Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., on Wednesday, November 30, 2011; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that following any leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business until 10:30 a.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1867, the Department of Defense authorization act, with the time until 11 a.m. equally divided and controlled between Senator Levin and Senator McCain or their designees; further, that upon the use or yielding back of time, the mandatory quorum under rule XXII be waived, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on S. 1867; finally, that the second-degree filing deadline for amendments to S. 1867 be 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Mr. President, there will be a cloture vote on the Defense authorization bill at 11 a.m. tomorrow. We will work through amendments to the bill throughout the day.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

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

Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate Senator Reed's comments about the state of this economy and what the supercommittee is doing and the direction we need to go on all of these tax issues and all of these spending issues. He is so right.

We know several things about Social Security. We know it has been around for 75 years. We know if we do things right here in Congress, it will be around for another 75 years. We know it makes a huge difference in the lives of our citizens and our constituents in Oregon, in Ohio, in Rhode Island, and all over this country. We know that more than half of seniors in my State who are on Social Security get more than half of their income from Social Security, and it plays such an important role in their lives. We also know that until recently, there was not a cost- of-living adjustment for seniors. We know that over the last 2 years, even though the President and the majority in the Senate--the Democrats in the Senate and in the House--voted for a $250 one-time payment for seniors to help them deal with the increase in costs of their health care--except for that, we know that Social Security beneficiaries in this country didn't get a cost-of-living adjustment for 2 years.

We also know--and the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Oregon, is working with Senator Mikulski from Maryland and me on legislation to fix this. We also know the cost-of-living adjustment is, pure and simple, understated because the cost-of-living adjustment seniors usually get--never quite enough to keep up with their expenses--is based on the cost of living for a working person, for someone in his fifties or forties or in her thirties or twenties.

For someone who is working full time, their cost-of-living increase is different than a senior's cost-of-living increase because if a person is 70 years old, they are much more likely to have higher health care costs than if they are 30 years old.

So, historically in this country, we do a Consumer Price Index-W, ``wages''--CPI-W. It is based on a 30- or 40- or 50-year-old who is working full time, their cost of living. We are not basing it on the cost of living of a senior citizen who consumes, if you will, much higher health care, who has much higher health care costs.

That is what the legislation Senator Merkley and Senator Mikulski and I are working on: CPI-E, Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, reflecting their real costs. Why should a senior's cost-of-living adjustment be based on a 30-year-old's cost of living instead of a 70- year-old's cost of living? That is clearly why we need the change.

We also know another thing about Social Security. We know some conservative politicians in this institution--mostly Republicans, not quite entirely--we know some conservative politicians in this institution want to change the Consumer Price Index the other way, to make it even smaller.

For 2 years in a row, there was no increase, no COLA, no Consumer Price Index increase, no extra dollars to keep up with burgeoning health care costs for seniors. We know that did not happen for 2 years. There are people in this institution--many of whom have never supported Social Security to begin with all that much, frankly, to be honest--who want to see a smaller cost-of-living adjustment. It is something called chained CPI. I will not go into the details about how it works, but it

basically says to seniors: Whatever you are spending money on--if you are buying apples, for instance, then you could buy bananas. My staff says bananas are cheaper. We had an argument about that, whether bananas are cheaper per calorie and per weight and all that. But, nonetheless, they say to seniors, under this chained CPI thing--some conservative think tank, some corporate-funded, insurance company, drug company-funded think tank, I assume, came up with this bizarre idea of CPI chained--they say to seniors: You can pay less for things because you can do substitutions of food--from beef to chicken or from apples to bananas or from something to something--and save money.

Most seniors have already made those substitutions in their buying habits because they are already squeezed because the cost-of-living adjustment has not kept up with their health care costs. That is the whole point. So instead of our moving to reduce the cost-of-living adjustment, going to this chained Consumer Price Index, chained CPI, we should move away from CPI-W, based on wages, to CPI-E, meaning what elderly people's costs are as their health care goes up.

It will mean several hundred dollars in the monthly benefit a senior receives. Let me give those numbers, and then I will wrap up.

For the average person who retired in 1985, that person would get about an $887 increase, if it was the way Senator Merkley and Senator Mikulski and I want to change Social Security. That CPI, that increase, would then go up a little bit over time, so seniors would, in fact, be able to keep up with their health care costs. That is the importance of this change. That is the importance of our legislation. We cannot go the other way, chained CPI.

The last point I will make is, these conservatives who do not much like Social Security--some of them are Presidential candidates, I might add--they will say: We cannot afford this. The budget deficit is not because of Social Security. It is because of a bunch of other factors. Social Security is not part of this budget deficit. We know how to do minor changes to fix Social Security long term and take care of seniors and their health care needs and their increased costs.

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

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, the supercommittee we all talk about--and it meets mostly in secret--is putting out plans and ideas to deal with the deficit--some, I am sure, good; some a little less good. I am concerned about one thing the supercommittee has been talking about--the stories that have come out that I know about, and that is something called the chained Consumer Price Index.

I know that many conservative politicians in this body and down the hall in the House of Representatives have advocated that we change the Consumer Price Index to something called the chained Consumer Price Index.

The way the Consumer Price Index is calculated is especially important for senior citizens because their Social Security cost-of- living adjustment--called the COLA--is predicated on how the cost of living is calculated.

Right now, the cost-of-living adjustment is based on the Consumer Price Index-W, which means it is determined by wages, the cost of living for people in the workplace. It is not determined by the cost of living for retirees even though it affects what retirees get in their cost-of-living adjustment.

