Floor Statements

Would the Senator yield for a question?

The message the Senator is conveying today is so important. I hope folks who are unsure about supporting our legislation are listening.

I was briefed earlier today by a large multinational company. One of its divisions is manufacturing, among other things, helicopters. Apparently, within the last 12 months, maybe even 6 months, the plans for developing and manufacturing one such helicopter were hacked and obtained by another nation--presumably the Chinese. So they will develop and will build their version of our helicopters. They won't be built by Americans. They will not provide American jobs. It will not provide revenues to that company or tax revenues to our Treasury; they will really be apprehended, if you will, by another nation. That is the reality of this theft.

So I was reminded just this morning of what the Senator is talking about, what General Alexander says is the largest economic threat in the history of our country, and it is taking place. I was reminded of that this morning, and I just wanted to share that with the Senator.

Madam President, I am joined on the floor by Senator Whitehouse, so we might take a moment

here with the chairman to have a little bit of a colloquy and then head off to another hearing.

While he is here, I wanted to say a special thank-you to Senator Whitehouse for the work he and Jon Kyl, our colleague from Arizona, and Chris Coons, our colleague from Delaware, and others have done in really helping to put the meat on the bones, if you will, of our original legislation. And they have done great work. I really admire them, and I thank all of them.

Over at the other end of the Capital, they have spent a whole lot of time in recent weeks and months on the issue of Fast and Furious, and I wanted to mention that one of the reasons I think the American people are furious with us is we are not moving fast enough to deal with the economy and to create jobs. Yet government doesn't create jobs. Presidents don't create jobs. Governors don't create jobs. As a former Governor, I know this. Members of the Senate don't create jobs. We help create a nurturing environment for jobs and job creation. That includes a lot of things, such as a world-class workforce, access to capital, infrastructure, access to reasonably priced energy and reasonably priced health care. But it also includes, as we go forward in time, the assurance that if a company spends a lot of money--a lot of R&D and investments--and it comes up with a really good idea that has commercial application, that before it can even build that idea, create that idea, or sell that idea in this country and manufacture and sell it around the world, the idea is not going to be stolen--stolen--by someone from another country who will use that idea to make money on their own.

That introduces an uncertainty in this country we have never had to worry about before. We just have not had to worry about that before. But, as General Alexander has said and has been quoted here already today, the greatest economic thievery in our history is underway right now through cyber security. This is as much a jobs issue as it is a security issue. It is an economic security issue, and we have to be mindful of that.

I have spoken to some of our friends over at the chamber of commerce with whom we work on a variety of issues and said to them that we need their involvement and support. We need them to help us get through this. If they have good ideas, if they have read the legislation as it is redrawn and want to share those ideas with us today, Democrats and Republicans, that would be a huge help.

I hope everybody over at the chamber is watching today, and I hope they hear this request for them to be more involved in a constructive way. It is not so much that we need them in the Senate, we need them as a country, and the folks who are their members across the country need them to be involved as well.

This legislation started out as more of a command-and-control deal where our Department of Homeland Security was going to say: These are our standards, and we expect companies and industries in critical areas to comply with these, and that is it.

That is an oversimplification of the original legislation, but we have moved so far away from that, it is amazing. We have moved from a command-and-control system to one where we say to critical industries, sensitive industries: Listen, you figure out amongst yourselves what the best practices and standards ought to be for protecting you and your businesses and your ideas. You figure it out, you share those ideas, develop those ideas, really, in a collaborative way with a council that includes the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security. And then, in an interim process, we refine those ideas, refine those best practices, and refine those standards, which would then be implemented. If companies don't want to comply with them, they do not have to. It is on a voluntary basis. If they do, there are rewards. If they do not, they do not participate in those rewards, including protection from liability.

Sometimes we get stuck on legislation, and we just say: This is it, and we are not going to change it. This is it, and we are not going to let you do that. But here we have changed this legislation dramatically and I think for the better. Some people say we changed it too much in order to get to ``yes.''

The last thing I would say before I yield to Senator Whitehouse is that the legislation before us is not a Democratic idea, nor is it a Republican idea. This is not a conservative idea. This is not a liberal idea. This is a good idea, and this is an idea that has gotten better over time. This is an idea whose time has come. And we need to be mindful of the fury across our country. We need to move faster to take good ideas like this and make them better and to implement them.

With that, I yield to Senator Whitehouse, and again a big thank-you for the great work he and Senators Coons and Kyl have done, as usual.

Madam President, there are several people who wish to be recognized. If Senator Collins is ready to go, I will yield to her and then ask unanimous consent to speak immediately after her, then to be followed by Senator Alexander, if that is the will of the body.

Madam President, while the Senator is still on the floor, I wish to engage in a brief colloquy, ad-libbing this or, as I recall in football, an audible. We have the two people who are most key to this, Senator Lieberman, chairman of our committee, and Senator Collins, our ranking member, who worked very hard with their staff and our staffs to fashion this legislation.

In recent years when we heard opposition to doing something on cyber security, the concern we had was there was going to be a top-down. There was going to be Homeland Security, which in its early days did not have a very good reputation. The idea was that somehow Homeland Security was going to be running this top down without a whole lot of input from industry. Basically we have taken even the second most recent version of our bill, and we changed that. What we said is it is not going to be top-down, it is not going to be Homeland Security saying these are the best practices, these are the standards to protect cyber security. Instead we said: Industry, what do you want to tell us? ``Us'' being Homeland Security, ``us'' being the Department of Defense, ``us'' being the National Security Agency, ``us'' being the FBI. What do you think those best practice standards should be? Give us a chance to work on those together.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think the deal here is for Homeland Security to say: You have to throw those away; those make no sense, we will do it our way. That is not what is going to happen here.

In our meeting yesterday with the folks from the FBI and the National Security Agency, that is not the way it is going to work. It is not the way it works today and it is not the way it is going to work in the future. What does the Senator think?

I am going to direct this question to our chairman through the Chair. One of the other criticisms of the early version of the bill was not only was it top-down oriented and directed by Homeland Security, but also there were just sticks involved. We were not going to incentivize anybody to comply with the standards that might be developed, but we would just hammer somebody. That is not the way it turned out. I commend the chairman for doing that.

Will the chairman lay out for us in a minute or two how it would work? I think it is a much smarter approach.

My colleagues have heard me say this before. We have been joined by Senator Rockefeller, who has done great work, Senator Feinstein, and others, Democratic and Republican, who have done fine work on this legislation.

But I love asking people who have been married a long time: What is the secret to being married a long time?

This is especially important for me to say this with Senator Collins sitting on the floor. She and certainly her husband to be anticipate their coming marriage. But I love asking people who have been married a long time: What is the secret to be being married a long time? I get great answers, funny answers but also some very profound ones, and the best thing I ever got was the two Cs. What are the two Cs? Communicate and compromise. That is not just the secret for a long marriage, a union between husband and wife, but it is also the secret for a vibrant democracy.

I think the two Cs characterize what is going on with this legislation because I have been here a while--11 years--and I don't know that I have ever seen better communication on an issue of this importance than I have in this instance. It was very dramatic, very satisfying, and frankly, compromise, the kind of compromise we have talked about over the last 15 minutes or so, needed, given, done willingly, to lead us to this point today.

It has been said before, and I will say it again. The reason we are on this bill today, why we have taken it up today, this week, is because our economy and our national security are under attack. This is not the kind of war that some of us served in during our youth. This is not the kind of war we have read about in history books. It is not the kind of war we have seen and watched on TV. This war is occurring in cyber space, and it is occurring in real time.

Literally, as I speak, it is being carried out by sophisticated criminals, by terrorists, and even by other countries. While some hackers just want to cause mischief or make a political point, others want to hurt people, our people. Still others want to steal our ideas, our intellectual property, as well as other sensitive information. From clean energy technologies and defense systems to medical research and corporate mergers, cyber spies are looking to steal some of the very innovations that fuel our economy and help make us a great nation.

GEN Keith Alexander, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, has called these efforts the greatest transfer of wealth in history. Those of us who have tried to put a dollar figure on how much intellectual property we are losing to cyber theft have put the pricetag at about $\1/4\ trillion per year. It is not just valuable information we are losing. To put it bluntly, it is American jobs, and it is our competitive edge.

Of course, the same vulnerabilities being exploited to steal our intellectual property can be used by those who want to attack us to do physical harm. With a few clicks of a mouse, cyber terrorists or a sovereign nation could shut down our electric grid, they could shut down manufacturing, they can release dangerous chemicals into our air, they can release dangerous chemicals into our water supply. They could disrupt our financial systems. At the very least, any one of these attacks could further slow the economic recovery of our country or disrupt it altogether.

In a worst-case scenario, a particularly lethal cyber attack could throw parts of our country into chaos or even lead to widespread loss of life. If my colleagues don't believe that, look at the impact the recent summer storms and the resulting power outages had on this region. If we don't become more vigilant and soon, a sophisticated hacker can succeed in replicating that kind of power outage, putting many lives in danger and severely undercutting the productivity of our workforce.

The revised bill we take up today takes a number of bold steps to better secure our critical infrastructure and share cyber threat information. It will go a long way toward bringing our cyber capabilities into the 21st century. It represents a good-faith effort to address legitimate concerns of business and privacy groups of our intelligence community and of Senators on both sides of the aisle.

None of this bill's five original cosponsors is suggesting our bill is perfect. As my colleagues hear me say from time to time, if it isn't perfect, make it better. With that thought in mind, we look forward to working together with all our colleagues to find common ground to make this legislation even better.

For example, many of my colleagues and I are concerned that we don't have the proper safeguards in place when private information, ranging from Social Security numbers to financial records, are compromised. The American public expects that government agencies and private businesses holding our tax information, our medical records, and other sensitive data will take every precaution necessary to ensure that sensitive information is secure and well protected. Too often those expectations are not met.

That is why I have introduced a bipartisan amendment with my colleague Senator Blunt to address concerns regarding data breaches which occur all too often. Our amendment would ensure that Americans can be confident that their private and sensitive information is made more secure. As our Nation becomes increasingly reliant on technological advances to do just about everything, it is imperative that we not let technology outpace our ability to prevent fraud and identity theft.

However, with the recent breach within the Federal employees retirement program--the Thrift Savings Plan--over 100,000 Federal participants know all too well that their sensitive private information is not always safeguarded as it should be.

The amendment Senator Blunt and I are offering seeks to ensure that all entities holding personal sensitive information have to adhere to a national standard that is designed to keep that information safe while ensuring that both consumers and law enforcement are promptly notified in the event of a breach. This requirement would replace the current patchwork of 46 separate State laws while ensuring that consumers have a uniform set of protections they can understand. By adopting this data-breach amendment and passing the broader cyber security bill, we will enable the United States to lead by example both in preventing cyber attacks from occurring in the first place and in responding swiftly and effectively to protect consumers in the unfortunate event of an attack or a breach.

As we consider our amendment, the Blunt-Carper amendment, let's remember that this bill is not the finish line. If I can paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. This bill really represents the end of the beginning. And as beginnings go, it ain't bad.

Although we are still working out a compromise, I want to close by talking very briefly about some of the features of the underlying bill we are considering.

First--I will reiterate what has been said before; it bears repeating--we have elected not to direct the Department of Homeland Security to mandate new cyber security regulations for private owners of critical infrastructure. We said we are not going to do that. Instead, we have endorsed an approach that relies on a public-private partnership and a voluntary cyber security program to strengthen the electronic backbone of our most sensitive systems. Instead of government penalties, our bill calls for using incentives such as liability protection to encourage critical infrastructure owners to adopt voluntary cyber practices developed by industry.

Second, our revised bill provides a framework for the sharing of cyber threat information between the Federal Government and the private sector while offering liability protection and better privacy protections for all Americans.

Third, to ensure that Federal agencies are better equipped to stop cyber attacks on them, the bill includes a number of security measures that I have worked on for years with Senator Collins and others to better protect our Federal information systems. In particular, this bill will help replace our outdated, paper-based security practices with a real-time security system that can actively monitor, detect, and respond to threats. For example, agencies will be required to continuously monitor their systems the way a security guard would watch a building through a video camera rather than just taking a snapshop, developing the film, and reporting on the results once a year.

Finally, our bill makes a number of important investments in developing the next generation of cyber security professionals. This is workforce development. For example, the bill provides stronger cyber security training and

establishes better cyber security programs in our schools and in our universities. This legislation also makes research and development for cyber security a priority so we can develop cutting-edge technologies here at home and bring jobs to our country. Doing so will not only make us safer as a nation, it will help ensure that America's workforce is better prepared for tomorrow's job market, and tomorrow is just around the corner.

I wish to conclude my remarks here today with something that one of our colleagues, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, introduced to me several years ago. Mike calls it the 80-20 rule. He used it at the time to explain to me how he, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, and the late Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate, were able to accomplish so much prior to Ted's death when they were the two senior leaders on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

I said to Senator Enzi: How come the two of you, very different people--one a Democrat and one a Republican--were able to get so much done?

Senator Enzi said to me: Ted and I agreed on about 80 percent of what needed to be done on most issues, and we disagreed on the other 20 percent. Somewhere along the way, we just decided to focus on the 80 percent we agreed on and set the other 20 percent aside for another day.

