

Two-thirds of low-income families are at risk of not having enough income to maintain anything close to their standard of living in retirement. Expanding Social Security could be the difference between a modest retirement--an earned modest retirement--and living in poverty.

The hearing discussed the administration's new MyRA accounts. ``MyRA'' stands for ``my retirement account''--a play, obviously, on the words of the IRA, the individual retirement account. It represents a small but important first step. Access to tax preferenced retirement accounts must not be something workers receive when they cross the threshold into the middle class but a tool that helps them start their journey into the middle class.

There is no easy fix to retirement savings. But in a system where we primarily administer our programs to encourage private retirement accounts through the Tax Code, we need to make sure the incentives are going to the people who need them.

So what we are doing through the Tax Code, as Senator Cardin from Maryland, who has been a long-time advocate of stronger, better retirement security for seniors--and he attended our subcommittee hearing; he is a member of the Finance Committee--are the issues we need to work on.

When President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, he said: ``This law represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built, but is by no means complete.''

The same could be said, maybe even more so, for our retirement system today. That structure is still being built. It is up to this body to ensure that it is built, that it does not collapse in the meantime, and that we can bring more retirement security to far more Americans who have worked their entire work lives.

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

Mr. President, when we think of those who provide treatment to our loved ones, we think of registered nurses like Ann Wayt--a long-time staff member of Affinity Medical Center in Massillon, OH. Ms. Wayt has earned both the Affinity Medical Center Nurse Excellence Award and the esteemed Cameos of Caring award from the University of Akron's College of Nursing. Patients and fellow nurses in the hospital's orthopedic unit, were touched daily by Ms. Wayt's professionalism and care. Several of Ms. Wayt's coworkers have referred to her as a role model.

It does not come as a surprise that a nurse who cares so much about her patients also cares about her fellow workers and their working conditions. Collective bargaining in health care isn't just about a paycheck. It is about staffing levels, patient safety, and ensuring health care quality. For years, joining a union was a ticket to the middle class and ensured that those who work hard and take responsibility can still get ahead.

However, on September 26, 2012, Ann was fired by Community Health Systems, the hospital's parent company, shortly after she rallied with co-workers to organize a collective voice for better, safer workplace conditions and patient care. In fact, Ms. Wayt was fired by the hospital the day before the nurses voted to form a collective bargaining unit. Though other grounds were given, both the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, and the Federal Court ruled Ms. Wayt was fired because she was a lead organizer for her fellow nurses.

We have seen too many attacks on workers' rights in recent years. We have seen too many efforts to hamstring the NLRB and its ability to protect the rights of workers, and we have seen too many people fired for engaging in collective activity.

Fortunately, the NLRB stepped in and held a hearing last year, and the findings speak for themselves: Community Health Systems was ordered to reinstate Ms. Wayt and to recognize the nurses' union. Community Health Systems refused to comply.

In January 2014, Federal Judge John Adams ordered Ann's reinstatement, the recognition of the nurses' collective bargaining unit and for the hospital to stop harassing the nurses because they want a voice at work.

Nurses are on the front lines of patient care and deserve to have their voices heard on important, common sense issues such as:

Minimum staffing levels based on patient acuity;

the right to refuse unsafe assignments;

the right to advocate for patients; and

lift equipment safety protections for RNs and patients.

A 2013 study by the American Nurses Association shows that when workplaces collaborate and listen to worker input, nurses are able to provide care more effectively, and hospitals gain better overall patient outcomes.

Welcome back, Ann, and congratulations.

Thank you, Mr. President. It is good to see my long-time friend from Massachusetts in the Presiding Officer's chair.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, President Kennedy, from the Presiding Officer's home State said, if I could paraphrase a bit: A nation reveals itself not only by the men and women it produces but also by the men and women it honors, the men and women it remembers.

It is our duty to take care of those who served in uniform. Today, this Nation has revealed itself, and the image is shameful. This body failed to consider the important veterans legislation of this Congress--the most important veterans legislation of this Congress: the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014.

I sit on the Senate Veterans Affairs' Committee. I am the first Senator from my State ever to sit on that committee for a full term. I consider that an honor. I consider it a privilege to serve those who served us in this Nation.

I have worked alongside Republicans and Democrats, as has Chairman Sanders and Ranking Member Burr. We have produced good legislation here. Next to the post-9/11 GI bill, which Senator Webb worked on 4 or 5 years ago, it is the most important advancement in veterans legislation and assistance to our Nation's veterans at my time in the Senate. That is the good news.

The bad news is this debate has been about politics, not about veterans. Again, people in Washington want to score political points by filibuster, by obstruction, by blocking good bipartisan legislation, supported by a whole panoply of veterans organizations and community groups.

There are those who have concerns who want to add to this bill, concerns that are not related to veterans. To hold up this bill with something unrelated to veterans is unconscionable.

Whether you are in Marblehead, MA, or Mansfield, OH, we all have heard our constituents say: Why do they attach these unrelated things to legislation instead of voting them up or down on their merits? That is what people want to do here. Those who want to filibuster this bill are the people who want to add things to the bill that have nothing to do with serving our veterans.

This legislation by itself improves vital programs to honor our commitment to those who served in uniform and for those who care for our veterans. Whether it is a community-based outpatient clinic in Zanesville or Chillicothe or Springfield, whether it is a VA center in Dayton or Chillicothe or Cleveland, we care about those who care for our veterans, many of whom are veterans themselves, and we take care of those veterans.

This corrects errors in programs and benefits and, as I said, has widespread support in the veterans community. The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Vietnam Veterans of America, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America all support this legislation.

I will not go through a lot of the details we have discussed before that Senator Sanders brought to the floor, but I want to talk about a couple.

This bill renews our VOW to Hire Heroes Act by reauthorizing provisions such as the VRAP, the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program. This program retrains unemployed veterans for high-demand occupations.

I traveled across Ohio throughout 2012 spreading the word about VRAP, encouraging our veterans to apply. Ohio veterans applied in larger numbers than our State's population would suggest because of the outreach of so many in encouraging people to sign up for VRAP.

I met veterans such as Everett Chambers in Cleveland, who used VRAP funds to get retrained as an electrical engineering technician at Cuyahoga Community College, or Tri-C.

I remember meeting a veteran in Youngstown who went back to school because of VRAP and got the opportunity to work at a health care center in information technology.

We know VRAP works. It helps our veterans get back to work. It lowers the unacceptably high unemployment rate for recently separated servicemembers who have so much to offer employers.

This program is aimed for those veterans who are a little bit older who are no longer eligible for the GI bill and those veterans who have been out of the service for a while. But it does not stop there. It adds other important improvements in education benefits, in reproductive health, in the delivery of care and benefits to veterans who experienced sexual trauma while serving in the military.

Too many Members in this body will say they support the programs in this bill but that finding the money to do so is not possible. So they are for the bill,

they say, until they are not. Well, there is a disconnect between what they say and what they do. Those same elected leaders--those same elected leaders who say: I am for this bill, but we can't pay for it, so we can't pass it--those same people want to give tax breaks to companies that take jobs and factories overseas when we say we cannot find the money to provide a caregiver the support he needs to care for his wife, a veteran. We fight a decade-long war in Afghanistan that goes unpaid for and we cannot find the resources to ensure the very people who fought that war will be cared for.

It would be a little more simple than that. When a company closes down in Springfield, or Springfield, MA, and moves to Wuhan, China, or Shihan, China, they can deduct the cost of the plant shutdown in one of the Springfields and they can deduct the cost of building the new plant in Wuhan, China. That is a loophole we could close. It would mean more companies would stay in Springfield, OH, or Springfield, MA, helping our communities, helping our tax base, and it would mean those companies would not be deducting that move and that money could then be used for these veterans programs. But no, they say: We can't find the money.

It is important to end this filibuster and pass this bill.

Buying Government

Mr. President, I heard my friend from Kansas talk about what he calls the personal attacks on two I believe he said great Americans, but Americans nonetheless, which they are, and prominent businesspeople in Kansas and around the country.

These two Americans--and this is not personal to me--these two Americans have spent millions of dollars trying to defeat me, as they have tried to defeat a number of people in this Chamber who think government has a role in preserving Medicare and government should provide funds for Head Start and government should give tax breaks to low-income people, not just rich people, and government should play a role, as the Presiding Officer has, in a cleaner environment and deal with climate change. But I disagree with these two Americans. I do not personally dislike them or personally know them. But I do know they have spent millions of dollars in ads, millions of dollars in an unprecedented way--they and a small number of people--to try to hijack our political system.

People are sick and tired, first, of the TV ads; second, of the lies in the TV ads; and, third, that there are people--a few billionaires-- who are trying to buy elections in this country, billionaires who are looking for tax breaks for themselves, billionaires who are looking for the opportunity to weaken environmental laws, billionaires who want to kill the union movement in this country.

I want to read from one editorial that was printed in, I believe, Roll Call or The Hill newspaper talking about some of these ads. Here is what this editorial said:

Were this an ad for Stainmaster carpet, a Koch product--

Koch, this is the family, the brothers--

Were this an ad for Stainmaster carpet, a Koch product,

Federal Trade Commission guidelines would require the ad to

``conspicuously disclose that the persons in such

advertisements are not actual consumers.'' Moreover, the FTC

would require them to either demonstrate that these results

of ObamaCare are typical or make clear in the ad that they

are not.