That sounds like a lot of words, but here is what that means. It means that when you figure the average increase in the cost of living for the American people--and you are only looking at those who are employed, so they are more likely to be in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, their fifties, maybe in their early sixties or a little older. So if you are only looking at that, the cost of health care is a less significant cost for them in their daily expenses and their monthly expenses and their annual expenses than for someone who is retired.

So I am going to introduce legislation soon that will change the Consumer Price Index-W--wages--to the Consumer Price Index-E, for elderly. The reason is because if you are 70 years old, your cost of living is much more fueled by the cost of health care than if you are 30 years old.

I know Senator Mikulski has been a real leader in this, and she is one of the immediate prime cosponsors of our legislation. She has had a terrific record here in the Senate, the senior Senator from Maryland, in fighting for fair play, a fair, strong Social Security and Medicare system, against these plans from conservatives around here to take Social Security and turn it over to Wall Street, to take Medicare and turn it over to the insurance companies.

But our legislation would make it fairer so that seniors would actually have a cost-of-living adjustment based on their cost of living. What is wrong with that? Instead, conservatives around here want to go the other direction, which would reduce the cost-of-living adjustment by this thing called a chained CPI.

The way this chained CPI works in a nutshell is this: If your cost of living is $100 a week, and the chained--instead of eating beef, you could save money by changing to chicken. So they are saying, under this chained CPI, that you should change to chicken and save X number of dollars so your costs would be less.

What this would mean--and I want to read you some statistics--if they get their way, if anti-Social Security conservatives around here get their way, it will mean that senior citizens will get significantly less than they would under the way it works now, let alone the way that we want to change it to, that Senator Mikulski and I want to change it to, this CPI-E. It would mean that seniors, by the age of 85, would be getting about $1,000 less in their Social Security. That is just not something we can do.

Here are the exact numbers. Under the chained CPI, a typical 65-year- old would get $136 less today than they would get under the CPI as calculated today. A typical 75-year-old--this is calculated each year, so it is a little bit like the reverse of compounding interest--a typical 75-year-old would get $560 less a year. A typical 80-year-old would get $984 less per year. A typical 95-year-old would get $1,392 less a year.

So what conservative politicians around here want to do--I know you have been on the right side of this, Mr. President, from Minnesota your whole career and before you came to the Senate too--what the conservatives want to do is cut the cost-of-living adjustment even more.

The last 2 years, there was no COLA, there was no cost-of-living adjustment for seniors. What conservative politicians--the ones on the supercommittee who want to do the chained CPI--what they are arguing is that you should have gotten a cut; that instead of no COLA, you should have gotten even less; that this way we do the COLA now is too much money for seniors.

Social Security is not part of the budget deficit. It is not the problem. It does not need fixing. Of course, we always need to make sure Social Security is viable, and it will be for decades in the future. We can make some minor adjustments. But in the name of cutting the budget, cutting Social Security cost-of-living adjustments really affects poor seniors and middle-income seniors. We know that in my State of Ohio and the Presiding Officer's State of Minnesota, Social Security--more than half of the people in my State get more than half of their income from Social Security. So we have no business cutting Social Security.

My legislation would actually be a fairer reflection of the cost of living and is preferable to what some people in this body and some people in the House of Representatives and in the supercommittee want to do--the so-called chained CPI. It is a terrible idea, the chained CPI. It is not fair to our seniors. It is not fair to our country. It is something that should be rejected out of hand.

Then, as we figure this out and move forward, we should think about, do we want to do the CPI-E based on the elderly cost of living, not the CPI-W, based on a 35-year-old's cost of living and how that is reflected.

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

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

This week marks the 90th anniversary of American Education Week where we honor our teachers, education support professionals, parents, and substitute teachers for their dedication and service to our children and to our schools.

My mother was a high school English teacher. Born in Mansfield, GA, a town of about 500 people, she taught in the era of segregation in central Florida. Raising my two older brothers and me in Mansfield, OH, she taught in an era of a growing American middle class. As have teachers throughout our history, she taught her students and her sons that education is the gateway to opportunity, that it can integrate a divided and segregated Nation and, in the process, create a more prosperous nation.

When our Nation needs our teachers the most--at a time when our economy needs our schools to succeed--we must remind ourselves of the importance of educators. I would add that the Presiding Officer is known in this body as one of the premier educators in our country, before he came to the Senate, as superintendent of the Denver schools.

Unfortunately, many of our educators are working in substandard school buildings with leaky roofs and poor air quality and malfunctioning HVAC systems. The average U.S. public school building is 40 years old--obviously, many are much older--impairing teacher effectiveness and student achievement. In Ohio, thanks to former Governor Taft, who, in part, was able to renovate a large number of our school buildings about a decade ago, has made a significant difference. But school buildings in my State, as they are across the country, are still too often old, decayed and much less efficient and often compromise teacher and student morale and teacher effectiveness. Conservative estimates suggest it would cost some $270 billion to make much needed maintenance and repairs for schools.

That is why I introduced the Fix America's Schools Today Act--the FAST Act--which would invest some $30 billion to repair and modernize our Nation's school facilities. The FAST Act would invest in States and local school districts to help them make critical repairs to existing facilities or to supplement their current maintenance efforts.

Modernizing our schools can save $100,000 a year in maintenance costs--enough for two new teachers or 200 more computers or 5,000 textbooks.

The FAST Act would focus on areas of need--school districts with high percentages of poor children and schools with the greatest need for repair and renovation.

Modernizing schools can improve the academic experience for students. In September, I spoke with principals from across Ohio who discussed how the quality of their school facilities affected their students and their teachers. This is pretty interesting. I heard from the former principal at a high school near Zanesville, a city in eastern Ohio, who described a student's reaction following the renovation of their school. This was a generally low-income, an Appalachian area of Ohio. Students were used to going to schools that were substandard--not in terms of teacher quality but in terms of the facility itself. We preach to our young people that education matters more than anything else in our society, and then we send students to physically substandard schools. But this student's reaction, after the renovation of the school: ``I felt rich,'' he said, because he was going to school now in a renovated, modern, high-tech environment, something he had never seen growing up in Appalachia, Ohio, as a kid whose parents didn't make a lot of money.

