Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask uanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Mitigating Systemic Risk in Financial Markets Through Wall Street Reforms.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 2:30 p.m., in room 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 2:15 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 30, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Compensation Policy, and Consumer Rights, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 30, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Standard Essential Patent Disputes and Antitrust Law.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to conduct a hearing on July 30, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a legal fellow in Senator Blumenthal's office, Afton Cissell, be granted floor privileges for the duration of July 30, 2013.

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

Mr. President, tomorrow we celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the ADA. This landmark civil rights legislation will always be the highlight of my almost 40 years here in the Congress.

The Americans With Disabilities Act is one of the landmark civil rights laws of the 20th century; as someone once said, a long overdue emancipation proclamation for people with disabilities. The ADA has played a huge role in making our country more accessible, in raising expectations of people with disabilities about what they can achieve at work and in life, and inspiring the world to view disability issues through the lenses of equality and opportunity.

In these times, it is valuable to remember passage of the original Americans With Disabilities Act was a robustly bipartisan effort. As the chief sponsor of the ADA here in the Senate, and as the chair of the Disability Policy Subcommittee at that time, I worked very closely with both Republicans and Democrats. At that time Senator Robert Dole was the minority leader of the Senate, and we received invaluable support from President George Herbert Walker Bush. Key members of his administration, such as White House Counsel Boyden Gray, worked so hard on this, as did Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who was magnificent in his support for the Americans With Disabilities Act. Transportation Secretary Sam Skinner and other Members of Congress also played critical roles in passing the ADA.

First and foremost among those, I would have to say, was Senator Ted Kennedy, who was chair of the full committee at the time and who allowed me to take the bill through as the chair of the Disability Policy Subcommittee. Senator Orrin Hatch played a key role at times, making sure we got the conservatives on the same page. Representatives Tony Coelho, Steny Hoyer, Major Owens, Steve Bartlett, and I might also mention someone who is not mentioned a lot, because he was not here in the Senate at the time we passed it, but who put in a lot of his life's work and who was chairman of that subcommittee before I took it over, Senator Lowell Weicker from Connecticut. As a matter of fact, he was the first sponsor of a comprehensive disability policy bill here in the Senate. So he became a great supporter, a great personal friend of mine through all these years, and Lowell Weicker deserves a lot of credit for actually getting us focused on the issue of a comprehensive civil rights bill addressing the issue of disability.

Before the ADA, life was very different for folks with disabilities in Iowa and across the country. Being an American with a disability meant you couldn't ride on a bus because there was no lift, not being able to attend a concert or a ballgame or a movie with your family or your friends or loved ones because there was no accessible seating, not even being able to cross the street in a wheelchair because there were no curb cuts. In short, being disabled in America before the ADA meant not being able to work or participate in community life. Discrimination was both commonplace and accepted.

Since then, we have seen amazing progress. The ADA literally transformed the American landscape by requiring architectural and communications barriers be removed and replaced with accessible features such as ramps, lifts, curb cuts, widened doorways, and--for anyone who is watching this on C-SPAN and put on the mute button--you get closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing.

More importantly, the ADA gave millions of Americans the opportunity to participate in their communities. We have made substantial progress in advancing the four goals of the ADA: equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency--the four pillars of the ADA.

But I stand here today to remind my colleagues that we have not yet kept the promise we made 23 years ago with strong bipartisan support. We still have too many Americans with disabilities living in poverty, oftentimes in isolation and without control over the supports and services in their lives.

For example, last week in my role as the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, we concluded an investigation and issued a final report on the state of the implementation of the part of the ADA that provides for people to be able to live and receive services in integrated settings, and prohibits people from being unnecessarily separated and isolated from their family and friends and put in institutions or other segregated settings. What we found is disturbing. Twenty-three years after the 1999 Olmstead case decision by the Supreme Court, we found that more than 200,000 working-age Americans with disabilities--many in their late teens and early twenties--remain trapped in nursing homes and institutions, separated from their families and communities against their wishes--despite the 1999 Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v. LC that people with disabilities have the right to be integrated in the community.

Our committee investigators found that only 12 States devote more than half of their Medicaid long-term care dollars to home and community-based services. The number of working-age adults in nursing homes has actually increased by more than 30,000 over the last 5 years. It is shameful.