The cyber security legislation we are debating here today this week is an 80-20 bill. I think it is worth asking, is it worthwhile to pass a bill that achieves maybe only 80 percent of what we want to do or even only 70 percent of what we want to do? I would just say, well, compared to what? Compared to doing nothing? Compared to zero? Given all that is at stake in today's dangerous world, you bet it is worthwhile. That much we ought to be able to agree on, so let's get it done.

Like many of my colleagues who have worked on the legislation for years, I welcome the opportunity this week to legislate--to legislate-- on an issue of great importance to our Nation, to offer our amendments, to debate them, to defend them, to vote on them, make this bill better by doing so, and in the end adopt this bill as amended by a bipartisan margin. A lot of people in this country of ours question today whether we are still able to set aside our partisan and other differences when the stakes are high and summon the political will to do what is best for America. Let's show them by our actions this week that, yes, we can. Let's seize the day. Carpe diem.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of Senator Chris Coons, Congressman John Carney and myself in recognition of Mr. Paul L. Parets upon his retirement from 36 years of exemplary service at A.I. duPont High School as a nationally-recognized high school band director and 46 years as a music educator. His enthusiasm and leadership over the years has won him the respect of educators, musicians, community leaders, co-workers and students alike, and his passion for teaching music has inspired generations of Delawareans.

Growing up in Michigan, Paul Parets was not raised in a musical family. In fact, his parents expected Paul to become a doctor. But Paul had a keen interest in music from an early age, and once he joined the band in his grade school, he was hooked. Following his graduation from Melvindale High School in Melvindale, MI, Paul received a Bachelor's of Music Education from Central Michigan University and continued his graduate education at the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland. For the first 10 years of his career, Paul led the band at Croswell-Lexington High School in Michigan. Fortunately for those of us in the First State, though, he moved to Delaware in 1976 and became the Band Director at A.I. duPont High School in Greenville. There, over the course of the next 4 decades, Paul developed one of the foremost high school band programs in the country.

Under Paul's leadership, band membership rose from 90 students to well over 300, and from one band sprouted five: the Freshman Band, Symphonic Band, Jazz Band, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble and The Tiger Marching Band.

Paul's unique approach to music education has made the A.I. duPont band program a standout in Delaware and in America. Through a student- elected executive board for the band, students--not teachers--are empowered to make major decisions about music and band activities. By allowing students to decide the arrangements they would like to perform, the drills they want to execute or the trips they want to take, Paul gave his band members an important opportunity to learn how to lead, to make decisions and to become better musicians. Paul's approach also expanded the prospect of band membership to every student--from novices to the classically-trained, from football players to after-school waiters--giving all Tigers exposure to the power of music.

Paul once said in an interview with School Band & Orchestra Magazine that he has two objectives as a band director. The first is to make sure his students play ``some great music by some great composers.'' The second is that the students recognize that ``there is only one purpose for music, and that is to thrill people. Nobody listens to music that doesn't do something to them emotionally.'' And for the past 36 years, our State--and the world--has been thrilled by Paul Parets and his A.I. Tigers.

Beyond A.I. duPont and Delaware, the rest of our Nation--and other countries beyond our borders--began taking notice of Paul Parets and his talented musicians at A.I. duPont years ago. Since 1989, his bands have received first place awards in almost every category of every festival competition they have entered. Paul is the only band director, and his Tiger Marching Band is the only high school band outside California, ever to be invited to the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade an unprecedented five times: 1990, 1995, 1999, 2004, and 2008. The Tigers have appeared in the Orange Bowl twice, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Hall of Fame Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl twice, the 6ABC Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia every year since 1987 and the inaugurations of three U.S. Presidents, the most recent being Barack Obama.

Internationally, Paul's Tigers have represented the First State with honor at the London New Year's Day Parade seven times, the Rome New Year's day Parade twice, the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin 4 times, and played for two of the world's most recognizable figures: Queen Elizabeth in London and Pope Benedict in St. Peter's Square. The talents of his bands have filled the music halls and legendary stages of the Ireland National Concert Hall and The Royal Albert Hall in London.

Paul was named Delaware Teacher of the Year in 1987 and was a recipient of the Ruth M. Jewell Outstanding Music Educator Award from the Music Educator's National Conference at Indianapolis in 1988. In 1989, my friend and former colleague, then-Governor Mike Castle, conferred on Paul the Order of the First State, as well. While Paul's accolades have made him legendary in the sphere of public education, his legacy will undoubtedly remain with the thousands of students--many of whom are second generation Tigers--that he has taught in his nearly 50-year career.

It is not hard to see the span of influence Paul has had on his students, who are now scattered across the globe. He has nearly 2,000 Facebook friends, mainly made up of past and current students. A quick Internet search of his name will turn up blog post after blog post of former students stating that Paul--or ``Mr. Parets''--``changed my life,'' ``made a difference,'' and that A.I. will ``never be the same'' without him. I think all of us who have experienced the thrills of any of the A.I. duPont bands echo these sentiments. As they say at A.I., ``You cannot hide that Tiger Pride,'' and I know I share that feeling of pride every time I turn on my TV and see the A.I. duPont Tigers marching down the streets of Pasadena, London or New York. Up and down Delaware, we certainly can't hide our overwhelming pride for Paul Parets, nor will we be able to hide our heartbreak when he is not on the director's podium this fall.

Upon Paul's retirement, he will leave behind a legacy that is a testament to the importance of music in public education and the pure joy--and thrill--of music. His lessons inside and outside of the classroom will remain with his students, our community, and with future generations of A.I. duPont band members. I thank him for his contribution to music education and for his commitment to public service through years as an elected member to the Delaware City Council. I also thank him for the pride he has brought to the First State and for the generations of musicians he has nurtured--a gift that will give time and time again. I wish him, his children, Tim and Meredith, and two grandchildren, Aaron and Abigail, and the rest of his family only the very best in all that lies ahead for each of them. As we say in the Navy, ``Bravo Zulu!'' to Paul Parets. You are one of a kind, and we are blessed to have known you all of these years.

While our friend from Idaho is trying to leave the Senate floor, I want to say that the Congress did act. Harry Truman said the only thing that is new in the world is the history we never learned or forgot. The Congress did act with a Republican President, a guy named George Herbert Walker Bush. It was passed overwhelmingly in the House and in the Senate and supported, as I recall, by those of us here on the Senate floor today.

I will go over a little history here. In 1990, the Clean Air Act said: Look, there are problems with toxic air emissions. We are not sure where they are coming from, but let's spend a little bit of time and have the EPA figure it out. They spent 10 years trying to figure it out. In the last year of the Clinton administration, the conclusion was reached that a lot of the toxic air emissions such as mercury, arsenic, heavy metals, acid gases, come from utilities. A lot comes from utilities.

In 2001, the brandnew Bush administration said: Well, let's go to work and figure out what to do about it. Five years later in 2005, the Bush administration said: Here is a rule to deal not with the 70 toxic emissions but with one, mercury. Just one. Immediately lawsuits were filed, and in 2008 the Federal courts said: What about the other 70 toxins? They didn't do anything about the other 70 toxins. What they did with mercury was a cap-and-trade system which doesn't work for mercury. The courts remanded it to the EPA and said: Let's try that again.

Senator Alexander has been heroic on these issues. And while I have worked literally for years to try to make sure the Congress provided some leadership--we do see toxic air emissions from sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide as well--there is not an appetite with the utilities to actually support legislation.

We finally gave it a great try in 2010. My friend Senator Inhofe was part of the effort to get legislation enacted. Finally, I think the utilities said we would rather take our chances on an election and see what the election yields and see if we have to deal with the EPA. Well, we had an election and now the courts are saying: EPA, you have to rule. You have to provide leadership, and the EPA has done that. It is not as if they are jamming it down anybody's throat.

Senator Alexander and I offered legislation that said by 2015 there has to be a 90-percent reduction in mercury. What the EPA has said is by 2015, there has to be a 90-percent reduction plus they need to address a bunch of other toxic emissions. The EPA said the States can give an automatic 1-year extension. If utilities have problems with getting this done by 2016, they can apply for another 2-year extension. This started in 1990. It is 2012. When we play out the string, it could be as late as 2018 to comply.

In the meantime, States including Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and a bunch of us on the east coast, are downwind of all the States that put up the pollution in the air. We have to breathe it.

Look, the technology exists to fix this problem. Fifty percent of the utilities have already applied the technology. It works. It is broadly deployed. Most utilities have the money to pay for this. If they don't, they have the ability to raise capital.

There are tens of thousands of workers who wish to do this work. The idea that we have to choose between a stronger economy and a cleaner environment is a false choice. It has always been a false choice, and it is a false choice here today.

I am a native of West Virginia. After my dad finished high school, he was a coal miner for a short time, so I have relatives back in West Virginia. I care a lot about the State and the people who live there. I want to make sure we do whatever is fair to them. I want to thank Jay Rockefeller for stepping up for West Virginia and being a hero here today.

I yield the floor.

I call up amendment No. 2287 and ask unanimous consent that the reading be dispensed with.

Madam President, roughly two-thirds of the cost of raising a chicken is the cost of feed. In recent years, the cost of feed, including the cost of corn, has, as we know, risen dramatically, raising with it the cost of chicken and other meats in our supermarkets. These rising costs have placed a strain on the poultry industry, among others, and on consumers too. That is why I joined with Senator Boozman in offering an amendment to this bill that makes improving the efficiency, digestibility, and nutritional value of feed for poultry and livestock--including corn, soybean meal, grains and grain byproducts--a top research priority at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

By improving the food used to raise our chickens and livestock we can provide the poultry and livestock industry with a greater variety of feed choices for use in their operations. But this research will not only benefit our country's food producers, it also benefits our Nation's families by continuing to provide consumers with affordable high-quality food.

Senator Boozman and I urge its adoption.

My thanks to Senator Boxer and to Senator Inhofe.

Over the years, I have been privileged to hold a bunch of different jobs, including newspaper boy, pots-and-pan man in college, naval flight officer, and Governor of my State, just to name a few. The most cherished and important job I have ever held is that of the role of father. I am blessed with three wonderful sons who make me proud and thankful every day.

Celebrating Father's Day this past weekend, I was reminded that a major motivator in my own life has been my love for our boys and my desire to make the world a better place for them. Today, 2 days later, I am reminded of just how important this clean air fight is for my children and for children across the country.

Unbeknownst to a lot of us, our children actually listen to what we say. More importantly, they watch just about everything we do. They notice the choices we make and the company we keep. They hear us talk about playing by the rules and treating others the way we would like to be treated. They watch carefully to see if we actually practice what we preach--if we play fair, and if we do try to follow the Golden Rule as we go about our lives. They hear us talk about chores, homework, and responsibility, but they watch to see if we actually pitch in and do our fair share.

It strikes me that much of the country's ongoing efforts to clean up the air pollution is about playing fair and doing our share. My home State of Delaware has done our homework and worked hard on that front and, as a result, we have made great strides in cleaning up our own air pollution. Unfortunately, a number of the upwind States to the west of us have not made the same commitment to clean air. In fact, 90 percent of Delaware's pollution comes from our neighboring States. This pollution endangers our hearts, lungs, and brains, and it costs us a great deal in medical bills and in the quality of our lives.

Some of this air pollution, such as poisonous mercury, settles into our streams and our fish, threatening the health of this generation and generations to come. That doesn't sound like the Golden Rule to me.

Even though the First State is doing its part to protect our air and public health, some of our neighbors are not. Yet those of us who live at the end of America's tailpipe end up suffering. It just is not fair.

Fortunately, Federal clean air protections established by the Clean Air Act have been created to right that wrong. These protections were forged by both Democrats and Republicans who believe that playing fair and doing our share when it comes to cleaning up America's air is profoundly important.

The Clean Air Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 and updated in 1990 by President George Herbert Walker Bush, was approved each time by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. In fact, many in this Congress on both sides of the aisle supported the passing of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Those Members include my friends, Senator Boxer and Senator Inhofe, and me.

This landmark law to protect public health and the environment has proven time and again to be a success. In fact, I am told the Clean Air Act delivers about $30 of health savings for every $1 we invest in clean air--not a bad return on our investment. Moreover, the Clean Air Act has helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs in new technologies as America develops clean air solutions that our businesses can export around the globe.

The bipartisan vision embodied in our Nation's clean air laws has been translating into healthier, longer, and more productive lives for millions of Americans.

While much of the Clean Air Act has been in place improving health for years, some key aspects of the law have never been implemented. They include requirements to reduce deadly mercury and other toxic air emissions from some of our oldest and dirtiest coal-fired plants. These toxic air pollutants are known to cause cancer, neurological damage, and other health concerns.

One example of particular concern is mercury. Up to 10 percent of childbearing women in this country have unsafe levels of mercury in their bodies. Today, all 50 States have mercury fish consumption advisories. In fact, there are more fish consumption advisories in the United States for mercury than for all other contaminants combined.

Uncontrolled coal-fired utilities are our largest source of mercury in this country. Fortunately, current control technology can dramatically reduce mercury emissions and mercury in our local environments.

This is why Senator Alexander, several of our colleagues, and I have been trying for years to reduce emissions through legislation. It is also why 18 States have their own powerplant mercury standards. Yet, until recently, we lacked a Federal standard.