Improving school facilities, of course, though, is more than just about student morale. Research has proven the rates of absenteeism decline and test scores improve in a more modern school facility. It is also about teacher effectiveness. According to a study conducted by the Department of Education, 47 percent of schools indicated the condition of their permanent facilities interferes with the delivery of instruction. The condition of the school interferes with the delivery of instruction. This is problematic. Some 70 percent of students are forced to learn in facilities that have at least one significant-- sometimes more than that--inadequate building feature, such as an outdated heating and air-conditioning system, a leaky roof, a plumbing problem. Some 57 percent of students are learning in a school with at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition, such as poor indoor air quality, poor acoustics or heating and lighting challenges.

These substandard conditions can also harm the health and well-being of teachers and support professionals. Last week, I hosted a national call with advocates to discuss this legislation and discuss the impact substandard schools have on students and faculties and parents. One of the participants shared with me her personal experience as a special ed teacher. It is a story I imagine many of my colleagues have heard before and can be found anywhere in our country.

Joellen spent 9 years of her 23-year teaching career in an elementary school in Fairfield, CT, with severe mold contamination. Poor air quality in the school forced her into an early retirement by compromising her health and her well-being. Because of these poor working conditions, Joellen has lost 50 percent of her lung function and is currently dependent on an oxygen tank. She is not the only one affected by these conditions. Eighty-five of her colleagues are also battling health conditions as a result of an unhealthy school environment.

It is unacceptable that our failure to act undermines student achievement and teacher effectiveness and the health and the well-being of our entire school communities. It is even more disturbing that our schools go unrepaired when there are thousands of workers ready and willing to modernize our schools. The FAST Act, by employing people to repair our aging schools, would create good-paying, middle-class jobs.

We know we have to fix our schools. We know we have to do this renovation. We know as a nation, when we put real attention into infrastructure, the dividends it paid for generations were significant. The United States, in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, led the world in infrastructure. Whether it was school repairs, the building of community colleges, water and sewer systems, highways and bridges, ports and locks or medical research, we were the envy of the world in our infrastructure, and it set the foundation for decades of prosperity. Unfortunately, as this Congress has been more interested in tax cuts for the rich and less interested in

investment in medical research, in education, in health care facilities, in transportation, we have declined economically as a nation. The middle class is under fire. We are not able to build and produce the way we could have if we had kept this infrastructure up to date.

That is the importance of the FAST Act. It is the importance of much of the rest of the jobs bills we have pushed in this Congress. We know that every $1 billion in school renovation can create 10,000 jobs.

The FAST Act includes strong ``Buy American'' provisions to ensure that Ohio construction workers, for instance--we are the third leading manufacturing State in the country, exceeded only by Texas, twice the size of California--three times the size--building technicians, boiler repairmen, roofers, painters, electricians, and people who manufacture these products are using American-made products.

The FAST Act is included in President Obama's American Jobs Act. Under his proposal, Ohio would receive some $985 million in funding for K-12 schools and an additional $148 million for Ohio's community colleges. Ohio has one of the best community college networks in the country.

It is obvious our schools need fixing. Our workers need work. Interest rates are low. Construction companies want to put people to work and, competing with each other, will bid as low as they likely will in the next decade or two, so now is the time to do this.

This bill has been endorsed by some 50 organizations: the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Building & Construction Trades, First Focus Campaign for Children, and the Parent Teacher Association, the PTA. They agree it is about jobs, about education, and our Nation's future. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense legislation.

Lastly, I wish to read a couple letters I received about this legislation. First is Jeannine from Strongsville, OH. She is a teacher:

I have taught at the same middle school for 24 years.

During that time, I have watched our building physically

deteriorate before my eyes.

Strongsville is what we would call, by most measurements, one of Cleveland's more affluent suburbs. Nonetheless, she has seen it physically deteriorate in 24 years of teaching.

The leaky roof leaves stains on the ceilings and the

floors. Often the heating doesn't work.

Two years ago, my classroom had no heat in December. We are

a suburb of Cleveland, so do I need to tell you how cold it

was in there?

After more than two decades with no money for paint, our

vice principal asked Home Depot for help--it donated enough

paint to spruce up the hallways, offices, and a handful of

classrooms.

She writes:

Does it sound like I teach in the inner-city or an extreme

rural area in Ohio?

She doesn't. She teaches in what we would call an affluent suburb of Cleveland.

I teach in a suburban community where many of the houses

sell for around $300,000 or more. But the community has not

passed a levy in a while.

I pay 20% toward my health insurance . . .

My colleagues may remember that Governor Kasich had just pushed through a bill to take away collective bargaining rights for people such as Jeannine, saying they should be paying more of their health care. They have already made those concessions at the bargaining table. That is why Jeannine says she pays 20 percent toward her health insurance. She says:

10% toward my retirement, and [I] have not seen a pay

increase in years.

I really love what I do, but am despondent at times about

the lack of community support for education.

That is a whole other issue. But we do know we can make a difference in making not just Jeannine's life better--that is a goal we should share--but, most importantly, making teacher morale, student morale, teacher effectiveness, and student learning significantly better.

The last letter I will share is from Erin from Columbus, OH. She is a special ed teacher. She writes:

Of our 14 schools, 5 are currently undergoing the last of a

2 year renovation project.

We had schools where walls were literally falling in, we

were in urgent need of these repairs.