Unfortunately, many States continue to approach community living for people with disabilities as a social welfare issue and not as a civil rights issue. This is a failure of vision on the part of many State leaders.

So how can we correct this injustice? Well, we need to clarify that under the ADA, every individual who is eligible for long-term services and supports has a federally protected right to a real choice--their choice--in where they receive these services and supports, whether in an institution or in a community.

What that also means is, at long last, Congress needs to end the institutional bias in the Medicaid system. Right now, under Medicaid, States are required to pay for long-term services and supports if you are in a nursing home. But if you want to receive those supports and services in an integrated community-based setting, Medicaid has the option of covering you. That is the institutional bias that exists in Medicaid: They have to pay for you if you are in a nursing home, and they don't have to pay for supports and services if you are in a community or integrated setting. As long as it remains that way, the deck will continue to be stacked in favor of costly institutional settings. We know from our investigations that home-based, community- based integrated settings with support services for people with disabilities is more cost effective than putting people in an institution or a nursing home--not to mention the quality of life, and the fact that so many people with disabilities want to be in an integrated community setting and do not want to be housed in a nursing home.

In my remaining 17 months that I have as a Senator here in the Senate, I plan to hold hearings and introduce legislation that will accelerate the rate at which States move their long-term services and supports in the direction of home and community-based settings.

Another area where our work is incomplete is making sure people with disabilities take their rightful place in the American workforce. Twenty-three years after the passage of the ADA, it is shameful that two out of every three adults with a disability are not even in the workforce, not working. That is shameful. We may say, Well, the unemployment rate in America is now 8 or 9 percent. Think about if you are a disabled adult; it is 60 percent or more who are unemployed.

Next week in the HELP Committee, we will mark up the Workforce Investment Act, a critical law that has not been reauthorized since 1998. The workforce has changed a lot since 1998, and a lot of the ADA generation have come of age during that period of time. So in the bipartisan draft Senators Alexander, Murray, Isakson, and I filed with the committee yesterday, we include provisions that will improve how the vocational rehabilitation system partners with schools to deliver services that will result in more young people doing internships, part- time jobs, in competitive settings. The aim is to maximize the likelihood that young

people with disabilities will leave school college and career ready-- people such as Lily Siegel, who was my intern this summer from the American Association of People with Disabilities. They provide summer internships. Lily, and so many like her, have high expectations for themselves. They want to be challenged. They want to work in competitive, integrated employment. They don't want to be shunted into subminimum wage jobs with no future, no chance for advancement, no chance for challenging themselves to do better and to do more and to take more responsibility. We owe it to them to do everything in our power to help them transition to the kinds of jobs and higher education experiences that will help them build a career and maximize their economic self-sufficiency.

I can tell you from my work in this area that this generation of young people who have come of age under the umbrella of the ADA, who were born in 1990 through 1995, has been integrated into their schools. They weren't segregated as my brother was and sent halfway across the State to a State institution. They have higher expectations. They have had accessibility. They see what society has done to make sure that they can travel, they can go out with their friends and their family, they can go to school in integrated settings, they can get jobs and, under the ADA, employers have to provide reasonable accommodations for that job. They don't deserve now to be frustrated by not having the opportunity to get that competitive integrated employment.

That is what we are doing in the Workforce Investment Act, to provide for young people in high school who have disabilities, to let them know they expect more of themselves, and we do too. No longer will it be acceptable for them to leave school and go into some minimum wage covered employment where they are warehoused for the rest of their lives. They want to get out there and show what they can do. That is why we are changing the Workforce Investment Act, changing voc rehab to focus on getting these young people internships, job shadowing, mentoring, so they know what their abilities are and what they can expect to do once they leave school.

When we passed the ADA, so many people came here from other countries--legislators, parliamentarians--how can we now do this? How can we get our laws changed?

About 11 years ago, the United Nations set up a committee to look at this. Out of this came the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities, the CRPD. That treaty was sent to our President, and under our system the President sends it out to all his Departments in the executive branch to report back, what things do they need to do to change to conform to the treaty? In other words, if the treaty is the supreme law of the land, what laws do we have to change in order to comply with that treaty?

Guess what. After about a whole year of circulating through all of our Departments of Justice, Labor, HHS, Agriculture, and everything else, it came back: We don't have to change one law because we are the best in the world when it comes to the civil rights protection of people with disabilities.