Last December, after years of delay, the EPA finally implemented-- under court order--Clean Air Act protections to require dirty coal powerplants to clean up their mercury and air toxic emissions. The EPA did so through something called the mercury and air toxics standards rule.

By targeting our Nation's largest sources of mercury emissions, this regulation requires dirty coal plants to reduce their mercury emissions by 90 percent. This will reduce the mercury that contaminates our streams and oceans, pollutes our fish, and harms our children's health.

In implementing these long overdue regulations, the EPA has provided a reasonable and achievable schedule for our powerplants to reduce these harmful emissions. EPA's new standard gives utilities until 2016 to comply. The EPA has also made it clear it is willing to give companies 2 additional years to address reliability concerns if needed. Delaware's powerplants have already met these standards. So do half of the powerplants throughout America. Most communities will see great benefits from these rules, and I am told that nationally we will see up to $90 billion in public health benefits.

As someone who tried for years to work across the aisle to find a way to clean up our Nation's powerplants, I welcomed the EPA's decision to act to finally address these harmful emissions.

Regrettably, some of our colleagues do not share the appreciation that many of us feel for the EPA's efforts to protect public health and our environment. They want to prevent these efforts from moving forward, despite court orders requiring the EPA to do just that. I find it remarkable that some in Congress would seek to prevent the EPA from following through on a law passed overwhelmingly by Congress 22 years ago and signed by a Republican President.

The EPA is doing what Congress told them to do over two decades ago. If we let them do their job, their efforts will reduce harmful pollution and improve the health of generations of children to come.

As much as I hate to say it, given my friendship with the author of this proposal, a vote for this Congressional Review Act would delay any real hope we have of cleaning up our largest source of mercury. A vote for the Congressional Review Act signals uncertainty and a lack of commitment--a commitment to make good on the law we passed overwhelmingly 22 years ago to protect public health in this country.

We cannot afford to delay the mercury and air toxics rule. This is the time to modernize our energy fleet. This is the time to clean up our dirtiest, most inefficient plants. And this is the time to clean up our rivers, lakes, and streams so that all children can look forward to living healthier lives.

So today I rise in strong opposition to this last-ditch effort to prevent the EPA from doing its job--a job we should have done--and reducing these deadly emissions, and I hope my colleagues will join us. My decision to oppose this effort is not based solely on the fact that I am a dad--like a lot of our colleagues here--but knowing that the implementation of this rule will positively impact the lives and health of my sons weighs heavily on my mind. It should weigh heavily on the minds of all of us.

Our children really do hear us when we talk to them and to others. They are watching today to see if we really walk the walk. Whether we are Democrats, Independents, or Republicans, we are still mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers. So let's continue to lead the way by following the Golden Rule this day. Let's treat our neighbors as we would like to be treated, and let's work together across America to keep the Clean Air Act resilient and strong and to make our air cleaner. Our children and their children are counting on us.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. President, a week or so ago, I was being interviewed by CNN. I think it was a couple days after the jobs report had come out for the month of May. The reporter who was interviewing me was commenting on those job numbers--which I think were disappointing to all of us--and asking me if we were back in the soup, were we heading back into a recession. Instead of continuing to recover from a

really deep, awful recession, an awfully hard, tough recession, would we go back into the soup? And I said to her that I know there are people in my State and across the country who are still hurting, still suffering. People have lost jobs, and in too many cases people have lost their homes and are fearful of losing their health care and not being able to maybe send their son or daughter back to school. And I said that I realize we still have more pain in our country, more than any of us would like.

But, I said, maybe there are four things we should keep in mind:

No. 1, let's not talk ourselves back into a recession, which we have the ability to do. Our hair is not on fire. Let's continue to make sure we are looking at the underlying fundamentals of the economy, and while they are not universally up or upbeat, the underlying fundamentals are not entirely bad either. Our energy costs are way down. We are not just the Saudi Arabia of coal, we are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We are now a net exporter of oil, and we are seeing significant reductions over the last half-dozen or so years in our dependence on foreign oil, from about 60 percent of the oil we use being from foreign sources to approaching 40 percent. So the movement is right.

Another underlying factor is the cost of health care in this country. For years we have seen double-digit increases in the rate of health care costs in this country, and last year health care costs in this country rose by only 4 percent. That is a positive factor as we try to be more competitive with the rest of the world.

Another factor is the difference in labor costs between our country and other countries with which we compete, one of them China and another, believe it or not, Vietnam--a very low-cost producer of manufactured products. What we have seen in those other countries-- Vietnam, China, and some of the other Asian countries--is that their wage levels have come up, and our wage levels in this country have pretty much remained the same. As a result, the inducements for companies here, particularly manufacturing companies, to move offshore their manufacturing operations have diminished from where they were a couple of years ago.

I think those are all encouraging factors, again, to lay the groundwork for a sustained economic recovery, if our friends in Europe can work their way through, navigate their way through their problems in places such as Greece and Spain. So it is not all bad news. It is not all bad news.

In the near term, what should we do? Again, No. 1, not talk ourselves back into a recession. No. 2, prepare to hit a home run. From a guy who likes baseball a lot, we need to hit a home run. I don't think we will hit a home run here in this Chamber, in this building, in this city before the election.

But the best thing, in my view, we can do for the economy is to adopt a bipartisan, comprehensive deficit reduction deal, much like that proposed by the deficit commission led by Erskine Bowles, former Chief of Staff to President Clinton, and by former U.S. Senator from Wyoming, Republican Alan Simpson--the so-called Bowles-Simpson Deficit Reduction Plan. That plan provides for $4 trillion to $5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years--$3 on the spending side for every $1 on the revenue side. That actually lowers both corporate and individual tax rates. It lowers the rates and bottoms the base of income that is taxable, eliminating half of our so-called tax exemptions, tax breaks, tax deductions, tax credits, and tax loopholes.

That is how we end up with lower rates both on the corporate and individual sides, and also actually creating revenue: $1 for every $3 of spending reduction. That is a home run. I don't know if we are going to hit that home run before the election, but sometime between the day after the election and, hopefully, by the end of the year we will adopt something similar to that and provide certainty: One, can we govern? Yes, we can. Two, can we be fiscally responsible? Yes, we can. Three, can we provide certainty with respect to our Tax Code? Yes, we can. I think the adoption of that kind of plan answers all those questions with, yes, we can. And we are.

But while we prepare to hit a home run, I don't think we ought to wait around until the end of the year to do something. In the meantime, we need to hit a lot of singles. So rather than hitting a home run with runners on base, let's see if we can't hit some singles and maybe some doubles and score some runs for the economy.

I spend a lot of time, as my colleagues will tell folks, on how to create a more nurturing environment here for job creation and job preservation. How do we do that? Our friend, John Chambers from West Virginia, a native of West Virginia--as am I--who now heads up Cisco, a big technology company, likes to say the jobs of the 21st century will go to those States and those countries that do two things especially well: One, a productive workforce--students who can read, write, think, do math and science coming out of our high schools, coming out of our colleges and universities, into the workforce; and, the States and nations that do another thing very well; that is, create a world-class infrastructure; broadly defined, roads, highways, bridges, transit, rail, port, airports, waterways, water treatment, broadband--all of the above, broadly defined infrastructure.

In addition to that, there are a number of other things we can do to provide a nurturing environment, and they include cost-effective regulations, commonsense regulations, access to leaders like us.

Another positive development in job creation and job preservation is access to capital, the ability to actually borrow money for businesses, large and small, at reasonable rates; the ability to export into foreign markets and to get financing for those exports if they need it; incentives to do basic research and development that actually can be commercialized and create products that we can sell around the world. Those are some of the things that actually contribute to a nurturing environment--not all, not the only things, but some of them.

The other thing that we can do in terms of hitting singles and doubles is some things that we have done in this Chamber this year, and I want to mention a few of those. They include actually doing something about our aviation infrastructure.

When we passed the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization earlier this year, we not only provided for a source of revenues-- provided by the general aviation community and the civilian airlines here, the sorts of revenues to upgrade, modernize, and improve airports--but we also provided money to bring an analogue air traffic control system into the 21st century, arguably a digital system. So that is one in terms of a more nurturing environment.

No. 2, I actually said the idea that in the past, if someone comes up with an idea--like this young woman who is typing down my words on the floor today. If she comes up with a good idea and goes to the Patent Office--in the past she could go to the Patent Office and say: I have a great idea--maybe for a better machine than the one she is taking down my words with here today--and she files for a patent on that machine. A year later, I show up at the Patent Office and say: No, that was really my idea, and I thought of it first. She just filed first, but I really had it first. I end up going and litigating with her, and it may string out for months, years, and provide a lot of uncertainty. I don't have a patent, but I just want to be bought out and basically paid off. Maybe I had the idea first, but in a lot of cases I didn't, and I want to be given something of financial consequence so I will go away.

We have changed that with the law we passed here and the President signed that says: Whoever files first--if she files first for that new machine, it is her patent. It is an important thing for us to do with respect to providing certainty for innovation and creativity.

Another thing we did that I think is a smart idea is we said: We are having a hard time selling our goods and services in places such as South Korea, Panama, Colombia, and a lot of other places around the world. We negotiated in the Bush administration--with George W. Bush-- and further in the Obama administration, free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and with Colombia. They have been approved by the Senate, agreed to by the President, and they are now the

law of our land and the lands of those free countries.

What does it mean for us and South Korea, a place where they sold to us last year 500,000 cars, trucks, and vans; a country we sold 5,000 cars, trucks, and vans to? That is going to change, and their ability to keep our vehicles out will phase out over time, and we will have the opportunity to sell our vehicles there just as they have the ability to sell their vehicles here.

We will have the ability to sell poultry products. We raise a lot of poultry on the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware. We will have the ability to sell poultry products into countries such as Panama and Colombia without impediment and tariff barriers to keep them out.

So the idea to provide better access to foreign markets, we have done that at least with respect to those three, and we are trying to negotiate now something called the Transpacific Partnership, which would allow a number of countries in this hemisphere--including us and maybe Chile and a couple other countries south of us, maybe even Canada and Mexico--to create a trading partnership with countries such as Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and a couple of other countries over there.

I am told the Japanese are interested in being part of that as well. That could be an enormous new global partnership that would enhance trade between all the countries that are a part of it.

Another piece of legislation for a single that we have hit over here is something called the JOBS Act. You may recall that IPO onramp-- initial public offering--for changing the shareholder threshold, raising it from 500 shareholders to 2,000, something I worked on. The IPO onramp will make it easier for companies, if they want to go public, to do so.

John Carney, a Congressman from Delaware, worked on that in the House and did a very nice job. But that is legislation endorsed by the President, supported by Democrats and Republicans, now the law of the land--another single, maybe a double, I don't know--where middle-sized companies and smaller companies that want to grow either remain privately held or become publicly traded.

Other potential singles and doubles are the postal legislation that Senator Lieberman, Senator Collins, Senator Brown, and myself and others have worked on to try to save the Postal Service, which is losing $25 million a day in the 21st century. We have a pretty good idea on how to stem that hemorrhaging and how to help them help themselves become sustainable again in a break-even operation. That legislation, a bipartisan bill, passed the Senate and was sent over to the House awaiting action. We need for the House to take up that legislation. If they do, that is something that can help save and preserve 7 to 8 million jobs and affect a significant part of our country.

Another potential double--maybe even a triple--is transportation legislation and the 2 or 3 million jobs that flow from that. A lot of transportation projects in my State and 49 other States are literally grinding to a halt because of the inability, in this case, of the House to agree with bipartisan legislation that we passed in the Senate to fund and to go forward with transportation projects in all 50 States that nobody is arguing with. They are not bridges to nowhere. They are actually smart ideas, and a lot of them involve State funding as well, but they need some Federal help.

We passed it in the Senate, and the House has sort of gone to conference with it. But we are having a tough time getting to yes. If they do, that is a double or triple with runners on base, 2 to 3 million jobs.

Those are things that we can do to actually enhance and nurture the environment for economic growth, for job creation, job preservation in this State.

There is one more single or double I want to talk about, and it is the agriculture legislation. We have an agriculture bill that has been brought out of committee by a big bipartisan vote. It would enable us to do what I think we need to do in a lot of areas of our government; that is, get better results for less money. I like to say in everything we do, everything I do, I know I can do better. I think the same is true of my 99 colleagues. I believe that is true of most Federal programs. One of our challenges is to figure out how to get better results for everything we do.

Today we had a very interesting hearing on the Medicaid Program and how to get better results for less money with respect to Medicaid and how we reduce improper payments--mistakes and so forth--and how we reduce fraud losses, which are about 10 percent of what we spend in Medicaid and Medicare. But a recurring theme for me and for the subcommittee I lead on Federal financial management in the Senate is how do we get better results in almost everything we do for less money or better results for the same amount of money? That is not a Democratic idea, it is not a Republican idea, it is not a liberal idea or a conservative idea. It is just a smart idea.

In a day and age of these trillion-dollar deficits--and deficits are coming down, but it is still too high. While we wait to do that big deal, hit that home run with something like the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Commission recommendation later this year, we need to continue to hit singles in terms of reducing spending taxpayers' money in a smart and more cost-effective way.