Needless to say, the ad meets none of these requirements,

thereby conforming to the legal definition of false

advertising.

That tells you a lot. I rest my case in just those terms. It is never personal. It should never be. It is whom you fight for in this body and what you fight against. But there are people in this country who think they can buy our government. We have seen that throughout our history. We have seen the oil companies try to do everything they can to at least if not buy government take a long-term lease. We saw the robber barons 100 years ago, including one from my State, Mark Hanna, who used to try to control the legislature. They used to say that he wore President McKinley like a watchfob when he was Governor of Ohio.

So we have seen this in the past. We have never seen it in such an incredibly big way as we have seen it in the last few election cycles.

Minimum Wage

Mr. President, I want to speak about the minimum wage, something this Chamber, frankly, needs to do. The Presiding Officer in his time in the House saw, as I did, a number of Members of Congress who would vote to raise their own pay but then vote against a minimum-wage increase, which I find morally inconsistent or worse. But let me make a couple comments about that.

In 1991, the average price of gas was $1.15 a gallon, a loaf of bread around 70 cents, a dozen eggs about $1. The tipped minimum wage--that is the minimum wage for people who work in a diner who get tips, people who push a wheelchair in an airport who rely on tips, a valet, someone who does nail manicures, people who work in jobs where they are receiving tips--the minimum wage in 1991 for those workers at the local diner or the local airport was $2.13 an hour--in 1991.

Today, the average price of gas is $3.30 a gallon; a loaf of bread costs $1.35, more or less; eggs are about $2. The tipped minimum wage is still $2.13. Its value has fallen by 36 percent in real terms. Think about that--$2.13 an hour.

Americans who work hard and take responsibility should be able to take care of their families. That is why I support the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in three 95-cent increments and then provide annual cost-of-living increases linked to changes in the cost of living. The bill would also gradually raise the Federal minimum wage for tipped workers at the diner, the valet, the person doing the manicure from $2.13 an hour to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage.

In 1980 the minimum wage for tipped workers was 60 percent of the regular minimum wage. It is now less than 30 percent of the regular minimum wage. In Canada the minimum wage in Ontario is $11; the tipped minimum wage is $8.90. The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world--except for Canada--where a large number of workers must depend on tips for a large share of their income. So in Canada the tipped minimum wage is only slightly less than the minimum wage. In the United States it is less than 30 percent of the minimum wage. In the rest of the world it is 100 percent of the minimum wage.

Interestingly, servers in the United States, people who work at diners or restaurants in the United States--when a European comes across the ocean and eats at a restaurant in Cleveland or in Cincinnati, the European will usually leave a really small tip because they are not used to tipping. The American worker relies on those tips for any kind of a decent wage.

Ohio's current tipped minimum wage is a little higher; it is $3.98. That is still not enough. These are men and women who have bills to pay and families to support.

Most tipped workers do not work at fine dining establishments where the average bill is $50, $60, or $70, so someone is making pretty good money on tips. A server in a high-class restaurant, an expensive restaurant, can make hundreds of dollars in a night. But for a server who works in a diner where four people come in, get coffee, spend an hour there, and have a bill of $6, the tip might be $1. That person has worked for an hour. They are not getting to the minimum wage with the tipped wage, and, often, neither is the valet or the person at the airport who is getting someone off the plane and pushing their wheelchair to their connecting flight. They often do not even receive tips because so often the person in the wheelchair never thinks about it, does not know that these are tipped workers, that they are only making $2, $3, or $4 an hour. They are working hard.

We work hard for the money we make. We are very well paid here. It is a privilege to serve in the Senate. But when you think about those workers who are working very hard, their minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. There is something not right about that.

One more point. The Center for American Progress completed an analysis of 20 years' worth of minimum wage increases in States across the country. They conclude that there is no clear evidence that the minimum wage leads to further job loss during periods of high unemployment.

The opponents of raising the minimum wage say that it is going to

cause price increases and that there are going to be layoffs. But what is interesting is that every time there is a minimum wage bill we are debating, the opponents say: You know, these businesses are going to have to raise their prices or lay people off to pay the minimum wage. But when an executive gets a $1 million bonus, when a CEO gets paid $12 million and gets a raise to $16 million the next year, I never hear them say: Boy, they are going to have to lay people off to pay those executive salaries. It is only when it is low-wage workers that my friends on that side of the aisle stand and say: This is going to hurt business. This is going to hurt commerce. This is going to hurt employment.

Their arguments are weak. Their arguments are, in many cases, a bit hardhearted. I wish my colleagues would do what Pope Francis said. Recently, Pope Francis exhorted his parish priests to go out and smell like the flock; go out among your parishioners and listen to them and try to understand their lives and try to live like them.

Well, a lot of those parishioners are minimum wage workers or slightly above minimum wage. Smelling like the flock might help some of my colleagues come to the conclusion that raising the minimum wage is important to do, is humane, is right for our country.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the words of Senator Hagan, who has been a leader in the Senate on issues for our veterans, for their health care and Camp Lejeune and so many other ways, looking out for pensions and health care for those who have earned it and sacrificed for us. She, as do I, believes it is an honor to honor those who have sacrificed for us.

I rise today to discuss legislation that benefits all Americans, and particularly my home State of Ohio.

I appreciate Senator Flake's comments. I admire his integrity and his focus on waste in government for the decade or so that I have known him--longer than that. I think he makes good points in this legislation. We come down on different sides in the end. Some of the things he had talked about, eliminating a lot of direct payments, were especially important and were made possible by legislation Senator Thune and I introduced.

This is an ongoing process to improve this bill every year. Every 5 years I am hopeful we can do that. I thank Senator Flake for his comments.

This bill is bipartisan. It reduces the deficit, it helps farms, helps families, helps our economy, and it helps our environment. It saves 23 billion taxpayer dollars. It provides certainty and support to one of the Nation's largest job creators, agriculture. Food and agriculture together are about one in seven jobs in Ohio. Agriculture- related businesses such as food processing, fertilizer and feed sales also are part of Ohio's largest industry.

I thank Senator Cochran and Senator Stabenow for getting us to this point. They have been dogged in their support for our Nation's farmers and our rural communities.

I have spoken with Ohio's corn and soybean growers, as well as members of the Ohio Farm Bureau. On Friday I spoke and met with a group of 300 farmers, members of the Ohio Farmers Union, in Columbus. They have told me the importance of passing a 5-year farm bill. They especially emphasized the certainty, finally, of this bill. They can make the planning and planting decisions that business people and farmers need.

I have traveled across Ohio's 88 counties and listened to farmers from Minster to Millersburg, who have told me they want a leaner, more efficient, and market-oriented farm safety net. Taxpayers deserve that too.

This bill is a reform farm bill. It eliminates direct farm payments, links crop insurance to conservation compliance, and it reforms our risk management programs--all important things in agriculture policy.

Ohio farmers were clear they wanted a farm bill that eliminated those direct payments and provided the risk management tools they needed when times are bad, but without the market-distorting policies that ensure farmers are planting for the program and not the market. Unfortunately, that was happening far too often.

In the last 6 or 7 years during my time in the Senate, leading up to the 2007-2008 farm bill and the 2013-2014 farm bill, I held some 25 roundtables with farmers and rural development people around my State. Working with my colleagues Senator Thune and Senator Durbin, we were able to streamline the farm safety net and make it more market oriented. Our bill, the Aggregate Risk and Revenue Management Act, is the basis for the Agricultural Risk Coverage Program, which was included in the commodity title. By reforming commodity programs to better align with the market instead of simply sending out checks--even when times were good and in many cases to people who don't need them-- this bill will provide farmers with increased risk management tools while improving the integrity of these programs.

The bill incorporates many portions of the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act that I introduced. We know too many farmers struggle to find local markets for their products. Too many Ohioans are also unable to access fresh and affordable food. This legislation helps to put them together. Whether by improving Farmers Market Promotion program, or the Value Added Producers grant, this bill makes a significant investment in local and regional food production and marketing.

We know what has happened in rural America in terms of development. While agricultural prices have been such that farmers have been prosperous enough and that many in rural America are doing OK, rural development is still an issue as people move out of the these communities looking for jobs.

Whether it is bringing broadband to southeast Ohio or a water and sewer project in Henry County or a low-interest loan to Buckeye Power, this bill will make sure rural communities have the tools, the programs, and capital that they need to succeed.

My State is home to approximately 130 companies that use agricultural crops to make new biobased products, ranging from natural pet foods to paint, soy ink, toner, and plastics. Last week, USDA Secretary Vilsack and I toured a Columbus plastics factory, where they are working to make more of their products with biobased feedstocks instead of oil. We know what that means for renewable energy in our State. Our homegrown products can replace imported oil in our everyday products. This is a win for our local economies and for Ohio farmers.

We also know the importance of helping young farmers. If someone goes to any farm organization meeting, farmers are typically in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. We don't see enough in their twenties, thirties, and forties. In this legislation, we will help to recruit, train, and retrain the next generation of farmers. That is part of this conference report. USDA needs to redouble its efforts, particularly in making capital available, and ensure that young and beginning farmers are able to succeed.

The bill streamlines and, in my opinion, improves USDA's conservation programs. That is so important in the western Lake Erie basin of the Great Lakes. We have seen what has happened with algae blooms east of Toledo along places like Port Clinton and Sandusky. It is reaching almost as far east as Lorain. We are seeing the problems it causes to water quality, recreation, tourism, and to development along the lake that is so important.