So last year, under the guidance of then-Senator John Kerry, who is now our Secretary of State, it went to the Foreign Relations Committee. They had hearings. Senator McCain and I were the two leadoff witnesses. We brought that treaty to the floor of the Senate in December, fully expecting it would pass. Under the Constitution of the United States, it requires a two-thirds vote to approve the treaty and we thought we had the votes. We brought it on the floor. We fell 6 votes short of the 67 votes we need. We had a number of Republicans and Democrats on the bill.

Why did it fail? Right before we brought it up, former Senator Rick Santorum and others began to talk about how this was going to prevent people from homeschooling their kids. I thought I knew the treaty. I had read it. I had looked at it. I thought, Did I miss something? Is there something in there I didn't find?

I went back to my staff and said, Comb through this. I got ahold of people at the U.N. and said, What is in there that would prevent people from homeschooling their kids? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That charge was made out of whole cloth somehow, but at that time in my office calls ran 50-1 against adopting the treaty on that issue. So people were misinformed because of a few people like Mr. Santorum and others who decided to whip this up--for whatever reason, I don't know.

There were also a lot of comments made on the Senate floor by my Republican colleagues at that time that we shouldn't be adopting a treaty in a lameduck session, even though we pointed out that many treaties in the past had been adopted in lameduck sessions. I review that history to tell my colleagues that under now the leadership of Senator Bob Menendez, who is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--and I might add that the person who succeeded Senator Kerry in his position in the Senate, the present occupant of the chair, is also on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--there are going to be some more hearings. Under the leadership of Senator Menendez, we intend to bring that back to the floor this fall. We need to get the 67 votes.

People ask: Why is that so important? It is important for the United States to take leadership on this issue around the globe. Over 100 nations have already signed the treaty. They are looking to us for leadership.

I have talked to some of my colleagues and they say: Why do we need to join that? We are OK. We are doing just fine. We are doing just fine with disability law in our country. We do not need to join this convention, sign this treaty.

It seems to me that is an inherently selfish way of looking at who we are and what we are about as a nation. We have provided, I think to the world, guidance and direction on disability issues. If we are a part of the Convention, we get a seat at the table. When countries come and say we want to conform our laws, we want to make sure we meet the guidelines of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, this commission that is set up will be there to both guide and direct countries but also to see whether they are fulfilling their obligations. If we are not a signatory to the treaty, we are not at the table.

There is another reason we should sign this Convention. I just spoke to a group of people yesterday, people with disabilities, and I said: There are a lot of people in this country who use a wheelchair. Guess what. They would like to travel overseas. They would like to go with their friends and their family. But in many of these countries they do not have curb cuts. They do not have lifts. They do not have accessibility for people with disabilities. Shouldn't people with disabilities in this country have the same right to travel and enjoy foreign travel as anybody else? If we are a signatory to the treaty, then we can work with those countries to help change their laws, change their structures.

I cannot tell you how many veterans I have talked to, people who have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan disabled, and do you know what they say. They want us to join the treaty too because they want to travel overseas, and they feel constricted because they will not have accessibility in other countries.

For the life of me I cannot understand why people are not supporting this treaty. I do not get it. I just don't get it. It is supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is supported by every veterans group in this country. It is supported by, I think, every faith-based group in this country. It is supported by everyone in the disability community. It is supported by every former living President, from the two Bushes to Clinton, to Carter. It has broad-based support. You would think with that kind of support it would be a no-brainer to pass it in the Senate.

We are going to bring it up again this fall. I am hopeful we can do it. No one worked harder on a lot of these issues than Senator Bob Dole. We just had his 90th birthday party Tuesday in Statuary Hall. It was quite an event. So we fell just six votes short. I look forward to working with Senators Menendez, McCain, Ayotte, Barrasso, Durbin, Udall, and Coons to bring the treaty back to the floor and get the additional votes needed for it to pass.

I tell you, people with disabilities, their family members, supporters, the

business community, the veterans community, faith-based and civil rights groups are mobilizing for this. They do not want to take another chance that this will not pass.

I urge my colleagues to take the time to look at the facts related to the disability treaty. It requires no changes in U.S. law. It has no budget impact. As I said, when we become a party to the Convention, we have a seat at the table with the rest of the world. We will be well positioned to accelerate progress for the 1 billion people with disabilities around the world. It is our chance to be that shining city on the hill for the rest of the world.