That brings us to the legislation that has been before the Senate this week, and that is the Agriculture bill. Believe it or not, in Delaware, our little State, we have 300 million people in about 100 miles from one end to the other, north-south, right here on the Mid- Atlantic between Washington, DC and New York City. For us, agriculture is still a big deal. We don't have a lot of cows--we have some. We don't have a lot of hogs--we have some. What we have a lot of is chickens. We have a lot of chickens.

For every person who lives in my State, there are 300 chickens. As you go from north to south, the chickens have us outnumbered even more than 300 to 1.

Eighty percent of our agricultural economy in Delaware is poultry related. The poultry industry doesn't need a lot or ask for a lot in terms of support or investment from the Federal Government. But we raise a lot of corn and soybeans in Delaware, and so we care about agriculture and we care about the farm bill. Other parts of the country care about it even more, maybe, than we do. But I want to talk about it for a few more minutes before I head back to my office.

I am here today to say that the farm bill that has been before us this week, when compared to the ones that have come before it in recent years, makes great strides toward reforming a process that was too often--and I think rightly--criticized as regressive and, unfortunately, wasteful.

All told, the bill that has been brought to the floor--a bipartisan bill. Great kudos to the chairman of the Agriculture Committee in the Senate, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and the Ranking Republican Senator, Pat Roberts from Kansas. They have done great work in steering this legislation through committee, again with strong bipartisan support, and bringing it to the Senate floor, saving the Federal Government almost $24 billion over the next 10 years compared to what we would otherwise be spending under current law.

The legislation eliminates wasteful spending by getting rid of the so-called direct payments program, which too often gave money to farmers even when farmers didn't grow anything or even own the land. But I think the bill is also humane, and this legislation is not unfair to our farmers. I believe it embraces the Golden Rule of treating other people the way we want to be treated, and that includes farmers and farm families and taxpayers.

But instead of continuing the direct payments program that has prevailed for years, this legislation institutes a new crop insurance program, a long sought after goal by those of us wanting to make progressive changes to farm law.

Instead of giving money to farmers who, again, sometimes don't grow even a single crop in a year, this legislation only helps farmers when they actually experience a loss on the crops they are actually growing.

For a lot of people in this country, that would just sound like common sense. But in Washington, DC, and across the country, it is an uncommon approach to farm legislation. This is a much smarter approach.

In the end, the new crop insurance program, the Agriculture bill before the Senate this week, still would give farmers the security they need to continue farming. There is a lot of uncertainty in farming. Is it going to rain? Is it going to be cold? Are we going to have hail? Are we going to have drought? There is a huge amount of uncertainty, and it is important for us--to the extent that we can reasonably do that--to reduce uncertainty and lack of predictability for all kinds of businesses. It is hard to do that. We don't control the weather; we don't control the temperature--well, indirectly maybe. But to the extent that we can help provide some certainty, security, and predictability for the farmers at a lower cost to the taxpayers, we ought to do that.

I think this committee has pretty well thought that through and figured out a way to do crop insurance--an old program--with a new approach, a smarter approach that is good for farmers and, I think, good for taxpayers.

Another thing this legislation focuses on is nutrition and how we can encourage farmers to grow and people to eat more healthful foods as part of their daily diets.

We live in a country where, sadly, one-third of the American people are overweight or on their way to being overweight, and maybe on their way to being obese--about one-third of us. The trend is not good.

In terms of cost for health care, it is killing us: Medicaid costs, dialysis, diabetes, hospitalization, loss of limbs, loss of eyesight, and for our ability to fund Medicare, again, the same kind of challenges and hardships in the ability for us to compete with the rest of the world when we are so much heavier than they are. We know the four major cost factors in health care are, No. 1, weight; No. 2, tobacco; No. 3, high blood pressure; No. 4, high cholesterol. If we could do a better job on all those fronts, we would be off to the races on our health care costs. We are making some progress bringing health care costs down.

Believe it or not, this agricultural legislation is part of the solution because it, among other things, encourages us to eat a diet that is more healthy for us. This bill doesn't mandate what people eat, but it helps to encourage and provide ways to make healthier foods available, nutritious foods available in places such as health deserts. There are some communities, some cities around the country, where the only grocery store they have in their community is a convenience store. There is nothing wrong with convenience stores, but if that is the only place one can buy fruits and vegetables, and they don't have them-- maybe bananas if one is lucky--that is not good.

This effort, along with the First Lady Michelle Obama, will be reducing those food deserts. It includes support for programs that help farmers produce fruits and fresh vegetables. In our State, we raise not only corn and soybeans, we raise a lot of fruits and vegetables, most notably watermelons, but we do a few lima beans and other products as well. We grow most of those in the summer, some in the fall and the spring, but we will be able to bring it to market in ways that benefit farmers and consumers and also support programs such as Farm to School, where we actually bring fresh fruits and vegetables from our farms to schools to feed our students.

We also talk a lot around here, as my colleagues know, about reducing our dependence on foreign oil. As I said earlier, dependence on foreign oil in this country has dropped from about 6 years ago; a half dozen years ago, 60 percent of our oil was from foreign sources; now we are turning down toward 40 percent. We hopefully will be there in another year or two. But this legislation, the agriculture bill, actually helps move us in that direction where we are lessening our dependence on foreign oil.

It includes legislation I joined Senator Stabenow in introducing earlier this year that would support the expansion of products made in country from bio-based material, such as the renewable chemicals made from plant material which can be used to displace petroleum and our plastics.

The DuPont Company, which is a major employer in our State--frankly, one of the great companies in this country for the last 200 years and around the world--does great work, exciting work not only in figuring out how to use corn, get more yield off an acre of land--as much as 300 bushels off an acre of land. Thirty years ago, a farmer was doing good if an acre was getting 50 bushels. Now DuPont has these experimental farms where they are getting 300 bushels off an acre of land, so we can feed ourselves and fuel ourselves. Not only that, we can take the corn--the cornstalks, the leaves, the corncobs--and turn that into cellulosic ethanol. We can also take the byproduct of some of the vegetables and some of the plants we are raising to create carpeting, as attractive as the carpeting in this Chamber, and clothing. One of the great growth businesses for DuPont, at least, is using plant life to create carpets and not to have to depend on petroleum to do that. It is very exciting. It reduces our dependence on oil, particularly on foreign oil.

It also creates new jobs in communities across our country, including my State and I suspect including Minnesota, where our Presiding Officer is from.

Another key investment this bill continues, although it is at a somewhat reduced Federal level from what we saw in the 2008 farm bill, is the agricultural bill's investment in conservation. Conservation and the preservation of agricultural lands are the key to the future of agriculture in every State but are especially important in a little State such as Delaware. These investments are also particularly critical to regions such as the Chesapeake Bay to our west, which Delawareans and Marylanders and Virginians especially are working hard to restore and to protect.

I might mention, if I could, in terms of conservation, we had a big problem in our State. People like to come to Delaware. We have great beaches, Cape Henlopen and Lewes and Rehobeth and Dewey and Bethany on down to Fenwick Island. People come to our State a lot of times because they want to retire there, maybe have a beach house in the summer and then decide they want to live in Delaware. We have had a lot of demand for housing in the southern part of our State crowding out some of our agricultural land. We are concerned about what does that do for open spaces and preserving our agriculture land.

When I was privileged to be Governor, initially proposed by Mike Castle, our previous Governor, we wrote a program to preserve our agricultural land. We have invested a fair amount of tax dollars in Delaware, with broad support from people who live in the suburbs and the cities as well as farmers, to preserve the farmland and we have preserved a lot of it. I am very proud of that. One of the best ways to preserve farmland is to make sure farmers can make money off the land they are farming. If they are able to make a good income in good years and bad years, if they have ways to get extra sources of income from the farms--which include raising corn that can be turned to a cellulosic biofuel and help fuel our country or provide the materials that are needed to create carpeting or clothing or to be a place we can build maybe windmill farms or solar energy and deploy those and harvest that as well as crops, those are ways to supplement the income of our farmers and promote conservation.

Beyond that, the bill we are looking at does focus some good attention, appropriate attention, on encouraging and nurturing conservation. I mentioned earlier, we have about 1 million people in Delaware and about 300 chickens for every person. About 60 percent of the cost, I am told, of raising a chicken is the cost of feed. In recent years, the cost of feed, including the cost of corn, has risen dramatically. Our new pages who are here for a 3-week period are anxious to know how much it costs to feed a chicken. We can actually take a chicken from the time it comes out of an egg and in about 7 weeks or so it is ready to actually go to market. But what do we feed them in the meantime? We feed them a lot of corn and we feed them a lot of soybeans. We have seen the cost of corn go from maybe a couple bucks for a bushel of corn to rise to as much as maybe $7 or $8 a bushel of corn. We have seen soybeans go from about $5 a bushel to as high as $12 or $13 a bushel. It is hard

to pay that kind of money for corn and soybeans to feed chickens, to raise chickens, and make money. We have lost a major poultry integrator in our State and other places because of the difficulty in feeding the chickens with the high cost of corn and soybeans. About 60 percent of the cost of raising a chicken is corn and about another 20 percent is soybeans. It is a tough business when those prices have doubled and actually tripled. They are coming back down. We are working hard to bring them down, but they increased a strain on the poultry business and made a very profitable business in some places unprofitable.

That is why Senator John Boozman of Arkansas and I have introduced an amendment to the bill we hope to be adopted, folded into the bill, that makes a priority at USDA research to improve the efficiency, the digestibility and nutritional value of food for poultry and livestock, including corn, soybean meal, grains, and grain byproducts. By improving the feed that is used to raise our chickens, and I might add other livestock, hogs and cattle and so forth, we can provide the poultry and the livestock industries with a great variety of feed choices to use in their operations which will ultimately help provide relief to those producers that rely heavily on their commodities in their operations and still provide healthy food.

Let me go back to where I started; that is, to ask then how do we get better results with less money in everything we do or maybe for the same amount of money? I think that every day I am here. I know many of my colleagues do as well. The bill before us, the agriculture bill, seeks to answer that question in a number of ways. They do help us get better results for less money, not just a better result for the taxpayer but I think maybe a better health result, reducing somewhat this upward trend toward obesity, making sure people who are not eating the kind of healthy foods they need, particularly fruits and vegetables, have access to fruits and vegetables. On both those counts, this legislation helps not just to serve farmers who are literally the lifeblood of this country but the rest of us too, including taxpayers.

I will wrap up where I started. I asked the sort of rhetorical question of how is the economy doing, and we are still struggling. To some extent, it is better than it was, but we know folks are having, in some parts of the country, including some parts of my State, a tough time finding a job, keeping a job, being able to keep their house and make sure their kids can go to college, make sure they have health care. We know there are challenges. We should be ever mindful of that.

I would say, though, in terms of moving out of the recession, the underlying fundamentals of the economy are not all bad, and we should keep that in mind. One of the surest ways to talk ourselves into another recession--having just come out of the Great Depression, we can now talk ourselves into depression. We can talk ourselves into a recession. We don't need to do that. We have seen consistent job growth in the private sector side for over 24 months, manufacturing jobs for over 30 months. We need to keep a balanced view, knowing there is still work to be done.

In baseball parlance, I was talking to a guy up here who follows the Minnesota Twins, the Presiding Officer pretty much. My guess is he is joined by the former Governor and now Senator from North Dakota. My guess is he might be a Twins fan too. I am not sure.

I got a thumbs up.

We pull for the Phillies. I pull for the Tigers as well, for some reason I will not bore everyone with today.

But we need to hit a home run to get the economy moving, and in my view the home run is bipartisan, comprehensive, balanced deficit reduction, not unlike the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendation. When the elections are over, we can move and pass something along those lines before the end of the year. For me, that is a home run with men on base.

In the meantime, there are a bunch of things we do to get singles, doubles, and get the economy moving to create that nurturing environment; do what needs to be done and finish with our transportation legislation to keep 2 or 3 million people working. The House has been less willing to help us find a good compromise, and they need to--as well as postal legislation, which supports an industry of 7 or 8 million people.

We passed bipartisan legislation 2 months ago, and we are still waiting for the House to move the bill 8 months after they reported the bill out of the committee. We need to get on with that. If they do that and we get a good compromise on a bipartisan bill on transportation, we preserve 2 or 3 million jobs, free a lot of money for transportation all over the country. That would be great. On the postal side, help the Postal Service rein in its deficits, move toward self-sufficiency and make sure there are 7 or 8 million jobs remaining there and the industry is strengthened.

The last thing we need to do is find a way, focus every day on how to get better results on everything we do. How do we do that? Not just defense spending, defense projects, not just education, not just transportation, not just environment, not just agriculture but all of the above.

This bill doesn't help us rein in the growth in some other areas, but it sure does in respect to agriculture. It saves us about $24 billion above what we would otherwise spend over the next 10 years. I think that moves us in the right direction, in terms of healthy Americans, to be a trimmer, less-obese population, and a healthier population by virtue of eating our spinach and our broccoli and a lot of other vegetables and fruits that are making us healthier and maybe a little bit leaner than we would otherwise be.

I think that pretty well wraps up what I wanted to say today. I think maybe I should yield the floor to my friend from North Dakota, a recovering Governor and a good man. I am happy to yield the floor for him at this time.

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

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 10 minutes and that the time be taken from the Burr amendment and equally divided.

Madam President, we have three counties in Delaware. The

southernmost county is called Sussex County. Several years ago, I was privileged to visit a Methodist Church there and speak as a lay speaker to try to encourage people to become mentors.