Now, we find ourselves lacking in technology, and are in

need of updating these needs, in order to compete with the

ever changing needs of the demands of the workplace that our

students will be entering.

Investments in education such as targeted resources for

school and campus repair and modernization will jump start

the economy and ensure students the learning environments so

essential to their success.

Our student day is now shorter, all in an effort to save

money.

Think about this: They are making the schoolday shorter when we are talking, in the paragraph before in her letter, about: How do we compete internationally? We are going to make our schoolday shorter when already we go to school--I think the former Denver school superintendent, the Presiding Officer, would confirm this--fewer days than many of our economic competitors. So because of costs, because we need to continue to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country, we cannot fund the kinds of things we want to fund in education to compete internationally.

In the end, Erin writes:

It's the students that lose, and our educators know this,

and [we all] strive each and every day to reach every single

student, with the ever increasing demands put upon them.

She writes:

The FAST Act will make sure that our students have the

learning environments they need and deserve.

My words may have, I hope, convinced some of my colleagues. I hope the words, the two letters from Jeannine and Erin--Jeannine from a Cleveland suburb; Erin, a central Ohio teacher, both with long experience in the classroom--I hope their words were compelling enough so my colleagues will join me in supporting the FAST Act, getting it through the Senate--not filibustering it. Let's debate it, talk about it, vote on it up or down, and send it to the House. I hope we get it to the President by the end of the year so we can start putting people back to work doing the school renovation, putting our factory workers back to work making the windows and cement and brick and all we need in school construction and school renovation and making a difference for our students in the decades ahead.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that after my remarks of no more than 12 minutes, that Senator Coburn be recognized for up to 15 minutes, and then Senator Harkin be recognized.

Madam President, on Tuesday, Ohio, my State, made history. Overwhelmingly, Ohio voters made a simple choice between what is right and what is wrong. They answered the question at the heart of any election: Whose side are you on?

Tuesday, Ohioans showed they stood with teachers and firefighters, with police officers and nurses and librarians, and other public workers and the middle class. They showed they want leaders focused on creating jobs rather than taking potshots at people who teach, who plow our roads, who guard our prisons, who teach our children, and who safeguard our public health. They showed they are ready to rebuild what was once a national consensus: that our Nation's strength is rooted in the strength of our middle class.

There used to be a consensus among educators and elected officials, community leaders, and business leaders that our economy is designed to build a strong middle class, to help people become part of that middle class. We used to see that consensus on Medicare and Pell grants, on civil rights and women's rights, on tax and economic policy, and we used to have that consensus on collective bargaining rights.

Rights earned at the bargaining table provide a path to the middle class for millions of workers who belong to unions and millions of workers who do not belong to unions. Collective bargaining is the tool we have had in this country for three-quarters of a century for labor and management relations in a democracy. Collective bargaining has helped minimize strikes and work stoppages because it allows a process where people sit down at a table, talk to one another, disagree, come to agreement, come to a consensus, a process to resolve disputes.

In Ohio, balanced budgets and collective bargaining have coexisted for nearly three decades. Collective bargaining not only strengthens middle-class jobs, it protects public health, and it protects community safety. During the passage of the legislation called S. 5 earlier this year, which was rammed through the legislature by the Republican Governor and the Republican majority in the House and Senate, even though a number of Republicans dissented on it, I had a roundtable in a church right on Capitol Square in Columbus.

A young teacher said to me from the Columbus suburbs: You know, when I sit at the bargaining table and bargain on behalf of my teachers, I do not just bargain for better wages and higher and better pensions and health care. She said: I also bargain for class size because I know my colleagues can teach better and students can learn better if class sizes are smaller.

Then a police officer said: When I bargain, I not only bargain for better wages, of course, and better benefits for my members, the Fraternal Order of Police, I also bargain for safety vests because it matters to me that the men and women who wear the badge work in the safest possible conditions.

But somewhere along the way we lost this consensus that we once had in this country. From what we have seen at statehouses across the country, you would think teachers and nurses, you would think sanitation workers and firefighters, you would think police officers and librarians caused the fiscal crisis and the budget deficit.

We hear Governors around the country, we hear Washington pundits talk about the privileged class of public sector workers. Now who is playing class warfare, when, in fact, they go after public workers to the point that I have heard young teachers tell me--and I have heard parents who have kids in college at Bowling Green or Akron U or University of Toledo or Xavier say: You know, my daughter or my son were going to be teachers. But I am not sure they want to be with the attacks that the Governor and conservative politicians have made against teachers.

So who are these privileged elite who have been attacked by conservative politicians? They are the people who clear snow off our streets. They are the people who run into burning buildings to save people and property. They are the people who teach our children. So let's be clear. It was recklessness on Wall Street that caused the financial crisis, not teachers, not librarians, not mental health counselors, not sanitation workers, not cafeteria workers at Mansfield Senior High. It is a crisis made worse by our Nation's economic tilt away from manufacturing.

Thirty years ago, more than 25 percent of the GDP in our country was in manufacturing. Only about 10 percent was financial services. That has almost flipped now. Financial services is about one-quarter of our GDP, and manufacturing is only 10 or 11 percent. You know what it has done in your home State of Missouri, Madam President, what this means for middle-class workers. We have moved far too much into

financial services because of government policy and far too much away from manufacturing.

States face budget crises because people do not have jobs--do not have these good-paying jobs and cannot pay taxes, so the revenue does not come. Yet instead of a balanced approach to State fiscal problems, we have had an ideologically motivated approach to destroy collective bargaining.