I might also add this is supported by the high-tech business community in America because their global leadership position on accessible products and services can be used by the rest of the world.

For all those reasons, we need to pass it. Let me just close with this one last thought. Again, I am struck by the fact that these days we are surrounded, as I said earlier, with a new generation of young adults with disabilities who grew up since passage of the ADA, including a number of wounded warriors back from Iraq and Afghanistan. I call these younger people the ADA generation. They see disability as a natural part of human diversity. They reject the prejudices and stereotypes of earlier generations. I can tell you this, they have high expectations for themselves. They want to be challenged and they want to challenge us to make sure our society is open and they have the opportunity to go as far as their talents can take them.

We cannot let these people down. If we passed the ADA, now we have to take steps to make sure it is not just a promise, but it is a promise we are keeping and that we will keep.

We in the Senate have a responsibility to keep fighting to ensure that they have an equal opportunity to be independent, fully integrated, fully self-sufficient. That, at the heart, is what the Americans with Disabilities Act is all about. Twenty-three years later, we can look at it and say, without doubt, it truly is America at its very best.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this week Americans are celebrating the 23rd anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. As chief Senate sponsor of that legislation, I know that we could not have prevailed without the tireless, passionate, never-give-up advocacy of disability rights advocates and leaders across America. One of those outstanding leaders, Michael Winter, cannot be with us to celebrate this year's anniversary. He passed away earlier this month. But I would like to take a few minutes today to celebrate the life of this wonderful person.

Michael was born with a disability, and grew up in Chicago at a far less enlightened time, when students and other young people with disabilities were excluded from the mainstream. Michael used a wheelchair, but he was not the kind of person to take discrimination sitting down. At an early age, he began to speak up. He discovered the power of advocacy. He was determined to change the world for people with disabilities.

In 1969, Michael was enrolled in Southern Illinois University. Because the school president's wife used a wheelchair, the SIU had made a commitment 15 years earlier to become one of the first accessible colleges in the United States. But Michael was not satisfied. He believed that the university needed to be more inclusive for students with disabilities. So Michael and other students with disabilities took over the university president's office and chained a wheelchair to his desk. They did so to drive home the point that the campus needed to have accessible transportation for people with disabilities. The university, to its great credit, made improvements, and Michael had found a special focus for his advocacy. His passionate and highly effective advocacy for accessible transportation became a constant throughout his life.

In addition, Michael was one of the early leaders in the Independent Living movement. In 1977, after college and attending graduate school, he went to the fledgling Berkeley Center for Independent Living, where he completed an internship with Judy Heumann. He ended up staying on as a staff member for another 4 years. He then directed a Center for Independent Living in Hawaii before returning to the Berkeley as director of the Center for Independent Living for 12 years. During that period, Michael also served as president of the National Council on Independent Living.

As I said, Michael's special passion was to advocate for more accessible transportation. Later in his career, he held various positions at the U.S. Department of Transportation, and was responsible for helping enforce civil rights with respect to transportation under the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, the Civil Rights Act, and other laws.

He also advocated for more accessible transportation internationally. Marca Bristo, CEO of Access Living in Chicago, recently shared a memory of Michael Winter, whom she considered a mentor on independent living. She wrote:

I'll never forget being in Seoul riding the most accessible

subway I've ever been on with my son. Later I asked my host

from Rehabilitation International, Dr. Il Yung Lee, how did

it happen? He said: ``The Convention on the Rights of Persons

with Disabilities and Michael Winter.''

Many Americans got to know Michael in Eric Neudel's award-winning documentary, ``Lives Worth Living,'' which chronicled the rise of the disability rights movement in the United States. The documentary recounts the historic day in 1990 when hundreds of disability rights advocates crawled and climbed up the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington to protest the slow progress in passing the Americans with Disabilities Act. One person who was there recalled the scene as follows:

A young girl with cerebral palsy, fiercely determined to

reach the top (``I'll take all NIGHT if I have to!''),

inspired the admittedly out-of-shape Michael Winter to follow

close behind. When the activists gathered en masse in the

Capitol rotunda, Winter was approached by a young, able-

bodied woman who was excited by the crowd. Turns out she was

a tour guide, expecting to host a group of ``handicapped''

people on a tour through the capitol. ``I have to tell you

something,'' Winter wryly informed her. ``I don't think these

people are here for a tour.''