The House wanted, on the SNAP issue, to slash food stamps by $40 billion. We fought back. Our conference committee rejected every proposal passed by the House to cut off the assistance to workers and their families who have fallen on very hard times. When we couple what some in this body want to do with cutting unemployment, failing to extend unemployment insurance, failing to raise the minimum wage, making huge cuts in Food Stamp Programs, this was a huge victory in our conference committee.

This bill needs to pass. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to pass it and send it to President Obama so he can sign this bill at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

Before I leave the floor, I do want to speak in great detail about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, and the nutrition title of the bill. SNAP benefits are very modest and are essential part of our nation's social safety net. The average SNAP household gets just over $9 a day in benefits or $1.46 per person per meal. Yet, for people that are food insecure, SNAP is the difference between putting food on the table or going hungry.

When there is an economic downturn, SNAP responds to support those who need assistance: the elderly, children, and working families. When we last strengthened the program in the 2008 farm bill, we ensured that a strong SNAP was there for families and communities. We saw the caseload rise from 28 million people in 2008 to over 47 million people today.

Too often, we forget that those who rely on SNAP are real people, and not just some statistic. I want to tell you about a couple of those people. Doris, from Reynoldsburg, is a 60-year-old who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2009. The doctors only gave her 6 months to live, but nearly 5 years later, she continues to fight. Because of her illness, she had to quit her work and she lost her health insurance. Doris has worked all her life and saves the little money she has to pay her bills and rent on time. Since she is on disability, she is eligible to receive $16 a month in SNAP benefits. After the cuts to the program that went into effect on November 1, her benefit is now $10 per month. She's too young to collect Social Security, so each week she and a friend drive to Columbus to the Mid-Ohio food bank for fresh produce.

Roxanne lives in northeast Ohio and is a home-health aide. She's a single mother and has four growing children under the age of 17. Roxanne works more than 60 hours per week, but relies on SNAP to help her make ends meet and ensure her children have enough to eat. For the past 3 years she has received about $400 per month; after the November cut to SNAP, her family now receives $335 per month. Unfortunately, this usually only lasts through the third week of the month. As she has tried to stretch her income, she has been forced to choose between serving her family healthy fruits and vegetables or ordering off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant. Roxanne never thought she would be in a situation where she would have to rely on a food pantry to help her feed her family.

I am proud that we were able to maintain a robust and responsive nutrition assistance program. The conference has rejected every proposal passed by the House to cutoff assistance to workers and their families who have fallen on very hard times. Rather than arbitrarily impose new and harsher time limits on how long unemployed workers may receive SNAP benefits, the bill strengthens SNAP employment and training program capacity. It provides modest but meaningful improvements in program administration and clarifies and codifies technical but important aspects of eligibility policy. The bill supports new anti-fraud initiatives, requires strong but efficient data matching in program administration, and supports keeping program retail operations up-to-date with the evolving food retailing environment.

There has been criticism about this bill's SNAP savings--which are far more modest than the House's proposal to cut $40 billion from SNAP. I appreciate these concerns. This bill achieves savings by correcting a quirk in the SNAP benefit calculation that allows some State agencies to give households higher benefits by allowing them to deduct more income from their shelter costs.

SNAP benefits are based on the size of the household and how much money it has available to buy food. This amount is determined by subtracting out essential costs that households must pay and cannot use to buy groceries. For example, households with high shelter costs relative to their income have less money for buying food. Shelter costs include rent or mortgage payments and the cost of utilities such as heating and cooling. Rather than trying to document each household's utility costs over the course of a year, the rules allow States to set a standard utility allowance, ``standard allowance,'' for households with these expenses. This standardization enormously reduces the time and paperwork required to calculate income. Almost every State uses the standard allowance, and most require it to be used to budget utility costs and do not allow any option to claim actual expenses.

Program rules have long recognized that the receipt of Low Income Household Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, aid is a simple method of determining if households incur utility costs. A few States have authorized households to receive negligible LIHEAP assistance-- generally only $1--merely to get them higher benefits. This was not the intention of connecting the standard allowance to LIHEAP. This bill closes this loophole by requiring that a family's LIHEAP payment must be at least $20 in order to qualify for the standard allowance solely on the LIHEAP connection. LIHEAP funds are very limited and at this dollar level States would no longer be able to fund the broad-based benefits for SNAP households that some now offer.

This change does not affect anyone in my State of Ohio, but I recognize that this will not be an easy adjustment for households that are affected. I expect that the Department will ensure that State agencies do not summarily deny the standard allowance to households that received a nominal LIHEAP payment. State agencies and the USDA must work with families so they can determine whether they have any heating or cooling costs that would qualify for the standard allowance regardless of LIHEAP. These costs are most likely a bill from a utility company, but could be a charge from a landlord.

As I have said, this farm bill ends the policy whereby some States give $1 of payment to most if not all SNAP households. I am concerned that many if not most of these households really do have heating and cooling costs and need the standard allowance to get an adequate and correct benefit. So I expect that USDA will work with State agencies to ensure that households have a meaningful opportunity to claim these costs so that they get the right amount of benefits.

Finally, I'm concerned about the very quick implementation requirement for this provision. If a State is not able to implement within 30 days, I don't think SNAP households should be held responsible. I hope that my friend Secretary Vilsack will find a way to ensure that households who may continue to receive higher benefits because the State agency was not able to implement this policy change within 30 days will not be held accountable for mistakes arising from such an aggressive implementation schedule.

There are a number of other provisions that do not result in benefit cuts to households, but change eligibility rules or codify common practices. I would like to turn to them now.

The title codifies longstanding SNAP student eligibility policy. While SNAP remains unavailable to most college students, low-income people on SNAP who are trying to gain skills and credentials needed for immediate employment can access SNAP.

Historically, most college students have not been eligible for SNAP and this bill does nothing to expand their eligibility. But at a time when workers need to continually acquire new and better job skills, States have concluded that many participants can be best served by enhancing their vocational skills through training offered by State career and technical education networks. These networks offer training and education that aims at enabling students to keep or qualify for new jobs. Many times the programs are offered by community colleges which are considered part of the higher education system. I want to be sure that SNAP

State education and training programs can connect SNAP recipients to this type of vocational education because in the long run it has the greatest potential to help people achieve lasting self-sufficiency. Giving people a stark choice between putting food on the table today or getting a job credential that will help them get a job tomorrow is counterproductive. By helping people stay in a vocational program, we can support them so they can better support themselves.

The bill clearly stipulates that the farm bill can support this type of education, and that students in these courses can continue to get food assistance. This reinforcement of current policy is an opportunity for the Department to work more closely with State agencies to establish better connectivity with their State career and technical networks to strengthen energy and training programs. We want worker training programs that will help people learn the skills necessary to get the good paying job they want so they will no longer need SNAP benefits. In the long run, this is a much better investment than supporting programs that result in procedural sanctions that churn households on and off the program in the short run but do little to improve self-sufficiency in the long run. Another provision tightens eligibility policy to make sure that people who enjoy substantial lottery or gambling winnings are ineligible for SNAP and will not become eligible until such time as they meet the normal income and resource standards for SNAP. This provision responds to a few isolated instances in which a SNAP recipient reaped a State lottery windfall. While such cases are extremely rare, we want to be certain that they are taken into account.

I expect that the Department will construct rules that will target these extraordinary cases without burdening State agency workers and recipients with unproductive reports. The first issue is how to define ``substantial.'' I believe the intent of Congress was to identify really extraordinary windfalls that change lifestyles, and not winnings that reflect good fortune but will be rapidly dissipated by paying major bills or addressing overdue car or home repair issues.

Crucial to implementing this is how the State SNAP agency learns about these winnings. This bill requires State SNAP agencies to work with any in-State gaming authorities to establish a mechanism to report substantial winnings. We envision a process that will rely entirely on agency-to-agency reports. Our intent is twofold. First, the only truly reliable source of this information will be the State gaming or lottery commission. It will offer much more dependable and authoritative information about winnings than recipient reports. Second, we want to avoid cluttering notices on responsibilities for reporting and action on changes with items about extraordinarily rare events such as a lottery windfall. This would run the risk of distracting participants from reporting much more frequent and important events such as changes in income and household membership. We want to maintain reporting requirements that are sharp, clear, focused, and short. We do not intend for this provision to trigger any additional household reporting or require additional questions on application and certification forms.

Another issue is regaining eligibility for those who had enough winnings to be disqualified from SNAP. The bill provides for applying the regular financial eligibility standards to these households if they apply for SNAP again. We intend this to mean the normal gross and net income eligibility guidelines and the dollar-limited resource eligibility thresholds specified in the Food and Nutrition Act, and expect that normal verification rules will be applied.

The bill reinforces policy on the eligibility of felons. Felons fleeing from law enforcement or violating their parole or probation are ineligible for SNAP. This bill highlights the ineligibility of those felons convicted of crimes such as murder and armed robbery who violate their parole or probation. Ex-offenders who have completed their sentences and comply with any parole conditions placed on their release, and who are otherwise eligible for food assistance through SNAP, remain eligible for assistance. But persons on the run from justice after committing one of these crimes should not be eligible based solely on technicalities about how the crimes are designated under some jurisdiction's criminal code.

This provision should not affect current application procedures which ask applicants about fleeing felon and probation violation issues. Rather, we believe that eligibility workers must receive clear guidance on especially serious crimes that should be treated as felonies.