The minister that day was a great old guy, Reverend Reynolds. He is now deceased, but he said to me that day these words, and I have never forgotten them. He said, ``The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.''

That is what he said. ``The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.''

At first I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but the more I thought about it I thought: Boy, this guy is smart. And if I am smart, I will keep the main thing the main thing.

For us in the Senate and in Congress, the main thing for the voters of this country is they want us to work together--well, maybe the two main things are they want us to work together--they want Democrats and Republicans to work together--and they want us to get things done. One of the things they want us to get done is to create what I call a nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. They want us to do things that are going to help encourage the creation of jobs and the preservation of jobs.

Little known to a lot of folks across the country, we actually have been doing some of that in the Senate for much of this year, and we have worked productively across party lines to pass a series of bills that I think do help create a more nurturing environment for job preservation and job creation.

Just a couple examples, if I could: One, the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration to establish a new source of additional revenues to modernize and update airports across the country, to bring the air traffic control system of our country into the 21st century where we had kind of an analogue system, and to bring it into the digital age.

Patent reform was another significant step forward earlier this year, where we said enough of this patent patrol--people who come in after someone has filed for a patent and say: Oh, no, that was my idea, and just botch things up and drag things out in the courts. Under patent reform legislation, if you are first to file, you are first to file, and that is your patent. Also provided in the same legislation are the resources needed in the Patent Office to more expeditiously process patent applicants.

Free-trade agreements. One of our roles as the government is to try to make sure we have access to foreign markets. If our goods and services are being closed out in those foreign markets, then we have to open them up. We agreed by a broad bipartisan proposal this year--three of them, actually, three free-trade agreements--one with South Korea, one with Colombia, one with Panama negotiated originally by the George W. Bush administration and embraced by the Obama administration, which is now the law of the land, to make sure when businesses have the opportunity to export, the barriers that have maybe kept them out in the past are knocked down or eliminated, and to make sure if American businesses need financing and help to finance their exports, that they have that kind of help through the Export-Import Bank, which we have reauthorized and extended into the future.

Another one that we worked on this year together, a bipartisan bill and supported by the President, is something called the JOBS Act. What it is all about is trying to make sure companies have better access to capital, and if a small or medium privately held company wants to go public, to make sure they can do it through something called an IPO onramp as opposed to just trying to jump into it and get it done all at once. Or for companies that want to stay privately held, for them to be capped at 1964 levels, 500 shareholders, to say they can go up to 1,000, 2,000 shareholders to enable them to have that access to capital to continue to grow and to create jobs.

Other examples of bipartisan legislation we worked on, in one case the Transportation bill--land transportation: roads, highways, bridges, and transit--we passed a good bill in the Senate, paid for, to help over the next couple of years to meet our transportation needs and make sure the 3 million people who are working on transportation and transit projects across the country don't basically get laid off in a month or two. We passed a good bill. I give a lot of credit to Senators Boxer and Inhofe for helping to lead the bipartisan approach.

Also, 7 or 8 million jobs depend on the Postal Service. The Postal Service is in tough straits, running out of money and losing $125 million a day. We are hoping that the House of Representatives will pass the bill--they need to--so we can go to conference and help fix that problem. But there is good bipartisan legislation here to effect positively 7 or 8 million jobs that depend on the Postal Service. All that stuff, in terms of the American people wanting us to work together, and we have been. Those are just a couple examples.

In terms of actually doing things that help create jobs and preserve jobs, every one of the items I just mentioned does create a more nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. In the coming weeks, we also want to work on agricultural legislation--a bipartisan bill, again, out of the Agriculture Committee that will save billions of dollars on the deficit side. It will also help to strengthen our agricultural economy.

We need to get to work on a national flood insurance update, and that legislation helps to bolster the home building industry in this country which is struggling, as we know, and we have the opportunity for those things that are on our to-do list, to get them done.

Today the Senate is considering another bipartisan piece of legislation, as we know, the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, affectionately known by its acronym. I don't like acronyms, but I love this one. It is called PDUFA. So it is the FDA and how we make sure the FDA has the resources they need to do their job. As the other bills passed by the Senate I just talked about, this bill helps create a more nurturing environment for those businesses to thrive. Those businesses include the pharmaceutical business and businesses that make and sell medical devices. But just as important, this bill helps to ensure that Americans get access to lifesaving medications and medical devices that are developed in this country as soon and as safely as possible.

This bill reflects a strong bipartisan, bicameral effort, for which Chairman Harkin and ranking member Mike Enzi deserve enormous praise, and I praise them even though they are not in the Chamber right now. They have done great work, and I thank them and their staffs for bringing it to this point today.

The legislation builds upon the successful current user fee programs. For a number of years, the companies have paid a user fee if they want the FDA to approve a drug or medical device, and we are making progress to actually have more resources for the FDA to do this than we used to. But they need some additional help, and this legislation would do that, paid for by the industries that are seeking the consideration of their new pharmaceuticals and their new medical devices.

The legislation also adds important new user fees for generic and biological drugs. The user fees are paid, again, by the prescription drug and medical device industries to help cover the FDA's costs for reviewing new drugs and medical devices.

What this means is safer drugs and a speedier process to bring new and less expensive drugs and medical devices to markets for consumers, and I think it is a win-win for just about everybody.

As a result of the FDA legislation affectionately known as PDUFA, the FDA's drug review times have already been cut in half. That is good. If these user fees, these user programs are not reauthorized, though, the FDA would have to lay off, I am told, about 2,000 employees, which would put them back in the ditch, if you will, and begin to delay approval of new drugs. We don't want to see that happen. That would threaten patent access to new therapies, as well as pharmaceutical and medical device industry jobs, and America's global leadership in biomedical innovation.

This bill also makes medicines safer for millions of children, improves the FDA's tools to police the global drug supply chain, and reduces the risk of drug shortages. There are a number of amendments that are being offered to the bill--we have voted on a couple of

those--and one of the amendments that we will be voting on, I believe, a little later this afternoon is legislation that would, in my view, weaken or contaminate our country's supply of prescription drugs and put our patients and our health care system at risk.

Some of my colleagues have proposed to include a measure in this bill that ostensibly would lower prescription drug prices. This amendment, in my view, however, is not without unintended consequences, and we always have to be careful of those.

I ask unanimous consent for 3 more minutes equally divided.

Unfortunately, it would open our borders to increased numbers of contaminated and adulterated drugs.

The proposal to import drugs from Canada would allow drugs to be imported wholesale, often from illegal Internet pharmacies with no protection against abuse or contamination.

Also, though this measure is supposed to be about importing drugs from Canada, in truth it would allow drugs to come from countries that don't have the kind of strong inspection and policing of prescription drugs that we have in the United States.

Instead of going down that road, we should work to increase the FDA's abilities to protect and regulate our drug supply. While doing so, we should reject any proposals to import drugs from Canada that undermine our ability to ensure that prescription drugs are safe and effective.

One last thing I want to mention is there is an amendment that is going to be offered today--or maybe already has been, but I am going to mention this anyway--that deals with generic drugs and concern about the ability for larger pharmaceutical companies to work with and pay off, buy out the generic drug companies so they don't bring their generic version of the name-brand drug to market. I just want to say that we need to be careful what we are doing here.

I came out of the Navy and came to this Congress in 1983 as a freshman Congressman. In 1982, 20 percent of the prescriptions being filled in this country were generic drugs. This year, 80 percent of the medicines or prescriptions that are being filled are generic. One of the well-intentioned amendments to have been offered today is one that says we are not making enough progress toward allowing the generics to grow. Say that again?

We have gone from 20 percent generic penetration in 1982 to, today, 80 percent. I would suggest that we should declare victory, and as time goes by, even that 80 percent will become 85 percent or 90 percent. But we have come a long way. As a result of that, people who need to buy medicine can find a generic version of almost any medicine that is being sold in this country. I think the system is working just fine, and we ought to allow it to continue to work.

In closing, the main thing is the main thing. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

For us, the main thing is to work together. We are in a whole host of ways--including under the great leadership of Senator Harkin and Senator Enzi--working to make sure our pharmaceutical industry is vibrantly strong, the medical device industry is vitally strong, but also that patients are not disadvantaged, that they are actually advantaged by all of that.

So responding to folks in Delaware and Iowa and across the country, we are working together. We are not just working together on a couple of things but on a whole host of things, a whole litany of provisions and laws and proposals that do what: help us to create a more nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. That is a good thing. That is a very good thing.

I thank Senator Harkin for giving me a chance to say a few words and for the great work that he and Senator Enzi have done. I am happy to follow their leadership here today.

Mr. President, over this past weekend, while reading the News Journal, Delaware's only statewide newspaper, I came across a column written by my good friend and our former colleague, Ted Kaufman. He was writing about an issue that is troubling to me and to many of our colleagues--the narrowing scope of bipartisanship in the U.S. Senate today.

As you know, Mr. President, our longtime colleague Senator Richard Lugar faced a difficult primary contest last week in Indiana. While he put up a good fight, he ultimately lost the primary to someone who openly espouses an aversion to bipartisanship. In recent days a number of our colleagues, including Senators Durbin and Kerry, have stood in this Chamber to lament the parting of Senator Lugar. Like them, I, too, am disappointed that Senator Lugar will not be part of the Senate in the future.

Though I haven't always agreed with him on every issue, Senator Lugar has been and remains a deeply respected colleague and statesman. He understands that national unity and patriotism should always trump partisan bickering, and he believes that working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle is critically important for the welfare of our country.

In his article last weekend, Ted Kaufman wrote, ``If candidates like Mike Castle and Richard Lugar are defeated because they are willing to consider bipartisan solutions, the gridlock can only get worse.'' I couldn't have said it better myself. Dick Lugar is the type of Senator we need more of, not less of. With his departure, the Senate will lose someone who was willing to put progress ahead of party and willing to favor compromise over conflict.

Senator Lugar, as mayor of Indianapolis and as Senator from Indiana, you have served your State and your country with distinction. I have no doubt that as this Congress and your time in the Senate come to a close later this year, you will choose to finish strong. I expect that as you do, my colleagues and I will have the opportunity to work with you, in a bipartisan way, on a number of critically important issues for our country. There will be much work to do, together.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of Senator Kaufman's article as a testament to the importance of bipartisan cooperation in the Senate.

I thank the Chair.

I will be happy to do so.

Mr. President, in listening to the presentation of my friend from Mississippi, I am reminded of the words of Harry Truman when he said something to the effect: The only thing new in the world is the history we forgot or never learned.

I want to go back in history. I want to go back about 15 years. We had gone from 1968 to 1997 and never balanced a budget. All those years--almost 30 years. Then President Clinton said to Erskine Bowles, his Chief of Staff, figure out a way to maybe negotiate a balanced budget deal with Republicans in the House and in the Senate and see what kind of deal you can get. So Erskine went out and negotiated and came up with a deal. It was the deficit reduction deal that lead to not one but three balanced budgets by the end of that decade. Interestingly enough, half of the debt reduction was on the spending side and half the debt reduction was on the revenue side.

Now fast forward to 2001, a new President, a change in administration, and as far as the eye could see not just balanced budgets but plenty of black ink--surpluses as far as the eye could see. Eight years later, we had another change in administration, and a new President was handed over a $1 trillion deficit, the worst recession since the Great Depression, and we are still trying to dig our way out of that. When we tried to pass legislation here to create a deficit commission a couple of years ago and failed--we were short of votes, and our Republican friends who had cosponsored that measure, as I recall, ended up not voting for it--this President used his own executive powers to say we are going to have a deficit commission and he asked Erskine Bowles to head it up, along with Alan Simpson, a former Senator and deficit hawk from Wyoming.

There were 18 good people, including some from this Chamber, who went to work on a real deficit reduction plan--Democrats and Republicans-- and 11 out of the 18 ended up voting for this kind of plan. It was not a 50 50 deal on deficit reduction, but $3 on the spending side for every $1 on the revenue side, with $4 trillion to $5 trillion in deficit reduction over a 10-year period of time.

As my friend mentioned, we are seeing a lot of different ideas. We have a bunch here on the floor. The administration submitted their budget as well, and, frankly, none of them come close to being as good as Bowles-Simpson. Alice Rivlin has done good work. Pete Domenici, our former colleague here in the Senate from New Mexico, has done a good one. But in the end, they all come back to pretty much the same place. Bowles-Simpson says we are going to raise $1 in revenue for every $3 on the spending side.

The grand compromise was Democrats agreeing to entitlement programs reform--not to get rid of them but make sure they are going to be around for our children and grandchildren. And on the revenue side, we actually raise revenues by reducing the rates on the individual side and the corporate side, and we eliminated by half the so-called ``tax expenditures'' in the Tax Code--tax credits, tax reductions, tax loopholes, tax breaks. We got rid of about half of them.

So the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission plan enjoys the support of almost half the Senate--almost half the Senate. Pretty much an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. We have a budget in place right now. We have a budget in place for 2012. We have a budget that is going to be effective for 2013. Right now, we are seeing a deficit reduction of $600 billion in defense spending implemented over a 10-year period of time. Right now, we are seeing a deficit reduction of $600 billion in domestic discretionary spending implemented over a 10-year period of time. And if we don't come up with an agreement, such as Bowles- Simpson, we will see $600 billion more of deficit reduction on the defense side, another $600 billion on the nondefense side, and some entitlement program changes as well.