Hundreds of disability rights activists are in Washington this week to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. We also celebrate the contributions of leaders like Michael Winter, who are responsible for America's remarkable progress toward fulfilling the four great goals of the ADA--equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency. Despite this progress, we know that our journey is far from finished. We have not yet achieved the full promise of the ADA. But we go forward inspired by the memory and example of Michael Winter and other outstanding leaders in this movement.

Thank you, Michael Winter, for a job well done. Thank you for helping us to create a better, fairer, more inclusive and accessible world for people with disabilities.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 1911, as provided under the previous order.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, we are now on the student loan bill, so to speak. There is going to be a few hours of debate on the bill itself--actually 3 hours. As I understand it, there will be three amendments in order under the rule on this bill. So we will probably be on this bill for some time this afternoon. But we do want to finish it. I know the leader wants to finish it. Both the majority leader and Republican leader want to get this finished today, so we will be working on this bill for probably the better part of this afternoon.

I would like to set the stage for it by talking about the situation with student loans and why we are where we are right now. First of all, I would like to say the bill before us basically is the House bill. There will be a Manchin-Burr amendment that will be offered as a substitute. I will be supporting that. That is the compromise bill. That is the compromise we reached through several weeks of negotiations between the Republicans on the Senate side and the Democrats on the Senate side and the White House. It was a three-party negotiation that went on, and this is the compromise that was reached. So the bill before us represents a number of compromises that were made on both sides to produce legislation that would give certainty to students who borrow money from the Federal Government to attend college this fall.

As we all know, we have debated several different measures related to student loan interest rates for several weeks. This is the closest we have gotten to an agreement that represents at least two core Democratic principles, our side's principles, related to student loan interest rates.

I think it is only right to point out that we have had a couple of votes on keeping the interest rates at 3.4 percent for subsidized student loans for next year. That did not receive the 60 votes needed to move. As a consequence, on July 1, the interest rates on subsidized loans snapped back from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. We have been working hard to try to keep students from paying that 6.8 percent interest and on how we could reach some agreement, and that is what this bill does that is before us.

The two core principles we fought for were that the front-end caps-- they have front-end caps to ensure that undergraduate students taking out Stafford loans will not pay above 8.25 percent interest even if there are extreme fluctuations in the market. I point out that 8.25 percent is exactly the caps we had on student loans in the 1990s. This is not something new or out of line with what we have done before. We had 8.25 percent in the nineties, and I might add five times in the nineties we bumped up against that cap, so that cap protected students five times in the nineties from going above 8.25 percent.

Graduate students taking out these Stafford loans will have a cap of 9.5 percent in interest. Parents and graduate students taking out PLUS loans, these are the parent loans, will never pay above 10.5 percent. That is the first principle, to have these upfront caps.

Second, the principle we had is to get as close to budget neutral as possible. The composition of this bill places us about as close to budget neutrality as possible, meaning that billions of dollars will not be generated off the backs of students to reduce our budget deficit, something that was included in the version of this legislation that passed the House and which was a key feature on an earlier Republican bill that received a vote in the Senate--not a passing vote, it received a vote.

Again, these are the compromises made on the Republican side. They had several billions of dollars to raise on the student loans in the future. We did not. So we compromised down. Basically, it is $715 million over 10 years. Since there is going to be over $1 trillion over 10 years, $715 billion is not much compared to the $1 trillion in student loans that will be taken out over the next 10 years. That comes down to about $71 million a year. That is just about as close as we can get it to budget neutrality.

What does this mean for students? It means this fall all undergraduate students, subsidized or unsubsidized, will only have to pay 3.86 percent interest. That is down from 6.8, down to 3.86 percent. That means they will have that interest rate for the life of the loan. That is locked in. It will not vary.

Graduate students will see a 1.4-percent rate decrease from what it would be and parents will see a 1.5-percent rate decrease, so in all cases a decrease. That means real savings for borrowers. That means an average of $1,500 savings for undergraduates, $2,913 for graduate students, and $2,066 for parents, again over the life of the loan.