The bill addresses program integrity concerns about multiple requests for electronic benefit transfer, EBT, card replacements. EBT cards are routinely replaced for a wide variety of valid reasons. State agencies need to be able to quickly replace them so families can continue to buy food. A small number of households frequently request replacement cards; we are concerned that a small subset of these households may be misusing their cards and benefits. The bill aims to require States to seek explanations from households with an excessive number of card replacement requests while preserving strong procedural protections for households. We envision it to work as follows: USDA is required to set a standard for excessive requests for card replacements. I think that the floor should not be fewer than 4 replacements over the course of a year. States must seek explanations from households that exceed this threshold as to why another card is needed prior to re-issuing a card. The process must allow households the opportunity to immediately provide the explanation because of the critical importance of maintaining access to food assistance. Any delay in working with the household freezes their food purchasing. I expect the Department to monitor this process and examine how long households are going without cards. Even if a State's computer lists the household as eligible, if it cannot access its benefits, it might as well not be. Any policy that denies a household effective food assistance should be treated as the equivalent of an eligibility cut-off.

Replacement cards can be needed for a wide range of legitimate reasons. Cards can be stolen, damaged, or simply lost. Some people may not understand that the cards are reusable, or may confuse a PIN problem with a card problem. Because some people are particularly vulnerable to these problems, this bill requires that rules will establish protections for persons with disabilities, homeless persons, and crime victims. Some people with disabilities may require accommodations or authorized representatives.

The bill does not allow for using this process to suspend or terminate SNAP participation. Program rules spell out procedural standards for acting on evidence of intentional program violations. These standards enable State agencies to pursue recipient fraud in a manner that protects the due process rights of the accused. If a State believes that its evidence about multiple card replacements indicates an intentional program violation, it must replace the card and use its established disqualification procedures such as administrative disqualification hearings or court actions. It cannot force a household member to submit to an interview in order to get access to its benefits.

I want to highlight two areas where the bill provides more resources to improve program integrity. First, we are giving the Department more resources to enhance its retail store monitoring through more data mining and analysis. We recognize that the Department has been actively using its data base of retailer transactions and want to enable more activity in this area.

Second, we're authorizing funding for Federal-State partnerships to implement pilot projects to combat trafficking. I expect that the Department will seek and select State agencies that demonstrate sound and fair procedures for determining fraud.

The bill has several provisions that I worked on that will better link SNAP retailer policy to evolutions in retail technology and marketing. The Secretary is authorized to test the use of mobile technologies in SNAP. This could really help SNAP customers shop at retailers such as farmers markets and vegetable stands that are unable to install traditional debit card machines but may be able to connect to smart

phone applications. This provision was included in my Local Food, Farms, and Jobs Act. But as we expand ways to accept benefits, we must maintain program integrity. That is why we are starting with a pilot project to test mobile technology in SNAP, including protections for recipients such as bans on any food price markups. We expect USDA to carefully examine program integrity issues as part of a required feasibility report, and would not expect any expansion of mobile technology unless the report shows a satisfactory level of integrity. The Department needs rock solid means of ensuring that mobile devices approved for a seemingly legitimate retailer do not end up in disqualified or other dishonest retailers' facilities.

This bill also allows pilot projects to test the feasibility of allowing the online purchase of food with SNAP benefits. More retailers are offering food delivery based on an online transaction. Food delivery can make the program more accessible to individuals who may have trouble getting out to shop. Again, any new way of redeeming benefits must meet high program integrity standards. The bill specifies that the Department must stop any growth of online transactions if we can't achieve the strong level of integrity that we expect. While the provision makes clear that delivery fees associated with online purchases may not be paid with SNAP benefits, I also expect USDA to set standards for the fees to ensure no adverse effect on food security. If consumers are paying an inordinate amount for delivery or other fees this could undermine food security. Most SNAP recipients are expected to spend a considerable amount of their own money to buy a nutritionally adequate diet, and if they are paying large delivery fees they may not be able to do that.

I would like to point out that in the mainstream retail environment these new mobile and online technologies do not rely on photo identification or other biometric information to authorize payments and maintain integrity, nor do standard credit or debit card transactions. A longstanding principle of SNAP benefit use has been that the SNAP retail transaction should look like any other debit card transaction to customers and retailers. I am concerned that USDA has approved State requirements for photos on SNAP cards to be presented at the point of purchase. This is not a condition for a regular credit or debit transactions--in many if not most cases, cardholders swipe their own cards without handing them over to a cashier. The SNAP retail environment should be consistent with general practice. The Department's regulations provide that, and they ought to be enforced.

While benefits have been issued and used successfully through EBT cards for years, there have been a few instances when cards failed to operate. In the event of a natural disaster or a major crash of the EBT system, participants may be in even greater need of assistance and must be able to use their benefits to purchase food. This requires the capacity to quickly and efficiently issue manual vouchers to affected individuals. We expect USDA to allow a switch to manual vouchers when EBT card use is undermined by major systems failures or natural disasters. States must be able to understand the criteria for issuing vouchers so that they can act quickly when a problem threatens access to food assistance, such as the cancellation of cards affected by a data breach.

The bill requires State agencies to use the Department of Homeland Security system to validate immigration status. This system--the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements--is already used by most State agencies. This bill does not change immigrant eligibility, or require anything new or different from applicants in the certification process.

The bill also requires States to have a system for verifying income and eligibility. SNAP has longstanding, rigorous, and specific verification standards. We intend that States have a system for verification and believe that all now do. We are not mandating the imposition of any specific matching requirements such as the match requirements under section 1137 of the Social Security Act. These matches were required 20 years ago and were not productive. We made them optional in the 1996 welfare reform legislation and intend that they remain optional. We expect States will employ verification systems that employ timely and useful matches with reliable sources of data.

One of the most important measures in the bill is authority and funding for pilot projects to enhance the Employment and Training Program. This bill provides support for up to ten projects and a rigorous independent evaluation of the impact of the projects on SNAP receipt, employment, and earnings.

I know that all of my colleagues share the goal of seeing more Americans earning enough so they do not need SNAP. I believe that this is best achieved through strong work programs, and not arbitrarily cutting off food benefits to people who can't find jobs. People are not choosing unemployment and SNAP over gainful employment. There simply aren't enough jobs. The ratio of the number of unemployed persons to relative to the number of job openings has been improving steadily but remains at historically high levels--about 3 unemployed people for every job opening. As a comparison, when the recent recession started this ratio was 1.8 unemployed people per job. So I think we need to do more to help SNAP participants successfully compete for the increasing number of jobs that we hope will be there as the economy continues to recover.

Employment and Training, E&T, has been a component of SNAP since 1987, but very little is known about its efficacy. E&T has afforded States substantial flexibility to design work programs and leverage Federal matching funds. The result has been a wide variation in the types and scope of services offered. While the most prevalent components are job search and job search training, followed by workfare, more States are offering career and technical education in recognition that many SNAP participants need significant skill building and education. In terms of funding, some States invest substantial amount of State funds to realize the Federal match, while many States rely exclusively on the 100 percent Federal grant to fund program components. So we have a program with huge variations but we don't know what works. And because we are not confident that we are getting results, fiscal support for the program has been tepid; the basic Federal grant was $75 million in 1987 and is only $79 million today.

What we do know is that SNAP reaches a very large number of employable low-income people. E&T presents a real opportunity to reach these Americans with better services. And this is a population we need to reach more effectively. A recent report by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia shows that low-income workers were much less likely to get skills training than better off workers. In other words, the people who most need training the most are the least likely to get it. So we need to do a better job of reaching low-income workers with training opportunities, and make sure that the services offered can help people get ahead.

What we want to do here is test different approaches to work and training programs and find which produce the best results. For far too long, we've reauthorized this program because we all want SNAP participants to be better off, but we haven't invested in learning if we are succeeding or how we can do better.

We envision a comprehensive approach to choosing the pilot projects that will incorporate a range of services and serve a range of SNAP recipients with different needs. This does not mean that every pilot must serve a wide range of participants with a wide range of services, but rather that USDA will approve a group of pilot proposals that as a whole will provide different services and reach different types of participants. The bill specifies that the pilots as a whole must reach able-bodied adults without dependents, people with low skills or very limited work experience, and people who are already employed.

Current law requires State E&T programs to be coordinated with their statewide workforce development systems. We expect that these pilots will at least be coordinated, and hopefully leverage existing infrastructure such as one-stop career centers and career and technical education networks. The bill provides for contributing funds from Federal, State, or private sources.

I want to briefly touch on employed persons who get SNAP. These are people who have shown that they can get a job but are not earning enough to make ends meet without help from SNAP. So we are interested in approaches that can help the working poor improve their circumstances. While hopefully many people will earn enough to no longer need or qualify for SNAP, others may increase their earned income but remain eligible for a smaller SNAP benefit. But they will be better off, and program costs will be reduced.

In many cases, stronger work supports could enable people to get a job or work more hours at their current job. For example, if some parents had better childcare, they may be able to take jobs that offer longer hours or better wages. Similarly, transportation support such as bus or transit passes may enable people to take a first job or get a better job. In many cases, people may be able to qualify for jobs without further training, but can't take the jobs because of issues like child care. So I see work supports--particularly child care--as a very promising E&T component that some pilot projects could support. I also believe increasing the minimum wage will help low-wage workers, but I will speak more on that issue at a later date.