A much better plan than doing that--even though that adds up to about $2 trillion worth of deficit reduction for this year and the coming fiscal year--is the kind of comprehensive balanced plan we have been given by the deficit commission. My hope is, at the end of the day, when we have the opportunity to debate here--later this year, when the elections are behind us--people will actually turn around and say, let's try to figure out the right thing to do, and then do it. This is the right thing to do. In the meantime, let's not waste the next 6, 7, or 8 months.

I would suggest to my colleagues to join the bipartisan efforts of people such as Tom Coburn and myself and others, Senator Conrad and Senator Grassley and others, and to join us in going to work on a to-do list provided to us by GAO, the Government Accountability Office. That to-do list is just full of ways to avoid wasting money, and it includes ways to save money by reducing improper payments. We are down from $119 billion last year to $115 billion this year, finally heading in the right direction, reducing fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.

Some very good stuff is being done there to help reduce the fraud losses. We have all this surplus property, a lot of which we don't need. The idea is to get rid of that, and we are beginning to do that. We have too many bad information technology projects and too many information processing centers. We are getting rid of a bunch of those we don't need. There is actually some good work that is beginning to be done. We can do more, and we ought to do more.

Lastly, I would suggest we ought to consider making the President's rescission powers real. Senator McCain and I and about 40, almost 45, Democrats and Republicans have proposed that we make the President's rescission powers real. The President could sign an appropriations bill under current law, send us proposals to rescind or reduce spending within that appropriations bill that he has just signed into law, and we don't even have to vote on the rescission. We don't even have to take it up or look at it. For the most part, we don't. What John McCain and I and almost half the Senate, Democratic and Republican, have said is, when a President signs an appropriations bill into law and sends it to us, he can send us a rescission message as well that we have to vote on, we actually have to vote on it. And it doesn't affect taxes. It is not a deal that affects entitlement programs but on appropriations, and we would try this for 4 years.

With a simple majority, we literally vote on the President's proposal. If it doesn't get a simple majority in the Senate--51 votes-- or a simple majority in the House--218 votes--then it goes away. But at least we have to take responsibility to be held accountable to vote on it. The President would perhaps have some extra responsibility and the opportunity to make meaningful reductions.

Mr. President, how am I doing on time?

I want to close and say to my friend, Senator Conrad, I know the Senator, as much as I, favors Bowles-Simpson, and I want to thank the Senator for the work he is doing in bringing attention to it again and saying this is still the best plan in the room. I think it is still the best plan out there.

So the idea is when we get to the day or the week after the election, we will be ready to move and to take it up and,

hopefully, to embrace and endorse large parts of it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President on behalf of Senator Chris Coons, Congressman John Carney, and myself, I wish to offer my congratulations to fire chief Isaac Willis, president S. Christopher Hudson, and the entire Citizens' Hose Company No. 1 as they celebrate the Company's 125th anniversary of service to the town of Smyrna in Delaware. The success of the Citizens' Hose Company is a tribute to the many dedicated men and women who not only have served in this company but have served this community in a number of ways.

In 1885, the town of Smyrna installed water mains and fire hydrants throughout the town in preparation of the founding of the Citizens' Hose Company. Since that time the members of this company have protected the property and residents throughout this historic community. The company has reached many milestones throughout the last 125 years--initially fighting fires with a man-drawn hose tender and ladder cart to now answering fire calls using a 100-foot KME Kovatch ladder truck which, in 1999, was the first ladder truck the company purchased new. Additional milestones included the formation of the Ladies Auxiliary in 1950, as well as the expansion of the station in 1985 to accommodate office space and future growth. With over 440 members today, the Citizens' Hose Company No. 1 maintains the highest level of excellence. Over the last several years, the Citizens' Hose Company has answered an average of 475 calls per year and are on pace to keep that record in 2012.

The Citizens' Hose Company serves as a great neighbor to all in the Smyrna area. The company participates in numerous community activities throughout the year and has a renowned company band. Since 1947, the Citizens' Hose Company Band has provided music for the marching unit of the company during parades and other community gatherings. An annual participant in the Delaware Volunteer Firefighter's Association Parade, the Citizens' Hose Company has won the prestigious Governor's Cup Award a record 31 times. The company band has had the honor of playing music throughout Delaware as well as in Dublin, Ireland, New York City, and even represented the First State at the inaugural parades of both President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama in Washington, DC.

Delaware's firefighters are dedicated and caring professionals who willingly put themselves at risk--day and night, in all kinds of weather. As their congressional delegation, we are all sincerely grateful for the continued service of the men and women of Citizens' Hose Company. The hard work and commitment of these devoted volunteers is an inspiration to us all. Moreover, the Citizens' Hose Company No. 1 has crafted a tradition of superior and selfless service.

Today, we send our warmest congratulations to the members, volunteers and families of Citizens' Hose Company No. 1 on this momentous anniversary, and we look forward to hearing of their continued success and exemplary service for another 125 years and beyond.

Mr. President, I came to the floor today to talk about the actions we took here this week in the Senate to make sure the postal service has a good chance to return to solvency and be relevant in the 21st century and continue to provide a valuable role in providing 7 to 8 million jobs in the United States of America. But I think I will put that on hold for a moment and recall the words of a former President, Harry Truman, who left office not very popular, but in retrospect is regarded as one of the best Presidents of the last century. Harry Truman used to say, the only thing new in the world is the history we forgot or never learned.

I want to go back to a few years in our history and reflect on the words of

the preceding speaker and ask, what can we learn from history? Well, one of the things we can learn from is the last time we actually had a balanced budget in this country, and we had three of them in the last 3 years of the Clinton administration. He became President in the middle of a recession and left our country with the strongest economy of any Nation on Earth, with the most productive workforce, the most revered Nation on Earth. He turned the reins over to a new President, George W. Bush, and gave to him balanced budgets and a strong economy. Eight years later, we had accumulated more debt in those 8 years--from 2001 to 2009--I think than we had in the previous 208 years combined.

President Bush then turned over to President-elect Obama a $1 trillion deficit and an economy that was in free fall, with the worst recession since the Great Depression. That is where President Obama and Vice President Biden--a former colleague and Senator from Delaware-- started off in January of 2009. Keep in mind, the last 6 months of 2008, this country lost 2\1/2\ million jobs. The first 6 months of 2009, this country lost 2\1/2\ million jobs. That is sort of like where they took the handoff.

I am not trying, and have never attempted, to characterize the comments made by my colleague a few minutes ago, but I think a little history is not a bad thing. Interestingly enough, the balanced budget agreement was negotiated by President Clinton's Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. That is a name we have heard a lot of in the past year and a half, because he was asked by this President to do a similar kind of thing, to try to negotiate a deficit reduction deal, along with a former Republican Senator from Wyoming, Alan Simpson. The two were asked to head up a commission, with 16 other very smart people. And 11 out of the 18, after working at this for a year, came back and said, here is what we think you should do to take a good $4 trillion or $5 trillion out of the deficit over the next 10 years.

The deficit commission, headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, simply recommended we do that by working on the spending side and on the revenue side. For every $3 of deficit reduction on the spending side, they said there would be $1 of new revenues--not by raising taxes but actually by lowering somewhat the personal income tax rate, the corporate income tax rate, and broadening the base of the income which can be taxed.

That was seen by a lot of people as being a grand compromise. Democrats agreed to compromise on entitlement program reform in an effort to make sure we have Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid 50, 60, 70, or 100 years from now; and Republicans agreed to compromise on tax reform that actually lowers the rate but allows us to generate new revenue--$1 of new revenue for every $3 of spending reductions to achieve deficit reduction.

I think that is a smart plan. Other people have come forward with their plans since, but I think that is the smartest deficit reduction plan, and I think it is a good jobs bill. I hope by the end of the year, when the smoke clears and the elections are over, we will come back to that and use that as maybe our north star to get us back to fiscal responsibility in this Nation.

That is not why I came here tonight, but I thought maybe it was appropriate, on the heels of my friend and colleague, to set the record straight a little bit.

Postal Service Reform

Ironically, yesterday 62 Senators voted for postal reform legislation. I appreciate the support of the Presiding Officer and other colleagues, Democrat and Republican. But that legislation was almost immediately attacked by some of our Republican friends over in the House of Representatives. Our Presiding Officer knows I am not a real partisan guy; never have been, not while I was Governor or in the many roles I have been privileged to play in Delaware. But our bill was attacked almost immediately by our Republican friends over in the House because it doesn't do this or doesn't do that or whatever the sin might be.

Ironically, we asked, where is your bill? How about let's compare our bill to your bill. They haven't passed a bill. Yet they feel at liberty to take all kinds of shots--and I don't think they are entirely fair shots--at our bill. I had a conversation this afternoon with the chair of the relevant committee in the House and urged him to make sure they actually move a bill and not just criticize what we have done.

There are provisions in our bill I am frankly not happy with, and I am sure there will be provisions in whatever bill the House passes he won't be comfortable with. But at the end of the day, they have to move a bill. They have to say this is what we are for, because we have said this is what we want to have as our negotiating point in conference going forward. So we need the House to do the same thing, sooner rather than later. I am encouraged to hear the House is going to take something up by the middle of May. If they can do it before that, God bless them.

I want to take 5, 6, or 7 minutes to talk a little about what we are trying to do with respect to postal reform. We are trying to rightsize the enterprise, much as the auto industry rightsized itself 3 or 4 years ago coming out of bankruptcy. We are trying to modernize the postal industry and we are also trying to help the postal service-- encourage the postal service--to find new ways to use their existing business model--where in every community in America there are 33,000 post offices going to every front door and mailbox in America 5 or 6 days a week--to make more money and raise their revenues, some of the ways they can do that.

Our legislation focuses on that, rightsizing the enterprise given the reduction in mail, the diversion of mail to the electronic media because of Facebook, Twitter, the Internet, or all of the above. We communicate differently than we used to. We have to help them rightsize their enterprise and modernize and find new ways to generate revenues. That is the heart and soul of what we want to do.

How do we do that? As it turns out, by luck, the postal service over the years has overpaid its obligation to the Federal Employees Retirement System by a lot, it turns out by about $11 billion. There is no argument; they have overpaid the money. The postal service is owed that money by the Federal Employees Retirement System. The postal service wishes to take that money and use that money in two ways: one, to incentivize about 100,000 postal employees who are eligible to retire, to retire; not fire them, not lay them off, but say, look, if you will retire, here is another $25,000 or if you are close to retirement, here is some credit, but we want you to retire.

Second, the postal service has more mail processing centers than they need. A couple of years ago they had maybe 600 or so. Today they have a few less than 500. They want to get down to about 325 over the next year or two. That would be almost cutting in half the number of mail processing centers around the country. They do not need them, given the volume of mail today. They need mail processing centers, but not as many as they have.

When the postal service closes another 150 or so mail processing centers, some people will not be able to work at those mail processing centers, but the postal service is saying, we will find you other jobs. You can be a letter carrier or work in another part of the postal service. You will not get fired. But we want to encourage those eligible to retire to retire.

The Service also wants to take most of that Federal Employees Retirement System money to pay down their debt to the Treasury. Right now, they have gone on a $15 billion line of credit. The postal service wants to take most of their Federal Employees Retirement System reimbursement and pay off that debt.

Another thing they wish to do, that a lot of folks around here are real concerned about, is to close some post offices. There is the fear that maybe as many as 3,000 or 4,000 post offices. In rural places around the country, maybe the post office is the center of the town. Folks are concerned their post office will be closed and people will be left without postal service. As it turns out, that will not be the case.

What the postal service is going to do under our bill is to say to communities across the country, we want to offer you a menu of options. We want to offer you a menu of options for different communities, and among that menu of options we want to offer to those communities are these:

No. 1, we are not going to close your post office. We will keep your post office open, but in a place where we are paying the people $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year to run a post office that sells $15,000 worth of stamps, that doesn't make sense. So if the postmaster is eligible to retire, we want to incentivize that postmaster to retire. Let him go off and get his pension, get his benefits, and he could still come back to work on a part-time basis, maybe 2 or 4 or 6 hours a day, and run the post office in that community. If that is what the community wants, that is what they would get.

Some communities might prefer to put the post office in the supermarket or the local drugstore or a convenience store, where it is open not just a few hours a day but open 24/7, maybe. That would be an option for the community. Some communities may have a townhall and some other State and local businesses that could collocate those with the post office and put them all under one roof and everybody would save some money. So they could share some space.

Another option for some places, maybe Minnesota--we have rural letter carriers in the southern part of Delaware--we could offer people the opportunity for rural mail delivery. They wouldn't have to come in to town to collect their mail in a post office. It would be delivered to wherever they live. The idea is to say to folks in communities that might be adversely affected, you pick from among this menu of options, figure out what works for you. Even vote by mail and pick their favorite choice.

So rightsizing the enterprise, reducing the head count, reducing the number of mail processing centers further by another third, and, finally, ways to provide more cost-effective mail service in communities across the country, though not the heart and soul of what we are trying to do, they are very important.