In the elections last year in my State, 1 year ago this week, there was a sweep, as there was in some other States, of Republicans all saying: Put us in office and we will fix this problem with all of the lost jobs. They won, in large part, because of lost jobs. That is what elections are about. Yet almost from the beginning, the Governor and the radicals in the legislature in my State did not do a lot about jobs. What they did a lot of was attacking collective bargaining rights. They attacked women's rights. They attacked voting rights.

That is not what we should be doing. We should be working together in job creation. They seem, in many ways, more interested in payback than in progress. That is not shared sacrifice. As the middle class didn't happen on its own, it will not unravel on its own either.

Tuesday, Ohioans took an important step in protecting the very rights of collective bargaining that people of all stripes in our country have enjoyed for 75, 80, 85 years. It is an important step in protecting the very collective bargaining right that created our middle class.

Our mission is to continue to build a strong middle class and help people become part of the middle class. It is about creating jobs and fairness. For too long there has been class warfare in this country, waged from the top, aimed at the middle class. When the wealthiest people in this country continue to do better and better, and the wide swath of people in the middle--70 to 90 percent--have barely had a pay increase in 10 years, you know that is what happened. They love to say that our side commits class warfare. What has happened is they have committed the class warfare, we are just pointing it out. The class warfare they have committed has been class warfare waged from the top and aimed at the middle class.

That is a big reason we have seen this decline in the middle class. Tuesday, this week, Ohio pushed back, and we will continue to do so because this Nation is exceptional, because of our continued struggle to form a more perfect union, where opportunity grows and expands for all. It is not restricted to a privileged few. We do so because we are a nation and my State is a State that speaks more loudly and fights harder and stands up for the dignity and the honor of fair play.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we know that investment in our infrastructure means jobs and economic development now and in the future. We know as a country that in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties we built infrastructure--highways, bridges, water, sewer, community colleges, medical research, modernizing high schools--all the things we did in the postwar years for five decades, in the forties through the eighties. The world had never seen this before.

We know that American prosperity--the postwar prosperity--in large part was based on the foundation we had set in infrastructure--again, the physical infrastructure of bridges across the Ohio River joining the Presiding Officer's State and mine in Huntington, Ironton, Parkersburg, Marietta, and Wheeling, and across to Belmont County in Ohio. We know that the infrastructure of building community colleges such as Jeff Tech and building branch campuses at OU, and now building broadband, but then funding medical care--those things created the long-time prosperity of our country.

These are forward-thinking investments with payoffs that last for decades and benefit our Nation, our small businesses, and our workers for generations.

History tells us that our Nation's infrastructure has been critical to our Nation's economic, competitive, and industrial strength. Let's look back a bit. Abraham Lincoln created the transcontinental railroad. Thousands of jobs were created, and the development of the American West was possible. President Roosevelt modernized our Nation's electric grid during the New Deal. More than just electricity came to the Tennessee Valley in rural America. Americans were put to work setting the poles, stringing wire, building the hydroelectric dams that improved the quality of life, and attracting countless businesses to the region. So the infrastructure was built, creating jobs. But even more so, the foundation was set where many more jobs were created.

President Eisenhower and the Congress established our interstate transportation system. A generation of workers carved out highways and roadways, allowing commerce and people to travel from coast to coast.

Our Nation used its postwar infrastructure boom to become the economic superpower that we are today. Public work investments not only create good-paying, middle-class construction jobs, they spur economic development projects in small towns and rural communities and urban areas. We know what happens when a highway comes into a community, what it does to spawn other kinds of work. It serves as a multiplier effect and attracts businesses and workers and foreign companies to build in America, and benefits from that clear competitive advantage. That is why we led the world for five decades.

It is clear that when companies decide where to locate or expand or invest, that infrastructure, broadband, energy, transportation, all are critical factors in the decision. Businesses rely on solid infrastructure.

Companies such as Ohio's Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati recognize that our infrastructure provides a competitive advantage, enabling them to ship their products anywhere in the world. Ohio manufacturers, such as General Motors and Honda and Smuckers, rely upon our infrastructure as they operate with just-in-time manufacturing.

Yet we are falling behind in maintaining the very infrastructure that made us a superpower. Unsafe bridges have cost lives. Clogged roads and congested air space cost billions of dollars in lost trade and productivity. Some people tell us they spend more time commuting than they are at home with their families.

We are seeing 19th century water and sewer systems failing our 21st century cities. Meanwhile, more and more people depend on these services, while cities and States can't meet demand--where States face budget and revenue shortfalls that make these investments difficult, if not impossible.

And there is China--which is fast becoming one of our chief economic competitors--building more roads, better airports, and faster rail systems than we are. Why do we let that happen? No one in this Congress--nobody--and in State legislatures, as Senator Shaheen said earlier--should be proud of the condition of our roads. No one in this Congress should be proud of the fact the newest airports and train stations are being built somewhere far from our shores. Yet there remains an unwillingness here--and I am still incredulous about this-- to make the sort of investments necessary to improve our Nation's infrastructure.

I guess we have to cut taxes more for rich people instead of asking them to pay a little more to put that money into infrastructure. Historically, infrastructure has been bipartisan. I have heard some of my colleagues saying there is no such thing as a Democratic or Republican bridge. But it seems there is now because we see time and time again some of my conservative colleagues saying: No, we are not going to spend money on infrastructure. We are not going to do that.

Let me show a picture of a bridge I have been across many times. I have seen it from Cincinnati many times. This is a view from the Kentucky side. This is called the Brent Spence Bridge. The President was there not too long ago. I was not with him that day, but I have been on this bridge many times. It was named after a Congressman from Kentucky who served from 1931 to 1963. The bridge was inaugurated by President Johnson. So the bridge construction began and came later.