This bill also includes a provision that requires the GAO to submit a report to Congress within 4 months, detailing what the actual cost to the Federal Government of administering the Federal student loan program is and what the appropriate interest rate should be to avoid generating any unnecessary revenue. Again, I am sure people referred to it. There was an editorial in the New York Times this morning talking about the fact that the government should not be generating revenue off the backs of students. We all agree with that. That is why we tried to get this as close to budget neutrality as possible. As some will point out, under the system the way it is set up over the next 10 years, the CBO estimates the Federal Government will make more than $180 billion on Federal student loans.

I might just say, deriving savings was not the intended purpose of the Federal student loan program when it began in the 1960s, and it should not be a purpose of it now. The purpose should be to keep interest rates as low as possible for students and their families. So in 4 months, when the GAO submits its report to Congress, I plan to use that information to inform us on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act--I will have more to say about that in a second--to get a loan system that does not generate money for the government. This debate on student loan interest rates will continue, and I hope my colleagues will join us in that discussion as we move to the Higher Education Act reauthorization next year. As I said, I will have more to say about that in a second.

I have cosponsored this bill that is before us. I will vote for its passage. I will oppose other amendments because we have an agreement to move ahead. I believe this was the best deal we could get for students at this time.

The bill before us is supported by a number of groups, including the United States Student Association, the American Council on Education, Rock the Vote, Center for American Progress and Generation Progress, Generational Alliance, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Also, this morning we received a letter from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights that supports this with a ``yes'' vote on the bill before us.

I wish to make it clear that I plan to revisit the issue of student loan interest rates, along with other facets of the higher education system, in order to address the whole issue of college affordability. This fall the Senate HELP Committee, which I chair, will start consideration on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act that expires this year.

The interest rates--what we are talking about here today--we attach to Federal student loans is an important issue. I don't deny that. It is one that deserves our attention, but I want to point out that it is just one piece among many that go into college affordability. We will be tackling the many pieces that go into the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act so we can address the whole issue of college affordability.

When I am in Iowa, I hear from students and parents about the financial squeeze they are facing from the spiraling costs of college and their anxiety about student loan debt.

I have charts here. The first chart shows the increase in the cost of a public 4-year education over time. It has tripled since the 1980s. If we look at that chart, we can see that from 1980 to today the cost of a college education has tripled. That is the red line. The blue line is the Consumer Price Index. As we can see, our current system is out of step with the marketplace.

The cost of that degree has skyrocketed for students across the country. The costs have risen far higher and faster than the rate of inflation. Why is this happening? Why has it gone up so rapidly? If we look at 1990 to 1991, it just shot up. From about 2000 to now, it has really skyrocketed. I think it is legitimate for us to ask this question: Why is that happening? It is not just student loan interest rates causing that. We have had low student loan interest rates, so that cannot be the sole cause. Something else is going on. Again, that is why we need to examine that in the Higher Education Act--so we can find out why that has happened.

The second chart I have shows what is happening to our students. The average loan debt for a bachelor's degree has doubled since the 1990s. In the 1990s the cumulative debt a student would have after going to college would be $9,350. Today it is $26,660. That is over a 20-year period. Why has that gone up so much? That is why we have to get into the whole panoply of issues that affect college affordability.

In light of this crisis, I have chaired a series of hearings in our committee focused on what is being done to curb the cost and how we can have strategies to help keep the dream of higher education alive for students without giving them a ton of debt when they graduate. To date, we have examined promising strategies employed by innovative colleges and universities to curb costs while improving student outcomes. We have looked at State policies for improving affordability and State barriers to innovation, efficiency, and effectiveness. There is much room for progress and improvement when it comes to our system of higher education. I believe a consensus is emerging on the need to break away from business as usual. We cannot keep going on the way we have been doing over the last 20 years in funding for higher education.

Among the many ideas we have heard in these hearings, three major themes

have emerged. First, States are cutting funding to public universities, shifting the costs to students, their families, and Federal financial aid programs. In all of our hearings--and we have looked at all that goes into these charts, such as the increase in costs to students and the cost of college--the single largest correlative factor has been the decrease in State support for higher education.

What has become clear--at least to this Senator--is that State legislators have figured it out. They can cut their budgets and cut their support for public universities, shift the burden back on students and their families, the students come to the Federal Government and borrow more money, we increase Pell grants, and the burden on the student grows because their debt grows. Yet the colleges themselves are not stepping in to do anything. There are some colleges doing innovative things, but they are not doing enough to control the costs. Something has to be done about the States backing off of their support.