Let me mention one or two others, if I could. The postal service pays twice for health care for their retirees. I will say that again. The postal service pays twice for the health care of their retirees. They pay under Medicare and they pay under the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. Twice. The employees don't get the full benefit of that money, the postal service certainly doesn't get the full benefit of that money. Most companies in this country--big companies and small ones--when their employees retire, a lot of times will continue to provide health care benefits for them until the age of 65. Then at age 65, the company will say to the retiree, we want you to get your primary Medicare, your primary source of health care, and we will provide a wraparound, your Medigap program, to fill in the gaps for you. That is how a lot of companies do it. My wife retired from DuPont. When she turns 65--in about another 30 years, well, maybe a little sooner than that--Medicare will be her primary source of health care and the company will provide a wraparound for Medigap. What the post office wishes to do is have a similar type of opportunity. In the end, I think the retirees will benefit, the postal service will benefit, and the taxpayers, I think, arguably would benefit. Those are a couple of things that are in our legislation.

Did we pass a perfect bill? By no means. By no means. As I said earlier, there are some things in the bill I don't like. And I hope we can make the bill better in conference. In order to get to conference with the House, the House has to pass a bill. It is not enough for the House to criticize what we have done. We say, what have you done? As it turns out, so far, not much--at least in terms of passing a bill and being able to appoint conferees and see what we can work out here. My hope is they will do that.

My hope is they will do that sooner rather than later, so we can stop saying, well, the postal service lost $45 million today. They did that yesterday and they are going to do it tomorrow. That is not sustainable. That is not sustainable. They need to be put in a position where they can be successful. We can help them get there. And to the extent the postal service becomes vibrant and solvent, they can support the 7 or 8 million jobs that are tied to and interconnected with the postal service.

With that, Mr. President, I bid you adieu, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw amendment No. 2065.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2066.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, some of our colleagues have raised justifiable concerns about the level of compensation that has gone to some of the most senior officials at the U.S. Postal Service. The compensation package for one previous leader of the Postal Service was in excess of $1 million. In a day and age when rank-and-file postal employees are going to be asked to make some sacrifices as labor negotiations go forward, I think it is important for us to remember the concept of leadership by example.

This amendment makes sure that, frankly, deferred compensation packages of the kind I just described do not

occur. We cut in half--from 12 to 6--the number of postal executives who are able to receive compensation in excess of a Cabinet-level salary, but to give the Board of Governors the ability to pay a fee for good progress toward reducing the budget deficit at the Postal Service through pay above that up to about $270,000.

The last thing we say is, the idea that senior executives at the Postal Service do not have to pay anything for health care or do not have to pay anything for their life insurance is wrong and that should end. We do that with this amendment.

Mr. President, I hope my colleagues listened to what Senator Collins said with respect to the way this has been scored. It is a very important point. As much as anybody in this Chamber, I am interested in reducing the budget deficit. I want Senators to keep in mind these three points: One, for a number of years, the Postal Service has overpaid its obligation into the Federal Employees Retirement System--$12 billion to $13 billion in overpayment. They are owed that money. They should be given that money. They are going to use it to help 100,000 postal employees who are eligible to retire to retire. They will use that money to pay down their debt--$13 billion--and almost wipe it out. They will use it for that purpose. CBO scores that as something that makes the budget deficit bigger. If they overpaid the money into the Federal Employees Retirement System, they ought to get it back. They should get people who are eligible to retire and want to retire to retire. They should use it to pay down a $12 billion line of credit to the Federal Government.

The second point I wish to make is the one offered by Senator Lieberman. If we do nothing and we get to May 15, the Postal Service is free to close post offices across the country--3,700 of them. They are free to close as many as 200 to 300 mail processing centers. There is a smarter way to do this, which is in this legislation.

Lastly, we are going to have the opportunity today and tomorrow for all of us to better understand the amendments that have been agreed to and offered by both sides, what has been agreed to and put into the managers' amendment, which we will, frankly, have a lot more confidence in.

The Postal Service tells us today they are going to lose $23 million. They lost that much yesterday. They are going to lose that much again tomorrow, the next day, and the next day. They owe $13 billion to the Treasury. What I think is more important to keep in mind is when we finish our work today and tomorrow, and we look to see what that means for the Postal Service, in terms of their operation on a daily basis and where will they be in terms of paying their obligation by 2016, we need to keep our eye on the ball. I urge Senators not to vote for this. Give us a day for the body to work its will and then make your decision. If we have not made any more progress, vote against it.

Lastly, several of our colleagues have well-intentioned amendments that will literally drive up the cost and make it harder for the Postal Service to move toward a balanced situation, to a sovereign situation. I urge Senators--and some of these amendments are offered by people we love and it is hard to say no to them. But in this case, maybe the greater devotion should be to the taxpayers of our country, to the people who work for the Postal Service, and to their customers.

Mr. President, just briefly, I support this amendment. I am happy Senator Coburn has offered this amendment and it was debated. I hope it is accepted on a voice vote.

Let me say, we brought a bill to the floor that has been brought together by two Republicans and two Democrats. We just had a vote on whether to waive a budget point of order. Give us a chance to air the bill, offer amendments, and look to see what we can agree on in a bipartisan vote. We have an early opportunity to go back and forth on amendments not just for the Democratic amendments but Republican amendments as well.

My hope is at the end of the day we will approve both. Hopefully, we will be able to say we passed a bill with bipartisan support.

Mr. President, I say to my colleagues that this is another good amendment offered by the Senator from Oklahoma. What the Postmaster General has in mind for our communities across America, where there are 33,000 post offices, is to give a number of them an option--a menu, if you will--to see whether it makes sense in those communities to shorten somewhat the length of time the post office is open in a day--maybe to 6 or 4 hours a day--whether to use a colocator in a supermarket maybe or in a convenience store or to in some cases, say, to State and local government operations in those communities: Why don't we put them under the same roof? Why doesn't that make sense?

Frankly, all those ideas may make sense. The idea is not to tell a community which of those options they have to choose but to say: This is the menu. And this is one of the great options that should be on the menu.

I commend the Senator for offering the amendment. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.

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

Madam President, we are debating this bill today because the Postal Service is facing, as many of us know, a dire financial crisis that literally threatens its very survival. This is a crisis that has been building for some time. It is one that only Congress can fix at this point, and one that we absolutely must fix now, literally in a matter of weeks.

Since the Postal Service was first established in 1971 in its current form, we have taken it for granted that our mail would arrive and that important business and personal correspondence would reach its destination. In addition, businesses, large and small, have come to rely on the mail to reach new customers and to communicate effectively with existing customers.

The Postal Service has a presence in virtually every community of any size in our country, large and small. It supports a trillion-dollar mailing industry that creates and sustains millions of private sector jobs--I am told as many as 8 million private sector jobs today. Unfortunately, a number of those jobs are at great risk today. They are at risk because those of us in Congress have, to date, proven unwilling or unable to come to consensus around a package of reforms that can update the Postal Service's network and business model to reflect the reality it faces today--if you will, to right-size the enterprise, much as the auto industry has right-sized its enterprise in the last 3 or 4 years. That lack of action on our part comes despite ample warnings about the severity of the problem and about the consequences of not appropriately and effectively solving that problem.

Nearly 2 years ago, former Postmaster General Potter announced--I think with the help of three major consulting companies--that the Postal Service would run up cumulative losses of more than 230 billion extra dollars by 2020 if we did nothing.

There are several reasons for these losses, including the diversion of first class mail to electronic forms of communication and legislative hurdles Congress has imposed on reform efforts.

Mr. Potter and his successor Pat Donahoe have done a tremendous job, I believe, in trying to chip away at these losses, with the help of their employees, with the help of several of their unions, with the help of a number of their customers, and I think from time to time with help from those of us who serve in the Congress and in the last administration and the current administration.

Over the past decade, the Postal Service has reduced the size of its postal workforce by roughly a third--not by firing people, not by laying people off, but through attrition. They have closed scores of mail processing facilities across America with no noticeable impact on service. People still drop letters and packages in the mail, and they might be delivered the next day or the next day or within at least 3 days--pretty amazing when you think about it. The approval rating for Congress is not very high, but the customer satisfaction of the American people with respect to the Postal Service is still at about 85 percent--pretty good compared to how we are doing here in our Nation's Capital.

The Postal Service has introduced some new products such as the flat rate boxes: If it fits, it ships. They have formed productive partnerships with companies such as UPS and FedEx. UPS and FedEx do not want to deliver every package, every parcel to every mailbox or address across America. The Postal Service does that 6 days a week. The Postal Service has a nice partnership with FedEx and UPS in order to make money for the Postal Service and to provide good customer service in that partnership. But despite that, losses at the Postal Service continue to mount.

Last year, the Postal Service suffered an operating loss of more than $5 billion. It will see a similar loss this year, even if it finds some way to avoid making the retiree health prefunding payments due in the coming months. Then the losses accelerate to $6.5 billion in 2013; to $10 billion in 2014; to more than $12 billion in 2015; and to more than $15 billion alone in 2016.

But these losses are only theoretical. I say that because the Postal Service is close to exhausting its $15 billion line of credit with the Treasury and by this time next year will be well on its way to running completely out of cash. If that were to occur, the Postal Service's ability to continue operating will be in jeopardy.

Postmaster General Donahoe has said repeatedly that he and his team will do everything they can do to keep the mail moving even as the Postal Service's finances deteriorate. I believe him. But make no mistake: If the Postal Service is not permitted in the very near future to begin making the adjustments needed in response to the likely permanent declines in mail volume--especially first class mail--we have witnessed in recent years, the Postal Service will drown in red ink. The ripple effect of losing the Postal Service and the still very valuable services it provides would deliver a body blow to our economy at the very time our economy is recovering.

We are on the brink of this impending disaster in part because we are expecting the Postal Service of 2012 to try and be successful with a business model created in the 1970s. Let's remember, in 1970, when I was a naval flight officer on my first tour in Southeast Asia, there was no e-mail. There was the mail. The happiest day of the week was when the mail came--letters, cards, packages, magazines, newspapers, you name it. That was the day of the week to live for. The last time I was over in Afghanistan--and Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins have been there any number of times--the last time I was there, they still get mail, our guys and gals still get mail, but do you know what they have? They have Skype, they have telephones, they have these little phones like we carry around. They have the Internet; they have Facebook; they have Twitter. They have all that stuff. As a result, they do not use the mail as we did in our generation.

Today, Americans live and work online. We shop and transact more and more business online. These trends are likely to accelerate. If any of our colleagues doubt that, then they should ask our pages--these pages who are sitting right down here--how often they sit down and write a letter or send a greeting card. Our colleagues should ask members of their own staff how often they pay their bills through the mail. We should look at our own mail. In fact, when I asked my staff to do

this, I said: Go back and look at 2001--my first year as a Senator--go back and see, if you look at the number of e-mails we got then and the number of letters we got then, what was the ratio? For roughly every 15 letters we got in 2001, we got 1 e-mail. I said: Go back and look at 2011. They did. As it turned out, for every 1 letter we received last year, we received about a dozen e-mails. Think of that.

The Federal Government itself is even contributing to this trend, and I think in a pretty big way. It was announced within the last week or so that the Social Security Administration, starting next year, will send virtually all of its 73 million payments--I think that is each month--to Social Security recipients processed online through direct deposit, not mailed out. That is us.

So even as the American people adjust to new communications technologies, many of us here in Congress expect the Postal Service to continue as if nothing has changed. But in these changing times, these challenging times, we need to recognize that difficult choices need to be made. It is not efficient or affordable to maintain a mail processing and delivery network built for the peak mail volumes of years ago.

That said, many of my colleagues have legitimate concerns about the severity and speed of the Postal Service's streamlining efforts. To address those concerns, the managers' amendment that Senators Lieberman, Collins, Brown, and I have put forward includes a number of safeguards crafted to ensure that the changes that will occur in the coming months and years are implemented in responsible ways--ways that are consistent with what I can describe as the Golden Rule: that we would treat others the way we would want to be treated. That includes customers of the Postal Service, employees of the Postal Service, and taxpayers of this country.

We also seek to provide assurances in our managers' amendment that those who still rely largely on the Postal Service, including rural customers without access to broadband, will continue to have access to the services they know and need in the years to come.

We also take steps in this bill with this managers' amendment to ensure that this effort to save the Postal Service is not all about closing facilities and cutting services. Recognizing that questionable policy decisions made over the years regarding the Postal Service's pension and health care obligations are part of the Postal Service's financial problems, we call for, in this managers' amendment, refunding the more than $10 billion the Postal Service has overpaid into the Federal Employees Retirement System. A portion of that refund--that $10 billion to $12 billion, whatever it turns out to be--would be used to encourage at least some of the 125,000 postal employees at or near retirement age today to retire now or within the next year or 2, saving the Postal Service billions of dollars annually.

Let me back up for a moment. If you go back a decade or so ago, there were roughly 900,000 men and women who worked for the Postal Service, for us in the Postal Service. Today, there are 550,000 people who are employees of the Postal Service. Out of that roughly 550,000 people, 125,000 are eligible to retire. They are eligible to retire, and they have not chosen to do so, despite the fact they are eligible.