This is I-75 through Cincinnati, going from Kentucky to Cincinnati into Dayton, if you can follow it all the way north, and then into Toledo and ultimately into Detroit. This bridge carries millions of dollars' worth of freight and millions of drivers across the bridge. Someone said this bridge accounts, perhaps, for as much as 4 percent of our gross domestic product going either north or south across this bridge.

Today, the Brent Spence Bridge is 1 of 15 the U.S. Department of Transportation has deemed functionally obsolete. But the Brent Spence bridge is not alone. We can see there is no real space if a car breaks down. There is not much of a lane to get over if someone has a heart attack while driving or all the problems one can imagine having while on the bridge. This is major, major bridge across one of the most important rivers in this country--the Ohio River.

A recent study of our Nation's infrastructure found there are more-- get this--more structurally deficient bridges in the United States than there are McDonald's restaurants. Think about that: There are 14,000 McDonald's restaurants. But according to Transportation for America, there are 18,000 deficient bridges and 70,000 structurally deficient bridges.

From a public safety and commerce perspective, fixing a bridge is a necessity. The largest hurdle remains financing. Under the President's proposal we will vote on this afternoon, more than $60 billion, completely paid for, would go toward road and bridge construction, fixing our airports and transit systems. It would make our roads and skies safer for transportation.

The bill includes a national infrastructure bank that would fund infrastructure projects of regional or national significance, such as this almost 50-year-old bridge. Increasing private sector infrastructure lending, a national infrastructure bank could couple Federal loans with private equity, ensuring a private-public partnership that meets local needs.

For the Brent Spence Bridge, it would mean Ohio and Kentucky could obtain the necessary funding to complete the project ahead of schedule, create jobs, and protect the public safety.

We have to do this. We have to renovate and update our infrastructure. Why wait? Interest rates are as low as they have almost ever been. Construction costs--because there is so much competition among construction companies to get work now--are as low in historical times as perhaps they have ever been, and we need this work now because of the job employment situation. So we will benefit from replacing and fixing this bridge for years into the future.

For freight rail investments in Columbus, it would mean reducing the bottlenecks that prevent goods from moving across the country. For airports, it means reducing congestion and improving runways; on our rivers, such as the Ohio River, it means fixing locks that slow barge traffic.

Lake Erie, at the other end of my State, has made such a difference in the settlement of Buffalo--although there is also Lake Ontario there--Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Toledo. We know what these Great Lakes have done for the economic development of our country. It means fixing these ports. For all our States, it means jobs and economic development.

This is about a construction manufacturer in Peoria selling equipment to contractors working at the Port of Toledo. It is about dock workers loading American-made steel and Ohio-grown soybeans for export to markets around the world. That is what this bill is about.

This bill is about jobs now. It is about setting the table for jobs in the future. We know that. Republicans and Democrats alike know that. Yet Republicans, I guess, just want to see Barack Obama fail. That is what the Republican leader has said repeatedly, though I don't understand that. But that is what he says.

This bill is fully paid for. The bill before the Senate is funded by a very small tax on people making over $1 million a year. If someone is making $1 million a year, their taxes will not go up, but they will pay a little bit of money on the second million they make. So this isn't in any way going after small business, it is just saying the people who have done well have to pay a little more money. It is common sense and it is the American way.

We are asking those who have benefited the most--many on Wall Street, many of them on Main Street--people who have done very well to make this investment. We know it is infrastructure that has helped people make lots of money in this country. Without infrastructure, many of these companies never would have been successful.

World-class infrastructure is how we move goods across the country and export around the world--on our trucks, on our rails, on our barges, and on our airplanes. It is how we get to work and school, it is how we attract businesses, and it is how we protect the public health, through clean water and sewer systems.

This will create jobs immediately--good-paying, middle-class jobs. These jobs provide workers with health care and retirement. These are exactly the kind of jobs the Presiding Officer welcomes in Wheeling and Charleston and Beckley and I welcome in Portsmouth and Cleveland and Akron. These jobs enable people to buy a home, to save for their children's education, and to plan for their future. These jobs not only create the construction jobs we need, putting money in people's pockets they will spend in the community, but they also create manufacturing jobs in steel and cement and all kinds of materials. They also create long-term jobs as companies grow because they have better infrastructure.

This is about rebuilding our infrastructure. It is about rebuilding our middle class. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation later today when we vote on it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 3, 2011, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Empowering and Protecting Servicemembers, Veterans and their Families in the Consumer Financial Marketplace.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on November 3, 2011, at 10 a.m., in SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 3, 2011, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on November 3, 2011, at 9 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Excessive Speculation and Compliance with the Dodd- Frank Act.''

Madam President, I rise in opposition to the Coburn amendment's 41 percent of a $1 billion cut to USDA's rural development mission. Everyone in this Chamber talks

about job growth, as we should--some of us want to do some more specific things than others perhaps--but we have to ask the question: If we are going to consider a 40-percent cut to rural development, how does a small town recruit a 21st-century business or support entrepreneurs when the best it can offer is dial-up Internet access? How does a rural village in Allen County, OH, finance a $2\1/2\ million water system without some kind of grant or loan?

I ask my colleagues to vote no on the amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for morning business be extended until 6:45 p.m. with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, yesterday, in Cleveland--the largest metropolitan area and the second largest city in my State--I was part of, for want of a better term, a celebration of a public health victory for our country. I met on Halloween with Jeff Weidenhamer, chairman of Ashland University's chemistry department and a leader in consumer safety issues.

That name may ring a bell with some of my colleagues because I have mentioned his work on the floor of the Senate in addressing the very real public health disaster, in some cases, afflicting our children because of lead-based paint on many imported toys, especially those imported from China.