The second theme that emerged was that many of our more than 7,000 degree-granting institutions are not making college affordability a priority. It is just not a priority. They are focused on chasing rankings, investing in efforts unrelated to academic success, and they are failing to respond to a rapidly changing higher education landscape.

The third theme that emerged was that students and families are not empowered with accurate, clear, and accessible information about the comparative costs, quality, and value when shopping for a college education. While college affordability is a complex issue with no easy answers, there is much that all stakeholders--the Federal Government, State governments, institutions, families, and students--can do to increase college access and success and keep the costs down regardless of a student or family background.

Again, we are going to have to look at this in the higher education bill. Interest rates are just one piece of it, and that is what we are addressing today, but there is a lot more going on than just interest rates. We have to look at our system of accreditation. We have to look at our campus-based aid programs, the financing of Pell grants, and the regulation of the for-profit colleges that my friend from Illinois is always consistently pointing out here. We need to look at the structure that supports our Federal loan system, from the loan origination process to the servicing done by private and nonprofit contractors after students have completed their course of study, and debt collection should they default. The system we have is complex. I will repeat that the interest rate on student loans is only one piece of this jigsaw puzzle. It is an important piece to be sure and one we are addressing today.

Throughout the discussions about the interest rates, both President Obama and my ranking member and good friend Senator Alexander have personally committed to working with us as we take up the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in the coming year so we can address all the issues affecting our entire higher education system and hopefully enact much needed reforms.

We all understand how serious and important the issue of affordability is for a higher education. I look forward to working with Senator Alexander, members of our committee on both sides, and the White House in the months ahead to come up with a Higher Education Act reauthorization bill that is comprehensive and really gets to the bottom of college affordability so we can start to break away from the way we have been doing things in the past. As I said, we cannot continue on the way we have been doing this.

There are many who have been involved in negotiating the legislation before us today. Compromises are tough sometimes. I have said before-- and I know my friend from Illinois said this at our press conference last week--if I were to write this bill and if I could have it my way, this would not be what I would write. I understand that. It wouldn't be what my friends on the other side would write either. And that is the art of compromise--to bring both sides together and get the best agreement we can. This is a good agreement. It is good for undergraduate students, it is good for graduate students, and it is good for their families.

I thank President Obama for his leadership in negotiating this bill. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues. I thank Senator Durbin, who was a great leader in bringing this about. I thank Senator Manchin, Senator King, Senator Carper, as well as Senator Alexander, Senator Coburn, Senator Burr, and their staffs for all the hard work and diligence in putting this proposal together.

As I said, this might not have been the bill I would have written, and I think everybody who has been involved in this would say the same. But it is the best we could do. Quite frankly, it is going to lower interest rates this year. For undergraduate students, for the next 4 years it will be lower than 6.8 percent. In the fifth year it goes up just a little bit. As I said, as we look at the Higher Education Act and as we get this back from GAO in 4 months, we are all going to work together to see what exactly is the best path forward.

We can keep the interest rates low for students this year and into the future, and I support this bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act. I encourage all of my colleagues to vote in favor of its passage.

I am glad to yield for my friend Senator Durbin.

Again, I thank my friend from Illinois for his great leadership. Before I get right to the answer, I would point out the art of compromise, which we did. The Republican proposal we had before us a few weeks ago raised $15.6 billion over 10 years. So they have compromised a long way too. We have gotten it down to $715 million, over 10 years, from $15.6 billion. The Senator is absolutely right. We are looking at close to $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and that kind of puts that $715 million in perspective.

If we don't pass this today, there is one sure effect: Student loans will be almost twice what they would be under this bill--this year, almost twice--for them and their families.

And that would be true for this year and next year and the year after, almost--not quite--this is 3.86, it would be 6.8. So they would be paying 6.8 percent on every loan they take out this year rather than 3.86 percent, which I might point out also covers both subsidized and unsubsidized loans. That is a good deal.

Again, I say to the Senator that by keeping the rates like that--and this is another good point to make and I think people should understand. A student borrowing this year at 3.86 percent locks that in for the lifetime of the loan--locks that in. It doesn't go to 8.25 percent. That 8.25 is a cap in case interest rates start going up.