Pilots may also test private sector employment as a component. This may be subsidized or unsubsidized employment. We expect USDA to ensure that any employment components adhere to the full range of worker protection standards in the Food and Nutrition Act and in other laws on issues such as workplace safety and health, wages and hours, workman's compensation, and family leave. In addition, the Department should examine whether any additional protections are needed.

If employment components are presented as an E&T requirement, new issues arise around sanctions because the State agency may not know the circumstances when an assignment does not work out. But the basic principle holds: no one should be sanctioned unless he or she willfully refused an assignment without good cause. People may not be able to keep up with jobs because of changes in schedules, transportation, child care, or sometimes because they lack the skills that an employer wants. None of these situations should lead to a sanction. Current program rules have addressed situations such as transportation and child care problems. In an employment component, a new issue arises if people are dismissed for a lack of competence. There is a real difference between refusing to work and not being able to work competently. If people are not working out in a job, maybe they need more training. Maybe they would be better in a different job. They do not deserve a sanction. We expect that State agencies--not employers-- will make these decisions based on policies set out by the Department that address very specific criteria for when a sanction may be invoked in an employment component.

To get the best results from pilot projects, I think that individual assessment of participants is going to be important to get people in the right component. Pilots need to assess people's work history, education, skills, and child care and transportation situation to understand which component can help them the most. I expect the Department to examine assessment procedures as part of its monitoring. We see a strong independent evaluation as critical to the success of these pilots. The Department may use project funds for this purpose, as well as for Federal costs of managing the projects and any evaluation contracts. We expect that the evaluation will look at the impacts of different interventions such as job search, workfare, vocational training, and remedial education on different types of SNAP recipients in different local labor markets. Most importantly, we expect that the study will identify impacts on SNAP receipt and impacts on employment and earnings, including whether reductions in SNAP are attributable to higher earnings. The bill also allows the Department to authorize State-initiated reviews of their projects which can supplement the Federal evaluation.

I am pleased that these pilots strengthen the work component of SNAP without creating incentives to end assistance for people who can't find work or curtailing the ability of States with struggling labor markets economies to secure waivers of current time limits. Pilot participation by participants may be mandatory or voluntary. It is my understanding that if participation is mandatory, an individual who fails to comply with any work requirements may lose his or her SNAP benefits under the same rules that would have applied if she or he committed the same acts while assigned to the E&T program instead of the pilot. As the bill authorizes unsubsidized work as an allowable pilot activity for the first time, we expect the Secretary to issue guidance describing what I think are very limited circumstances under which a working person who loses a job could be sanctioned. Only if a person willfully refuses to continue a job without good cause should sanction policy come into play.

I turn now to some other modest improvements in program implementation.

The bill requires State agencies to use the Department of Health and Human Services' National Directory of New Hires to check on whether SNAP applicants have jobs. Currently States may use this data base to check on the employment of SNAP recipients. The bill requires States to check the National Directory data when a household applies for SNAP to enhance eligibility determinations. There is no expectation of matching during the period of certification. We expect the Secretary to issue rules to set standards to ensure that State matching practices are efficient and effective. As an example, it would seem prudent to focus matches on employable household members and not spend time and money on matches with children, elderly, and disabled members. The Secretary should work with the Department of Health and Human Services to fashion rules that balance the potential gains in payment accuracy with State administrative costs.

More Federal programs are implementing standards for exchanging information in an automated environment. This bill requires SNAP to develop these standards. More electronic data exchanges can help both participants and administrators. However, the strong privacy and confidentiality requirements of the Food and Nutrition Act must be preserved.

The bill tightens policy on using funds for program informational activities while preserving the authority to get information out so that people can make informed choices about the program. Let us review a little history. In the 1996 welfare reform law, we prohibited using Federal funds for recruitment. The idea was that support for information about the availability of help for grocery bills was okay, but we did not want to cross a line to persuade people to enroll if they already had learned about the program and decided to forego benefits.

Over the last decade, we have made enormous strides to extend food assistance to eligible families. USDA, States, and a wide range of community organizations have worked hard to inform low-income people about the availability of SNAP. And as we have changed the name of the program from the Food Stamp Program to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and States have branded their own programs differently, the need to get out clear information has never been greater. I want to commend USDA and its partners inside and outside government for helping to make SNAP a more effective anti-hunger program. In this bill we have drawn some bright lines for the Secretary to use in funding information efforts. First, no support for partnerships with foreign governments. Second, no contracts based on ``bounties'' that tie compensation to the number of people enrolled. And finally, re-affirmation that recruitment is not a legitimate activity for SNAP funding. I think the first points are clear and want to expand on the last one. Giving people information about the availability and benefits of the program to enable them to make informed choices about managing family food budgets to put enough food on the table is a legitimate use of Federal funds. If it crosses over into pushing people who have made an informed choice not to apply to apply, then we have a recruitment situation that the Conferees do not support. As long as households have

the knowledge and access to participate if they so desire, what they actually decide is up to them.

Providing positive information about the program and why or how to apply or assisting them in navigating a complex application process is not recruitment and remains an allowable activity and cost. We expect SNAP to continue to provide people with the information they need to make informed decisions about participation, while ensuring that all funds for public information are used responsibly and judiciously.

Finally, I would like to raise a problem about issuance that this legislation does not address--because we thought that earlier legislation did. Staggered issuance refers to spreading the issuance dates for loading benefits on to EBT cards over a period of time-- generally 10 but sometimes 15 days or more. This way you don't have so many SNAP households shopping on the same day. It benefits both retailers and their customers because stores are less crowded. The Food and Nutrition Act provides two key participant safeguards when a State agency moves to staggered issuance: first, no household can go beyond 40 days without an allotment, and, second, no household's allotment may be reduced for any period. I have become aware that the Department has been approving plans that recognize only one of these provisions; plans simply extend some households for 40 days between issuances. This means that an allotment designed to cover 30 days must now cover 40 days. Benefits are simply inadequate to stretch this far.

When a 30 day benefit must be stretched over 40 days, the daily benefit is clearly reduced. And since we eat every day, the daily benefit is a meaningful measure of benefit reduction. I am troubled that this important protection in issuance law is seemingly being ignored, and urge the Department to re-examine this situation and require supplemental issuances when States are implementing staggered issuance. Staggered issuance should be beneficial to all concerned. It should not increase hunger during transition months. Referrals to food banks during those months are a poor use of food bank resources and completely unnecessary given the act's requirement that households not suffer a loss of benefits--which having to stretch the same allotment over a longer period certainly is. Food banks are already being stretched thin and it should not be policy for SNAP recipients to rely on local food banks because benefits are stretched over this longer time period.

All in all, this farm bill represents 2 years of hard work by both Agricultural Committees. The nutrition title is not my ideal; the benefit reductions obtained by requiring significant utility assistance in order to qualify for the standard utility allowance will be painful for those households affected by it. But I believe it is a narrowly targeted way of strengthening the program, and with other modest improvements, makes the title worth supporting. I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

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

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

Mr. President, yesterday at the State of the Union Address by the President, I asked to join me--each Member of the Senate gets a pass, a gallery pass for a spouse or constituent or someone--I asked Elizabeth Dandridge, a Head Start teacher from Cincinnati, to join me and she sat in the gallery--the first time she had actually been in the Capitol. She taught at Head Start for 10 years.

Mrs. Dandridge isn't paid a lot of money. Unfortunately, we don't pay Head Start teachers and Head Start teaching assistants a whole lot more than minimum wage. It is important that people understand that there are a number of low-wage workers in this country.

There is one thing I want to say before I yield to Senator Sessions. One of the reasons to increase the minimum wage is that it matters so much to those families who work so hard and get so little for it. President Obama said no one who works full time in this country should live in poverty, and he is absolutely right.

The lesson of history is that 100 years ago this month Henry Ford made an announcement that he would pay every one of his workers--from the sweeper of the factory floor to the worker who assembles the autos--$5 a day. A lot of his business friends were outraged. They couldn't believe he was doing this. He wasn't necessarily doing it out of the goodness of his heart. I certainly don't know his heart. It was a good business decision.

He knew that if he would put $5 a day into his workers' pockets, they would begin to spend that money, it would create more prosperity for the community, a number of those workers might be able to buy cars that Ford assembled, and we would all be better off. That is really what the minimum wage debate is about. It is not only about increasing the minimum wage for those

hundreds of thousands of families in my State who work at such low- income levels. It is also going to help the economy in the State of Delaware, the State of Alabama, and the State of Ohio.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. President, it has been almost 1 month since Senators and House Members went home and failed to extend unemployment insurance, a lifeline for 1.6 million Americans.

In my home State of Ohio, 52,000 have lost their unemployment benefits--people who were working, lost their jobs, were looking for work, and have had their benefits ended. Another 76,000 in my State alone--from Toledo to Chillicothe to Cleveland to Dayton--will lose their benefits by the end of the year.

This insurance program is not called unemployment welfare; it is called unemployment insurance. People pay into it when they are working and get the benefits when they are laid off, and they only receive these benefits if they are actively seeking work. This is why it is called unemployment insurance. This is a program which has worked. This not only hurts the families who aren't receiving the unemployment benefits of about $300 a week. It is also money which goes into our economy and helps our economy grow.

A new report shows that because we didn't have an extension of these benefits, we have lost $1.76 billion in economic activity just in this 1 month alone. Ohio has lost tens of millions of dollars.