Back in the fall of 2007 and the spring of 2008, Dr. Weidenhamer identified a number of products that were highly contaminated with lead paint. As part of an Ashland University freshman chemistry class project, he sent some of his students to Dollar Stores to buy inexpensive plastic Halloween toys in the fall of 2007 and inexpensive Easter toys and ornaments in the spring of 2008.

Of the 97 products he tested, 12 of them were highly contaminated with lead paint--or about one in seven. These were products such as candy buckets, drinking cups, and fake teeth. Some of those plastic teeth the children, obviously, put in their mouths. It is what they are made for, I guess. The levels of lead contamination in them were much too high. And there were other Halloween props. Many were products bought at leading national retailers.

It was clear that our trading system, our regulatory system, and our corporations failed basic consumer and public safety standards. We think nothing, and our companies, apparently, thought nothing of what might be in the products they were buying from China that were inexpensive, that looked good in terms of Halloween and Easter, and that our children would use.

Dr. Weidenhamer, after collecting these products, went to work, and so did we. I commend especially Senator Pryor, who worked tirelessly in 2008 on legislation to, if you will, revamp the Consumer Product Safety Commission through the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act to ensure the CPSC had the resources and funding necessary to carry out its critical mandate.

Mr. President, how many times have we heard in the body of this Chamber, in the House of Representatives, during a Republican Presidential debate that government is too big; that we have to get government out of our lives and that government can't do anything right? Well, this was a case with the Consumer Product Safety Commission--and with this legislation, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act--where the government's involvement, the regulatory process, actually got it right.

This year--not long ago--Dr. Weidenhamer sent out his students again. Obviously, this hasn't undergone rigorous scientific analysis, but it tells us how things are moving. I believe they tested some 75 products this year, and they found not one containing lead.

We know what lead does to a child if that child chews on a piece of old crumbling wood containing lead-based paint--found particularly in old homes that are beginning to decay, and particularly inner-city kids and Appalachian kids. We know that lead in children's bloodstreams arrests their brain development. Children who ingest lead--and these are mostly low-income children or children exposed to these Halloween kinds of toys--can often suffer retardation or their brains do not develop as quickly as they should.

So this was a huge victory. Again, this legislation hasn't done everything we want, but I hear so often people dismissing any regulation as job killing. When we hear a conservative politician-- usually enthralled to corporate America--talking about regulation to the largest corporations that outsource jobs, we can bet the term before it is ``job killing.'' How about putting the term ``lifesaving'' before regulation, such as lifesaving regulation that makes a difference in a child ingesting lead?

How about lifesaving regulation that has cleaned up our air and cleaned our drinking water? How about lifesaving regulation when it is the prohibition on child labor worker safety rule? Instead, it is job- killing regulation every time. Clearly, that is not the way it has often worked. But then we see, after my Republican colleagues too often want to weaken these safety rules, as they have tried to do, House Republicans have tried to cut more

than $3 million from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

So we have this new law in effect that can literally save children's lives and make children more healthy and help their brain development, in effect, in Eugene, OR, and Columbus, OH, but if we cut back on the enforcement of these laws by cutting these agencies and taking away employees who inspect these, who force these companies--who make sure these companies are doing the right thing and not selling lead-based toys to American children, what have we? And that is really unfortunate. The cuts would take us back to the very reason Congress passed and President Bush--a Republican President--in those days signed into law the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in the first place.

We know there are plenty of government regulations that we should reexamine and in some cases pull back or reform or repeal, but it just seems my conservative colleagues don't know the difference between regulations that might actually affect jobs and regulations that clearly protect the public health and clearly protect the public safety.

We know the Senate will prepare to debate the fiscal year 2012 financial services and general government appropriations bill later this week. I call on my colleagues to support funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We know what that does. We know it saves lives. We know it makes a difference in the lives of our children.

Mr. President, I rise on a more somber note. A longtime friend of mine, Victor F. Stewart, Jr., from O'Leary, OH, died this week at the age of 85. He was a counselor to me, he was a teacher, and he was a friend. He was someone who mentored me and so many other people in our county and our State. He dedicated his life to his community and to his country. He leaves behind 10 children and family and friends. He leaves public servants behind him whom he counseled about life, politics, and public service.

Vic was a child of the Great Depression. He was born in the 1920s. He was a child of the New Deal. He believed in loyalty and frugality. He believed in a citizen's responsibility to vote and to be a citizen.

As I said, he was the father of 10--6 daughters and 4 sons. His wife Helen survives him, and he was married to her for 62 years. I remember going to Vic and Helen's 50th wedding anniversary and the number of children and grandchildren and friends in the community, and the love people felt and extended to both him and Helen was a sight to see.

Vic was a city councilman. He was mayor of O'Leary. He served in the U.S. Army in World War II. He was always a team player. He was a Catholic Youth League basketball coach, a Little League coach, a high school third baseman, and, again, a mentor to young people in politics, baseball, sporting activities, and especially to his children.

He was a Democratic Party chair in Lorain County for many years. He walked and met with President Kennedy, President Johnson, and President Carter when they were in Lorain County. He credits President Johnson with so much of what we all should credit our government for doing: the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the passage of Medicare, the antipoverty initiatives of the Johnson Great Society program.

When I think about what our government can do in partnership with the private sector, that is what brought us Medicare, that is what brought us safe drinking water, that is what brought us civil rights, and that is what brought us Head Start, many of them passing in the mid-1960s, passage of legislation from which our country still benefits.

Many of the young people sitting in front of us today will benefit from the Pell grants that came out of the Higher Education Act. Senator Whitehouse spoke to a group of us today about a forum he did at the University of Rhode Island and what those Pell grants mean to some of the professors there who were able to go to college because of the Pell grants, some of the young students there who can afford college because of the Pell grants, and some older people who went back to school because of these Pell grants and got an opportunity to further their education as middle-aged parents. Vic Stewart was part of all that.