One of the things the Postmaster General wants to do--and I believe our managers, those of us who are cosponsors, coauthors of this bill and the managers' amendment, want to do--is to encourage those folks to retire. Eighty percent of the Postal Service's costs are personnel costs. To the extent we can continue to right-size this enterprise, enable it to right-size itself, given the market share from 550,000, 500,000 down to maybe 450,000 in the next year or two--an enterprise where 80 percent of the cost is personnel--that helps get this enterprise back to a place where it is not bleeding money every day of every week of every month of this year.

Today the Postal Service will lose--get this--$23 million. Today. And today, if you look at the amount of money the Postal Service owes to the Treasury on its line of credit, it is roughly $13 billion--maybe more than that for the line of credit that only goes up to $15 billion.

There is some controversy that flowed out of the 2006 legislation signed by former President Bush. He insisted at the time that in order to sign that legislation, we in the Congress would have to agree to I think maybe the most conservative approach to prefunding retiree health benefits of any government agency or any business with which I have ever been associated. I used to be treasurer of my State government, and we began prefunding health benefits for retirees several years ago--actually, right at the end of my second term as Governor--but nothing like this. We instituted that requirement in order to get President Bush to sign on to the bill at a time when the Postal Service was in good shape. That was a very popular year, if you will, for the Postal Service, before the roof fell in and the economy went to heck in a hand basket. But the Postal Service was in pretty good shape, very good shape, so the taxpayers would not be saddled with those obligations in the event the Postal Service could not meet them in the years to come.

President Bush's people said: Look, we will sign this bill. The Postal Service will not always be making money--as they were in 2006-- and 10 or 15 years down the line when they are not doing so well, we want to make sure that a large part of the health care benefits for retirees have been satisfied or paid for.

That is not an entirely bad idea. We did not know that we were going to enter the worst recession since the Great Depression in 2008. We did not know we were going to lose 2.5 million jobs in the second half of 2008 and we did not know were going to lose 2.5 million jobs in the first half of 2009, but we did. It put us in the tank and it put the Postal Service in the tank far quicker than anybody had a reasonable right to imagine.

But, in retrospect, the payment schedule put into place back then proved to be too aggressive once the bottom fell out of our economy in 2008. Our managers' amendment scraps the schedule adopted in 2006 and replaces it with a more realistic one that is based on what the Postal Service actually owes. And that change, coupled with some others, including one that would better coordinate postal retirees' Medicare and Federal employee health benefits, would cut the Postal Service retiree health costs by more than half--not ignore them but cut them in half and put them on a more realistic time schedule.

Finally, our managers' amendment pushes the Postal Service to redouble its efforts to innovate, to redouble its efforts to develop new products that can grow revenue going forward. There are some who would argue that--let me dwell on that for just a moment. Frankly, somewhere down the line--I don't if it will be a year from now or 5 years from now or 10 years from now--a light will go on in somebody's head, and they will say: You know, the Postal Service goes to every door in America five or six times a week. They are in every community in America. Why did we not think of a particular idea to enable them to create a new source of revenue or new sources of revenue?

I would like to mention some that are actually working. Flat rate boxes--if it fits, it ships. That is a great product. There is the partnership the Postal Service has with FedEx and UPS, delivered by the Postal Service the last mile or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 miles where Fed-Ex or UPS does not want go in many cases. That is a good way to make money, especially if more people buy things, order things for themselves, for their families, for their loved ones over the Internet and have them shipped. The Postal Service can have a big piece of that business.

There are other ideas as well. Fed-Ex and UPS get to deliver wine and beer. The Postal Service does not. We changed that in this legislation. There are ideas dealing with electronic mail boxes. We will hear more about those in the days to come. Other countries with postal services actually have used that as a way to provide a good service for their people and for their businesses, and I think there is maybe an argument that we should allow the Postal Service here to do that too.

Even further down the road and kind of out there in ideas, as the Presiding Officer knows in neighboring Pennsylvania--they do not have a coastline,

but they are close to ours and to New Jersey--5, 6 years from now, we are going to have windmill farms off the coast of the United States, the east coast from North Carolina, Virginia, all the way up to Maine. They are going to be harvesting the wind, turning that wind into electricity. Do you know what. The wind does not always blow, but there are times that it blows a lot more, and we are going to generate more electricity than we can actually use on a particular day at a particular hour. What are we going do with that electricity? Well, we are going to store it. And where are we going to store it? One of the places to store it is in the batteries of fleets of vehicles. Who has one of the biggest fleets in America? The Postal Service. A lot of the vehicles in their fleet are like 25, even 30 years old. We have all of these new vehicles coming to the market that are far more energy efficient to replace those old and in some cases dilapidated fleet vehicles in the Postal Service. The new vehicles, with their batteries, can literally be a place to receive the electricity generated on a windy day in the Atlantic, out in the Outer Continental Shelf, to store that electricity and, when needed, put it back out on the grid, the electric grid, to provide energy as needed across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic part of our Nation. That is an idea that is sort of out there, but we need to be thinking boldly, and the Postal Service needs to be doing that.

I think one of the better pieces of our amendment--and this came from some of the more progressive members of the Democratic Party here in the Senate and kind of joined up with some of the more conservative folks on the Republican side--but the idea is that the Postal Service needs to be more entrepreneurial. They need to be more innovative.

When they come up with good ideas for making money, including the idea we talked about at lunch in the caucus we had today--how about vote by mail? In two States today--Oregon and Washington--they vote by mail. And what does that do to voter turnout? I think we were told by Senator Cantwell that in her State last year--2 years ago in the election, they had 72-percent voter turnout. This year they are expecting 84 percent voter turnout. I mean, this is a country in which we are lucky to have 50 percent of the people who are eligible actually turn out to vote. And we can see what vote by mail can do in those two States. They could be laboratories of democracy for our Nation, encourage voter turnout, maybe do it in a more cost-effective way and-- get this--provide new sources of revenue, a great source of revenue for the Postal Service. That is the sort of thing we need to kind in mind.

I don't think there is any one silver bullet, but I like to say there are a lot of silver BBs, and some of them are pretty big, and those might be among them. There are ideas we have not even thought of yet that we ought to do.

Let me just say--and I am getting fairly close to the end--that I don't mean to suggest that what the managers' amendment--the underlying bill was reported out of committee by about a 9-to-1 vote. The managers' amendment, crafted by Senators Lieberman, Collins, Brown, and myself, is not perfect. Very few things associated with my name have ever been perfect. But I will say this. One of my core values--some of you have heard me say this maybe too many times--if it is not perfect, make it better. If it is not perfect, make it better. And we have the opportunity to take what we believe is a managers' amendment which is an improvement over the original bill--we have the opportunity to make it better. I do not think in this case, they are not just Republican ideas, they are not just Democratic ideas, they are not liberal ideas, they are not conservative ideas, they are just better ideas. And my hope is that Members will have the opportunity in the days this week, in the days to come, to come to this floor and to offer their better ideas.

I would plead with our colleagues, don't just come to the floor and offer amendments that have absolutely nothing to do with the Postal Service. Please come to the floor to offer amendments that can help make this bill better with respect to ensuring that we have a Postal Service that is viable and solvent in the 21st century, that can meet our communications needs for individuals, for families, and for businesses.

We are not going through a fire drill here; this is an emergency. This is an emergency. It is a huge challenge, but it is also an opportunity to get it right this time and hopefully, with a growing economy, to maybe have a little bit of the wind to our backs.

We have to pass a bill. My hope is we can pass a bill with bipartisan support that is good underlying public policy so that when we end up in 2016, the Postal Service won't be running daily losses of $22 million a day as they are today, that the Postal Service will have had an opportunity to use this refund they are owed by the Federal Employees Retirement System--$12 billion--to pay down much of their debt, maybe use a little bit of that money to help incentivize some of the 125,000 Postal Service employees who are eligible to retire to go ahead and retire.

We can do this in a way--I know a bunch of our colleagues are concerned. We hear it--Senator Lieberman and I, Senators Collins and Brown--from our colleagues already. They are concerned about rural post offices. Believe it or not, we have some of those in Delaware. We have some of those in Connecticut and certainly in Maine, even some in Massachusetts. I think we have actually come up with a pretty good approach. And we appreciate very much the input of people such as Jon Tester from Montana and Jerry Moran from Kansas, those Senators--one a Democrat, one a Republican--to try to give us a better idea on how to move forward on the post offices.

Let me just close with this. There are 33,000 post offices in America, in communities across the country. A year or so ago, the Postal Service--the Postmaster General met with us and our committee, and he said: We have 3,700 of those post offices under review that we think maybe should be closed--3,700.

There were at the time about 500 mail-processing centers across the country that the post office had for processing mail, and he said: We would like to close about 300 of them. We would like to change the standards for delivery for mail from 1 to 3 days to maybe 2 to 3 days.

Some were afraid it was going to slip from 2 to 3, to 2 to 4, even worse.

Where we have ended in this managers' amendment--I would say to folks, my colleagues who are concerned about the impact that will have on their rural post offices or their mail-processing centers, here is where we have ended. The Postal Service has pretty much backed off and said: We are not that much interested in closing 3,700 post offices or 2,700 or 1,700 post offices.

What they really would like to do is this, and I think it is a smarter, actually more cost-effective approach, more humane approach, and that is to say to communities across America: We have a post office--or maybe the postmaster is making $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year and the post office is selling like $15,000 or $20,000 worth of stamps. Rather than close that post office, provide that community with a menu of options. The menu of options would be to maybe keep the post office open; say to the postmaster there who is eligible to retire: We would like to incentivize you to retire. Here is a $25,000 bonus if you will go ahead and retire. You can retire, receive your pension, be eligible for benefits as a postal retiree, and come back and work on a part-time basis and run that post office for 2 hours a day, 4 hours a day, 6 hours a day, whatever the community feels meets their needs, morning or afternoon, midafternoon, evening. And that retired postmaster can--that money they collect, they keep. They do not have to reduce their pension. That is just extra money they can make for continuing to provide the service. We still have the post office there. The flag still flies in front of it. That is one option.

Another option might be, if the folks in the community want it, to put that post office in a supermarket. One of the supermarkets that are close to my house in Delaware--they have a supermarket, they have a pharmacy, and they have a bank. It turns out that one of our major national chains of pharmacies, Walgreens--I was up visiting their headquarters, their offices up in Chicago--I do not know if Chairman Lieberman has been there, but the pharmacy of the future--they took me

to a couple of them--has a beautiful pharmacy. Part of it is a post office. So you can see in places across the country whether it might make sense to consolidate the post office in like a Walgreens or some other kind of pharmacy or convenience store. It might make sense to-- say you have a small town and they have like a townhall, that kind of thing. How about consolidating those buildings together with the post office?

We have even heard of an idea like creating kind of an Internet cafe in places where they do not have broadband and see if we can't have in rural post offices--where folks who live in that community, in that area, do not have broadband access, maybe have it at the post office. There are all kinds of ideas out there.

You know, on the mail-processing side, instead of closing 500 mail- processing centers across the country, the Postmaster General has come to us. We worked to maintain--not to go from 1- to 3-day service--from that to a 2- to 3-day service or 2- to 4-day service, but to maintain kind of like a 1- to 3-day service--1 with an asterisk: The 1-day service would be overnight service, next-day service in communities like if they are in the same metropolitan area.

They were still getting next-day service. Outside of that metropolitan area, they might. But in most cases it would be 2-day service, and in no case would it be worse than 3-day service. By going to the modified service standard delivery, the Postal Service would have to close 500 mail processing centers. It probably would be able to close 150 and be able to offer incentives to employees to retire and they could migrate to other jobs within the Postal Service. But I think it maybe would be a smarter way to move this large, old, but still germane, relevant Postal Service into the 21st century.

I will close with this: This is not the time to kick the can down the road. I have no interest in doing that. I know Senator Lieberman and Senator Brown and Senator Collins have no interest in doing that. This is the time to fix the problem. I would like to think we are smart enough in the Senate to fix this; that we are smart enough to work with the House, with our staffs, a lot of good people--the folks at the Postal Service who work there, the unions, the customers, and a lot of people in businesses all over the country together working on this. I think we are smart enough to figure out how to solve this. We need to do that.

Last thought: During the recess I mentioned to my colleagues and the Presiding Officer and Senator Lieberman during our caucus lunch, I said: I don't know what you guys did over the Easter recess, but I covered Delaware. I love to do it. I go back there every night, but it is a great joy to reconnect with everybody. I also spent some time on the phone and meeting with folks in businesses in Delaware and outside of Delaware who usually rely on the Postal Service.

Nationwide there are 7 million to 8 million people whose jobs are integrated or part of or facilitated by our Postal Service--7 to 8 million jobs. We are coming out of the worst recession since before I was born--before we were born. We need to get out of it. One of the best ways to do that is to provide certainty and predictability for a lot of businesses. One way to do that is to pass postal reform legislation that finishes the job we started 5, 6 years ago. We can do that. We need to do that. I am encouraged that we will do that.

I thank the chairman of the committee, whom I love working with--I think we all do--for giving me a chance to work with him on this issue and for providing the great leadership he always does. Also, I say to Susan Collins who has just left the floor, it is a real privilege to work with her.

Finally, we are blessed with wonderful staffs, wonderful people, as Senator Lieberman knows, John Kilvington and others who are part of my staff, and Michael and the team who are part of Senator Lieberman's staff, and Kate who works with Senator Collins. They have done great, hard work. We are privileged to be able to work with them.

With that, I yield the floor.