What does that mean? It means people don't have $300 a week in their pocket to go to the grocery store or to fix their car which they need to look for work. They don't have money to go to the local store or to buy clothes for their kids.

Economic experts have said extending unemployment benefits will create 200,000 jobs in our country because of the economic activity generated. So it is not just these families--in Ohio, 52,000 workers and in many cases their families--who are hurting. It is also the communities from Toledo to Steubenville, all over my State, and all over this country. At a time when Congress should be helping to grow this economy, our inaction slows growth and makes it harder to find work.

We know we are still emerging from the worst recession since the Great Depression. We have made progress, but there are still nearly 11 million Americans unemployed, and about 4 million have been unemployed for at least 27 weeks.

When President Bush signed the latest round of emergency assistance into effect, the unemployment rate was about 5.5 percent--more than 1 point lower than it is today. Today, the long-term unemployment rate is more than double what it has been at any other time Congress has let emergency jobless assistance expire.

Americans work hard. They want to work. Yet there is one job opening for every three job seekers.

The same people who don't like unemployment insurance typically don't like the way Social Security works--another social insurance program-- and typically don't like Medicare--another social insurance program. Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance--they are social insurance programs you pay into when you are working and get benefits when you are not, whether it is Medicare or Social Security or whether it is unemployment.

I will read a couple stories from real people affected by this. These aren't just numbers. These are real people hurt when Congress doesn't do its job.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island has been on this floor over and over. A number of us have pushed for this unemployment insurance extension. We continue to be met by a threatened filibuster. The House of Representatives continues to dig in and do nothing about unemployment insurance because they simply don't believe in the unemployment insurance program.

I'm in my mid-40s, have a Master's degree, and had an

excellent career history until I was laid off--through no

fault of my own--late last spring. I've been searching for

work for 7 months and hope to find something soon. While I am

encouraged that I have had five interviews in the last two

weeks, I know that if I am not hired soon, I will not be able

to pay my rent and buy groceries.

I would much rather be working, and I am doing the best I

can to find something. Please do not assume the long term

unemployed have given up. We have not. We need support in

continuing our search, however, so we can afford the bare

necessities.

The $300 a week for somebody like Emily--I don't know precisely what she would get based on her income and all the years she worked and all that she would need, but it is clear we are turning our backs on people such as Emily from Lake County.

Matthew from Cuyahoga County:

I was laid off almost a year ago, and I have been

diligently looking for work but have not been able to find

anything yet.

One of my children was recently diagnosed with an

incurable, yet manageable disease, and the medical bills have

exhausted our emergency fund.

I have worked extremely hard my entire adult life to

provide a good life for my family only to see it threatened

by the continual bickering in Congress. For many of us, the

recession is not over.

Please work with other Senators to continue the federal

unemployment benefits.

That is what we are doing. We are going to continue to bring this issue to the floor. We are going to continue to work to extend unemployment insurance for people such as Matthew, for people such as Emily.

Terry from Medina County writes:

I am a 59 year old single parent and have been diligently

looking for employment since November of 2012, [13 months]. I

have been able to secure some temporary work but not a

permanent job.

I have worked since I was 17 years old and I have never

been out of work before. I am also a college educated woman

with a Masters Degree in Public Administration. If I don't

find something soon, I may have to file for bankruptcy. My

house will likely go into foreclosure by the spring. My son

may have to live with his dad to finish out his last year of

high school, and he will struggle to obtain the necessary

finances to afford college.

Senator Brown, I want to work. I do not want to stay home

and collect unemployment or not utilize my brain, talents and

experience. I am an intelligent, capable, healthy person with

a lot to offer. . . .

It is time to stop blaming those who have been unemployed

due to these circumstances and stop publicly declaring they

don't want to work.

I could have brought 15 more letters to the floor from people who have had long work histories, of people who lost their jobs because of economic situation--not because of anything they did wrong--of people who are looking actively for work, of people who simply want to continue contributing to their family and to their community.

I urge my colleagues to get out of Washington, to do as Pope Francis said when he exhorted his parish priests: Go

out and smell like the flock. Go out and understand how people live and what their lives are like and how people suffer if they cannot find work and, where we can, do something about it to, No. 1, help the 50,000 families in Ohio and over a million around the country and, No. 2, help grow our economy by the infusion of these dollars into communities that will make a difference in the lives of those families and help to create jobs in our communities.

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

I always appreciate the comments of Senator Murkowski, who is always thoughtful and works across the aisle. I appreciate the work she does.

Mr. President, I rise briefly, joining with Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut and Senator Merkley, who is now in the Presiding Officer's chair but who will be joining us, to mark the 50th anniversary of Surgeon General Dr. Terry's groundbreaking report on the dangers of smoking.

The 387-page report released five decades ago concluded something that was almost revolutionary in its time, and was revolutionary in its impact, that said: ``Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.''

We know how our views in this country have changed about smoking. But we also know that 400,000 people every year die from smoking-related illnesses. That says the tobacco companies have to find 400,000 new customers every year, and the people they have tried to seduce into smoking are not people my age. They are the pages' age or even younger. Those are the people they aim at to teach them to start smoking.

It is not just young people that tobacco companies are trying to get addicted to smoking; it is also what they are doing in the developing world.

I was in Poland in 1991 working for Ohio State University right after the Communist government in Poland fell. The first billboards all over Warsaw, Krakow, Lublin, and eastern Poland were tobacco--mostly American tobacco companies but also British tobacco companies. Those were the first billboards up.

So as the tobacco companies try to seduce young people in our country to smoke, they have, in some sense, attacked the developing Third World to get people to smoke there. One of the ways they have done this is by using our trade agenda to weaken public health laws in other countries. Some poor, developing countries have enacted public health antismoking laws, and U.S. tobacco companies and tobacco companies from other countries have tried to weaken--sometimes successfully--those laws.

It is important we close loopholes in our trade agenda which allow big tobacco corporations to undermine these global health standards. This administration's decision not to exclude any one product, including tobacco, from the TransPacific partnership--the proposed trade agreement among the United States and 11 other countries--is a disappointment: It opens years of anti-tobacco public health policies to attacks by Big Tobacco, because under the TPP's investor state provisions, tobacco companies can challenge public health laws in the United States and abroad, all under the guise of and in the name of free trade. A record number of investor state cases were filed last year, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

So the public health campaign against tobacco continues in our country and Senator Blumenthal has been a leader in this for well over a decade. It extends to our international politics, our international trade regimen.

We have a lot of work to do. That is why I am pleased to join Senator Blumenthal and Senator Merkley in their discussion today honoring the 50th anniversary of Dr. Terry's report.

I yield to Senator Blumenthal.

I note the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, President Johnson 50 years ago, as Senator Harkin was talking about, declared a war on poverty down the hall in the House of Representatives in his State of the Union Message. A little later he visited Athens, OH, in the heart of Appalachia, and he said:

I came out here today to see you because we can't always

see poverty from the Capital in Washington. But you can see

it when you get out and ride the rivers and the range, the

mountains and the hills.

When President Lincoln was in office, even though his staff said stay in the office, win the war, free the slaves, preserve the Union, President Lincoln

would say, no, I need to get out and take my ``public opinion baths''-- I need to see the people and talk to them and understand their problems.

Pope Francis recently exhorted his parish priests to go smell like the flock, obviously using the allegory of the sheep in the Old Testament and New Testament, but also saying to his parish priests: Understand how people live, talk to them about their issues and their problems and their lives and live among them as much as you can, something perhaps none of us in this body--I know the Presiding Officer from Vermont possibly does more townhalls and meetings with people than anybody in the Senate. All of us need to do that more to understand better.

But as we debate the extension of unemployment benefits, $500 a week is the average benefit; 52,00 people in my State were cut off from benefits at the end of the year, tens of thousands more will lose their benefits if we don't act. It is not just what this means to parents so they can feed their families and continue to look for work. But as the Presiding Officer knows, they need to continue to look for work in order to get this $300 a week on average. We also know it helps the economy.

One hundred years ago this week, Henry Ford made an announcement that stunned the country. He said: Everybody in my auto plant is going to receive $5 a day. Whether it was the young man sweeping the floor or the autoworker, they were all going to receive $5 a day.

Whether it was done out of generosity or not, what Henry Ford knew was putting money in workers' pockets--just the same as when you put money in people's pockets for unemployment benefits, which is the insurance they paid into--the money that they get will help grow the economy. It will help people be able to do things they would not otherwise be able to do. That is the importance of the extension of unemployment benefits, and that is the importance of passing minimum wage legislation, which Senator Harkin also spoke about.

The fair minimum wage would raise the minimum wage 90 cents upon the signature of the President, 90 cents a year later, and 90 cents a year after that. At the same time it would raise the subminimum wage for those people who work in diners, push wheelchairs in airports, and for valets in restaurants. Those workers often make less than the minimum wage. The subminimum wage--the tipped wage--is only $2.13 an hour. It hasn't been raised since 1991.

The Harkin, Sanders, Brown--and others who are part of this legislation on the minimum wage bill--legislation will increase the tipped minimum wage over time up to 70 percent of the real minimum wage.

I will close with a letter from Karen in Columbus. She said:

I had to come out of medical retirement because I couldn't

make ends meet.

I have now worked at a department store for four years and

still don't make $9.00 an hour. My salary goes entirely

towards rent and utilities.