Vic Stewart believed that the role of government in our communities could make a difference in people's lives, especially working families. So while he met with President Carter and President Kennedy and President Johnson, his heart was always in the community. He cared most about working families, poor kids who didn't have the opportunities of some more privileged people in O'Leary or Lorain or anywhere else in our county. That is what I admired about Vic.

I was so appreciative of the wisdom he would impart to me when we would get together several times a year at breakfast or lunch and just talk about what I was doing and what he was doing, and he was always so helpful that way. He offered his no-nonsense advice with a touch of humor and compassion and a healthy dose of common sense.

He understood the value of a hard day's work. He lived his life guided by that devotion to God. He was a devout Roman Catholic. To family--he was a terrific father and husband to Helen. Friends--he counted so many of us as people who were close to him and his love of country. We will never forget his warmth and his wit and his wisdom.

He always looked to the whole community, not just the privileged. He was sickened by this power of Wall Street and this huge executive compensation, these huge salaries and bonuses that too many in our society on Wall Street and other places have taken.

His heart was always with the middle class, working families. He taught integrity, especially to young people. That is why I owe Vic Stewart so much. We have lost a true friend, we have lost a teacher, and we have lost a mentor who made a difference in the lives of so many of us. We mourn for Vic Stewart, Jr. We think of Helen. We think of the sons and daughters whom Vic and Helen have taught so well and raised so well over the last five-plus decades.

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

Mr. President, 2 months ago, on September 25, 2011, Dr. Wangari Maathai of Kenya, the first African woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, passed away after her fight with ovarian cancer. She was a woman of firsts, of force, and of foresight. She was a woman who empowered millions of African women with hope and opportunity.

Born on April 1, 1940, in Nyeri, Kenya, to peasant Kikuyu farmers, Wangari Muta Maathai, at the urging of her older brother, attended primary school at a time when it was rare for women to receive an education. Her father worked for a White landowner who forced him to sell all his crops to him at whatever price was offered. From an early age, Dr. Maathai possessed a deep and abiding love and respect for nature. As a child, she spent time at Kanungu--an underground stream that flowed close to a sacred fig tree, and she would till fields with her mother, once saying, ``I grew up close to my mother, in the field, where I could observe nature.''

She went on to secondary school where she graduated at the top of her class. In 1964, she was awarded a scholarship to attend Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, KS, where she graduated with a biology degree. She pursued her master's of science at the University of Pittsburgh. From there, she continued her studies in both Germany and Kenya where she earned her doctorate in veterinary anatomy from the University of Nairobi. She was the first woman from East or Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, and also the first woman to hold a professorship at the University of Nairobi's Department of Veterinary Anatomy which she later chaired another first for a woman.

Through the force of personality, she reinforced the links between poverty and health, economic security, and environmental sustainability. Returning to Kenya from her studies abroad, she saw how deforestation and planting of cash crops had stripped the land of resources, causing animals and plants to disappear. The result was a lack of food, water, and rampant erosion. The effect was particularly devastating for women who were not only the family caretakers, but as subsistence farmers, depended [S3]upon the land for their livelihood.

In 1977, Dr. Maathai had the foresight to establish the Green Belt Movement which sought to combat the aggressive deforestation occurring in Kenya. Asked about her efforts, she once said, ``It occurred to me that some of the problems women talked about were connected to the land. If you plant trees you give them firewood. If you plant trees you give them food.'' While many derided her efforts, this Movement, made up mostly of women, has planted more than 30 million trees across Africa and helped approximately 900,000 Kenyans develop and sustain their ability to care for themselves and their families.

The Green Belt Movement would spread across the continent. Dr. Maathai inspired the development of the Pan African Green Belt Network. Her efforts have resulted in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe starting their own reforestation efforts. The Movement not only emphasizes the relationship between the people and their land, but also empowers women in the areas of family planning, reproductive health, nutrition, food security, and leadership development.

Dr. Maathai's environmental work eventually permeated the realm of politics. As a proponent of civic responsibility, she entered politics with the understanding that ``the message for Africans is that the solutions to our problems lie within us.'' As an advocate for the poor and under-represented, Dr. Maathai suffered not only political taunts but also physical violence at one point being brutally beaten by police and at another time, a victim of a tear gas attack. Throughout the 1990s, Dr. Maathai was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and threatened for exercising her rights.

Despite physical threats and political setbacks, in December of 2002, she was elected to Kenya's National Assembly and was appointed the Deputy Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife. She was also instrumental in the creation of Kenya's Bill of Rights. She went on to serve as the Presiding Officer of the Economic, Social, and Cultural Council ECOSOCC, of the African Union, as well as Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem.

As the author of multiple publications, Dr. Maathai garnered many awards including the 1989 WomenAid International Women of the World Award, the 1991 Goldman Environmental Prize, the 1991 United Nation's Africa Prize for Leadership, the 1993 Edinburgh Medal, the 2001 Juliet Hollister Award, the 2003 WANGO Environment Award, and the 2004 Sophie Prize. She has received numerous honorary degrees from a wide array of institutions including: Yale University; Williams College; University of California at Irvine; and Morehouse University. In 2005, she was honored by both Time Magazine and Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world, respectively. She was also a United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Hall of Fame recipient. In 2006, Dr. Maathai

was awarded France's highest honor, the Legion d'Honneur, by French President Jacques Chirac.

During her acceptance speech of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Wangari Maathai said:

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity

is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach

a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear

and give hope to each other. That time is now.

Whether she was advocating for the right of women or for the importance of protecting and developing the environments in which they live, Dr. Maathai's legacy of service advocating a message that one has the power to change the lives of many--remains.