My water bill just went up $8.00--

For those of us in this Chamber, if the water bill goes up $8, you deal with it. It is not that big of a deal. She is not even making $9 an hour. The increase in her water bill is 1 hour of pay at this department store.

My water bill just went up $8.00--as it goes up every

year--just like the electric, food, and gas.

Heaven forbid my car would break down or I would fall

victim to a serious illness.

I hope that our colleagues are getting their public opinion baths. I hope our colleagues are out among people listening to these stories.

I close, again with a quote from President Johnson's speech in Athens, OH, which was 50 years ago this year.

Poverty hides its face behind a mask of affluence. But I

call upon you to help me get out there and unmask it, take

that mask off of that face of affluence and let the world see

what we have, and let the world do something about it.

We have an opportunity today to do something about unemployment insurance and help people get back on their feet. We have an opportunity in the months ahead to raise the minimum wage. To restore it to something close to what it was back in 1968 in real buying power, that should be our obligation, our duty, and our mission in the months ahead.

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

Madam President, for those who do not remember or those who do not choose to remember, 5 years ago our economy was at the brink of collapse after being rocked by a financial crisis because of incompetence, Wall Street greed, overreach in the financial sector, and more. Washington had let the financial system run wild through deregulation. Banks had overloaded on toxic mortgage securities that they used massive amounts of leverage to purchase. In many cases these Wall Street banks were so large, so complex, so opaque, so overleveraged, they were too big to fail.

Increasingly, these banks are too big to manage and too big to regulate. I remember that time well. I was in Zanesville, OH, when I first got a call to discuss what we needed to do from Chairman Bernanke and President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury Paulson. Five years since the collapse of the markets, 3 years after the passage of the Wall Street reform law, we still cannot say that the Dodd-Frank legislation ended this problem.

In July of last year, Chairman Bernanke said:

I wouldn't be saying the truth if I said that the problem

is gone. It is not gone.

That is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

At her nomination hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Governor Yellen, then the Vice Chair--still the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve--said that ending ``too Big to Fail'' is ``among the most important goals of the post-crisis period.''

That is one of the many reasons I rise today to support and argue for Janet Yellen's confirmation as the Chair of the Federal Reserve. In today's complex financial system, it is more important than ever that we have strong regulators such as Governor Yellen who can recognize emerging threats to economic stability and who are not afraid to act when they find abuses that put American consumers and workers at risk.

Throughout her distinguished career at the Fed of more than a decade, Governor Yellen has shown she understands how risky financial practices deep inside the largest Wall Street banks can have a terrible and terrifying impact on American families. She was, 8 or 9 years ago, among the first to recognize the housing bubble that wiped out trillions in wealth and led to the biggest recession since the Great Depression.

In the years since the crash, Governor Yellen has been a voice on the

need for strong, sensible regulation to protect American workers and small businesses instead of the too-big-to-fail banks. While there are many failures that led the economy to the brink of collapse, one of the biggest mistakes on the Federal level was not keeping the average American's financial interest in mind. There is far too much bias in this institution toward Wall Street instead of Main Street.

Most people in my home State of Ohio, in the Presiding Officer's home State of Hawaii, are not millionaires. They are automakers in Lordstown, steelworkers in Cleveland, they are farmers in Darke County, they are hairdressers in Toledo, they are police officers in Columbus. They are the people who make the products we depend on every day.

My State produces more than any but two States in the United States. They are the people who make these products, who teach our children, who protect our communities. They are the average hard-working Americans trying to create a better life for their children. And they, along with millions of other Americans, deserve better than the crisis that we allowed to happen.

Over the years, Washington, the Fed in particular, has too often lacked an important connection to Americans whose lives are so affected by the decisions it makes. Few have been able to keep a perspective where they understand what is happening in middle America, among working-class Americans, among middle-class Americans.

When President Lincoln was in office, he would go out and meet regularly with ordinary Americans either in the White House or outside the White House. While his staff implored him to stay in the White House and win the war and free the slaves and save the Union, President Lincoln said: I need to go out and get my public opinion bath.

We have also seen the new pope, Francis I, exhort his parish priests to ``smell like the flock''--to get among them, to understand their lives as much as possible, to drink the water they drink, to be among them, to learn from them and to listen to them. We must know those whom we serve.

In a speech last year before the AFL-CIO, Janet Yellen described the real-world implications of unemployment and noted that the unemployed are not just statistics. She took stock of the work ahead for the Fed, notably ensuring that Dodd-Frank is fully implemented in ending ``too big to fail.'' I think she will break out of the beltway bubble. I think she will get out in the country far more than any of her predecessors have done and consider the lives and work to understand the lives of those people affected by these Federal Central Bank decisions.

As Chair of the Fed Subcommittee on Communications, she has played a strong role in monetary policy and its efforts to put people back to work, despite Congress's unwillingness--this body's unwillingness--to help. Whether it is extending unemployment benefits, which we should be doing today, whether it is raising the minimum wage, it means engaging in the lives and helping people in this country who may not be as privileged as those of us who have the opportunity to serve in the Senate.

Janet Yellen is qualified to take the helm of the Fed and make history in becoming the first woman to run the Central Bank.

In confirming Ms. Yellen, we can look forward to a new era of recovery and growth. I look forward to working with Janet Yellen and her staff.

I urge my colleagues to confirm Janet Yellen to be Chair of the Federal Reserve.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I wish to praise the passage of the National Pediatric Research Network Act, signed into law by President Obama on November 27, 2013. I was proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation along with my colleague and friend Senator Wicker.

I am a longtime supporter of expanded pediatric medical research and, as a member of the House and later of the Senate, have fought to increase funding to carry out these essential efforts. This bipartisan bill promises to build on the important body of work in pediatric research that the National

Institutes of Health, NIH, already supports.

This law authorizes the NIH to establish a number of multi- institution consortia conducting high-impact research into the most challenging pediatric issues of our day. These research networks will allow for the participation of multiple institutions through the use of a ``hub and spoke'' arrangement, with one or more central pediatric medical centers collaborating with other supporting sites.

Network applicants can focus on any type of pediatric research agenda, from basic laboratory research through later stage translational research and clinical investigations on a variety of pediatric disorders and diseases.

Importantly, the act will bridge the research gap between pediatric and adult conditions. Only 5 to 10 percent of the NIH's annual research budget is devoted to pediatric research, despite children comprising approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population.

Additionally, this act promises to strengthen our collective focus on pediatric rare diseases or conditions, such as spinal muscular atrophy, muscular dystrophy, Down syndrome, and Fragile X.

We are all aware that the NIH faces tight budgets and that these fiscal challenges are not going away overnight. Thus, Members on both sides of the aisle came together in support of this research model to promote efficiency and the sharing of resources. Modeled after the successful Cancer Centers and other successful networked initiatives, this law reflects the current fiscal climate and seeks to do more with less.

The National Pediatric Research Network Act could not have been enacted without the support of thousands of families, care providers, pediatric researchers and research institutions across the country. I would especially like to thank FightSMA and the Coalition for Pediatric Medical Research for organizing a grassroots effort that led to strong bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, and to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, and Akron Children's Hospital for their endorsement and hard work in support of the bill.

The legislation received the strong support of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, the Children's Hospital Association, Federation of Pediatric Organizations, Kakkis EveryLife Foundation, National Down Syndrome Society, and the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

Finally, I would like to recognize Madison Reed, a valiant Ohio teenager living with SMA, for sharing her story with me when I visited Nationwide Children's Hospital earlier this year. The National Pediatric Research Network Act has given hope to thousands of families like hers, across Ohio and the country, that collaborative pediatric research will speed knowledge from bench to bedside, allowing young people with medical concerns to lead healthier and fuller lives.

I thank the Presiding Officer and the Senator from New Jersey, and I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Washington be allowed to speak following my comments on the extenders.

Mr. President, I am here to join my colleagues in asking for unanimous consent--which we will do formally later on--to pass the Tax Extenders Act of 2013.

The bill will do a number of important extensions, including-- particularly important for my State--extending the health care tax credit or the HCTC. It is important that we extend it for workers and retirees who lose their jobs and benefits due to no fault of their own.

Extending the HCTC preserves a program that people in my home State of Ohio--such as Delphi salaried retirees, who worked hard and played by the rules--know, understand, and trust. These tax credits are set to expire in just 2 weeks, at the end of the year.

While affordable health insurance will be available on the health exchanges, one of the most important aspects of the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--extending the HCTC ensures that retirees who have already faced a number of transitions can keep insurance that is familiar to them while they learn about new options.

Extending the tax credit for 1 year is fiscally responsible. We could and should do more. We should improve the HCTC and make it permanent, as I proposed in legislation I introduced along with Senators Rockefeller, Stabenow, Hirono, and Donnelly. But in the meantime, we could and should at the very least maintain this critical tax credit for a population that needs it desperately. That is what this bill does. That is why the Senate should move it soon by unanimous consent.

I would like to take a moment to emphasize how important the Tax Extenders Act of 2013 is on a number of other issues besides the HCTC and credits my friends have discussed.

Among other important measures, we should also move to extend the new markets tax credit and the low-income housing tax credit. These programs are oversubscribed and are able to help revitalize communities by leveraging tens of billions of dollars in private investments. They are among the best programs we have for economic development in Ohio and across the country. I strongly support that extension.

Finally, I would like to associate myself with Senator Stabenow in calling for unanimous consent to pass the Tax Extenders Act of 2013 in order to extend mortgage debt relief. Without this critical extension, homeowners who make modifications to their mortgage or receive loan forgiveness could face a crippling tax bill. Imagine that. After you have done a loan modification, you are taxed on whatever money you save. Imagine getting that tax bill. That is why the mortgage debt relief extender is so very important.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, 75 years ago President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act written, in

part, by Senator Hugo Black of Alabama. He actually sat at this desk as he was writing the minimum wage law and some of the Fair Labor Standards Act legislation in the 1930s.

This legislation ensured that American workers would receive a minimum wage and work reasonable hours. We know what that has done for families in this country. We also know that the minimum wage hasn't even been close to keeping up with the cost of living and with inflation. We also know a number of other facts about the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Many minimum wage workers are working and making $7.25, $8 or $9--less than what we want to raise the minimum wage to so all would get a raise. We know that many of those workers work in the fast food industry.

The CEO of a fast food corporation makes about $8.7 million or $8 million a year, while his employees average something around $19,000 a year.

I am not one of those who says they have to work a million hours to get to the $8 million a year. To put into perspective what has happened with wages, as wages for CEOs and top management have gone up, we have seen the productivity of workers go up. We know that wages for those workers have simply not kept up, not only for minimum-wage workers but for workers overall.

Since the 1970s, and especially since 2000, profits have gone up, productivity has gone up, executive salaries have gone up dramatically, yet workers wages have been stagnant. There is no better example of that than the minimum wage. The minimum wage was raised my first year in the Senate.

My first speech on the Senate floor was with Senator Barack Obama sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair. Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd were on the floor that day talking about and debating increasing the minimum wage.

We did that in a bipartisan way in 2007. The bill was signed by President Bush. That is good news.

The bad news is there was no cost-of-living adjustment. There was no escalation so that the wage would keep up with inflation. There has not been a minimum wage increase since then.

Here is another fact about the minimum wage. For tipped workers, those who work in diners--in many cases those who work pushing wheelchairs at airports don't work for the airlines. They work for a subcontracting company that pays subminimum wage.

Valets and people who are in positions in hotels where they might get tipped, their minimum wage is only $2.13 an hour. A woman working the floors of a diner, a man who is pushing a wheelchair or driving a cart in an airport, their minimum wage is only $2.13 an hour. Some are paid more than that, but some of them are paid as little as $2, $3 or $4 an hour, supposedly expecting that tips will make up the difference and get them to the minimum wage or above.

The assistant majority leader, who has joined me on the floor, has been working with Senator Harkin and several others of us on legislation for the new minimum wage increase. We want to increase the minimum wage $2.10 an hour, 90 cents at the President's signature, then another 90 cents, and another 90 cents. We also want to increase the tipped minimum wage--not increased for 22 years--to lock it in at 70 percent of the real minimum wage.

As the real minimum wage increases by the year 2016 under our legislation, and a worker's minimum wage would then be $10.10 an hour, a subminimum wage of a tipped employee in an airport or restaurant would then be $7 and a few cents an hour. Both of those wages, the tipped minimum wage and a minimum wage, will have a cost-of-living adjustment so we don't have to come back every 6 years and have a big political fight to raise the minimum wage. It shouldn't be a big political fight because clearly people in this country overwhelmingly-- Democrats, independents, and Republicans--think the minimum wage should be increased.

It will not only be the tipped employee or the minimum wage worker at a fast-food restaurant who gets a raise from what is now $7.50 or $8 an hour or even $9 an hour. As the minimum wage goes up, so will the wages for many of low-income, slightly above minimum wage workers.

In a fast food restaurant where perhaps the night manager may make a couple of dollars more an hour than the line workers who are at the counter--although the night manager does plenty of that too--the night manager might make a couple of dollars above or $3 above minimum wage. There we raise the minimum wage, thus raising everybody's wage. Then the night manager's wage will increase too.

The opponents to the minimum wage--and it is amazing to me that people can sit in this institution, with the good salaries that we make as Members of the Senate and Members of the House in both parties, with good benefits, good health insurance, decent pensions paid for by taxpayers, and oppose the minimum wage. It equally amazes me that they can oppose extending unemployment benefits. In my State alone--and I know in the assistant majority leader's State of Illinois and in the Presiding Officer's State, for a significant number of people, over 120,000, in my State alone, their Christmas present will be that unemployment benefits have stopped for them, have been eliminated, unless Congress acts. That is why it is so important, not only to enact a minimum wage in the weeks ahead but that we extend unemployment benefits for those workers who are looking for jobs.

These aren't people who don't want to work. These are people looking for jobs. They have to look for jobs in order to qualify. It is not a lot of money. It is 40 or 50 percent typically of their wage, of what they used to make.

There aren't enough jobs in this country. There aren't enough jobs in Connecticut, Illinois, and Ohio that they can find jobs, and then we take the unemployment benefits away.

No. 1, think of what it means to that family and, No. 2, as the assistant majority leader knows, this helps our economy. When people are receiving unemployment benefits, they are spending it. They are spending it in Toledo at the grocery store. They are spending it in Cleveland at the hardware store. They are spending it in Dayton at the auto repair shop to fix their car, so they can go out, get a job, and go to work. All of those are reasons why extending the minimum wage and extending unemployment insurance is so important.

One further point before yielding to the assistant majority leader from Illinois, unemployment is not called welfare, it is unemployment insurance. People pay in when they are working. They hope they are going to pay in for a long time and that they are not going to lose their jobs. But if they lose their jobs, they collect their insurance. They paid in. That is what insurance is. If things aren't working right, one gets unemployment benefits, unemployment insurance, social insurance. This is why this is so important.

I yield to the Senator from Illinois.

That is right. First, the points that the assistant majority leader was making about the bipartisanship has been exactly right. What is most--not discouraging but perhaps the most disappointing part of this is even as recently as 2007, when President Bush signed this bill--it was my first month or two in the Senate when we passed it. It was a big bipartisan vote in the House. I don't remember exactly the numbers in the Senate. Many Republicans joined. I believe almost every Democrat or maybe every Democrat--but it was gladly signed by the Republican President of the United States.

From the time of the minimum wage, when Senator Hugo Black sat at this desk and helped to write the minimum wage law and President Roosevelt signed the bill, for all of these decades the minimum wage in fits and starts has kept up with inflation--most of the time--until the 1980s. It has been signed on by people from both parties; the same with the extension of unemployment benefits that we discussed, this extension of unemployment benefits, social insurance. They pay in when they don't need it. When they need it, they can take money out of the social insurance fund and receive unemployment benefits if they can't find a job.

These are very tough times. Some of my colleagues, I don't think, understand sometimes how tough a time it is for so many families.

The President of the United States, the last President from Illinois before this one, Abraham Lincoln, used to talk about getting out of the White House and going out and getting his public opinion bath that he needed to hear from the public.

I know Senator Durbin does that throughout his State of Illinois. I know Senator Murphy of Connecticut, the Presiding Officer, does the same.

We go out and listen to people. We are talking to somebody making $8 or $9 an hour, and this minimum increase will increase their pay. They probably don't have insurance because they can't afford it. They are probably eligible for the SNAP program because of their low income, and so it is the least we can do.

These are people who work as hard as we do. We have jobs we get a lot out of. We are well paid, we have good benefits, and we also have wonderful opportunities to serve the public. So many people in these jobs are barely making it. They work jobs where they are on their feet all day. The woman in the diner is making $3 or $4 an hour and hoping people will tip her to get her up to $7 or $8 or $9 an hour. She is working every bit as hard as my colleagues and I work. Yet she has so little to show for it.

This is an opportunity for us, as people who care about this country and care about the people who live in this country--people who are doing such hard work cleaning hotel rooms, cleaning our schools, making sure our schools are clean and the trash is taken out, people who are serving our food--for the people in these kinds of jobs--home care workers who are barely making it--the least we can do is make sure the minimum wage gets them somewhat close to a decent lifestyle and standard of living and that we do better, if they are laid off, with unemployment insurance and that they get a chance with the Affordable Care Act so they can buy affordable health insurance because they will get some help and they can draw on food stamps if they are eligible, if they need them on these low wages.

There is no reason we can't, in the Christmas spirit, if you will, do what has been done on a bipartisan basis during my lifetime and that of my colleague Senator Durbin, where both parties would step up and do it.

I thank my colleague.

Pope Francis I, as he integrated these kinds of things into his life, he exhorted his parish priests--similar to Lincoln saying ``I need my public opinion bath''--to smell like the flock and to get among people and talk to them and learn from them, to smell like the flock, to be one of them. I am not Catholic. I know my friend from Illinois is Roman Catholic. But this Pope has really brought us to a different level. He has called upon our better angels, if you will.

Before yielding to Senator Durbin for his remarks, I have one more point to make about the minimum wage. The belief among many is that the minimum wage is for a bunch of teenagers. That is simply not true. Most minimum wage earners in this country are not teenagers; most of them are supporting themselves and in many cases supporting a spouse or a family or someone in their family who is disabled or a close friend. This is a wage people really depend on to get along. It is not just spending money for a high school kid; families depend on this.

That is why it is so important that in the next few weeks we raise the minimum wage; tie this subminimum wage, tipped wage, to that increase and

index it for inflation so we don't have to do this every 3 or 4 years just to keep up with inflation.

I yield the floor.