I would point out to my friend from Illinois that 8.25 is what we had in the 1990s, and five times in the 1990s we hit that cap, so we protected students five times in the 1990s at that 8.25 percent.

I say to my friend we have to pass this bill to keep students from paying 6.8 percent on their loans this year.

Amendment No. 1773

On behalf of Senator Manchin, I call up his amendment which is at the desk.

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

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 1774

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

Mr. President, I spoke on the floor earlier today about the proposal that is before us. I wish to reiterate what I said then: I cannot stress enough that this bill represents a number of compromises made on both sides to come to a solution on how to keep interest rates low for students in the coming years. The compromise we will be voting on shortly is the closest we have gotten to a deal that represents two core Democratic principles related to student loan interest rates: No. 1, the inclusion of hard, upfront caps for students, so should we experience high interest rates in the future, they will be protected from those high rates.

Let me repeat. Under this plan, undergraduates in this country will never pay more than 8.25 percent. That is what we had in the 1990s, and five times we bumped up against that in the 1990s. History could well repeat itself in that regard.

We have a hard cap. Graduate students will pay no more than 9.5 percent; parents and graduate students taking out PLUS loans, no more than 10.5 percent--hard cap.

Secondly, we wanted this to come as close to deficit neutral as possible, and this is what we have done.

To show how we made compromises around here, I will say that the Republicans' initial proposal that we had voted on here--and it went down, as well as the initial Democratic Senate proposal went down--the Senate Republicans' initial proposal raised $15.6 billion in deficit reduction over 10 years. We negotiated down to $715 million over 10 years. Put that in context. Over the next 10 years the student loan program will probably loan out somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.4 to $1.5 trillion. What we are talking about is only $715 million over the next 10 years. That is the closest we could come to zero and at the same time have hard caps and keep interest rates low.

I can't stress enough that this is a true compromise. If I were to write it, I would write it differently, and I have expressed myself in votes on the Senate floor in the past. But we have to deal with the art of the possible and reach compromises that answers both what the Republicans sought to do and what we sought to do.

I would also reiterate that this is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning.

As important as student loans are--Stafford loans so students are able to get an education and their parents being able to afford it--as important as that is, it is only one part of the jigsaw puzzle that is college affordability.

In 4 months, when the GAO report comes back--and I will again repeat that one of the elements we got in this compromise was a requirement that the GAO do a study on student loans, what the real cost is to the government, what the real cost is to administer that, and get that back to us in 4 months. When we are in our committee reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, we can take that into account.

My good friend from Maine, who has been so instrumental in working out this agreement, has said many times that the rule book we have to go on is CBO estimates. I have been here long enough to see how many mistakes CBO has made in the past. We don't know if they are right. We have no way of knowing that. We also don't know what those interest rates are going to be in the future, and we don't know if a 2.05 add-on or 3.6 add-on is the right thing. We don't know. That is why we have required the GAO to give us an in-depth study so we can have a better handle on the cost to the government, what it costs to administer the program and all of its elements. We will take that into account.

I was pleased to hear, again, Senator Alexander, my good friend and ranking member on our committee, earlier today on the floor. He expressed the same commitment he has expressed to me personally that I mentioned today; that is, working together to get a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act done in this Congress. Senator Alexander is committed to that, and so am I.

I might also add that I am pleased that President Obama has also said he is personally committed to working with us to get a Higher Education Act through and working with us to look at all of the college affordability issues. This was displayed in his speech today.

This is just one element--an important element but only one element.

I look forward to working with Senator Alexander, the White House, Secretary Duncan, the Department of Education, and members of my committee on the Democratic side to really look at all aspects of college affordability and how we are going to address this issue comprehensively.

I again want to point out for the Record--because soon we will be voting--that there are two amendments that will be voted on. I think one is by Senator Reed of Rhode Island and the other is by Senator Sanders of Vermont, and then we will have our final passage, if I am not mistaken. I know the two amendments that have been offered--one by Senator Sanders and one by Senator Reid--look very nice, and I know many on my side will be tempted to vote for them, but I will not be voting for them. They look nice, they sound nice, they would be nice in a perfect world, but we have to deal with CBO estimates. Quite frankly, the cost of those amendments, as judged by CBO, is something we can't do. Again, they sound nice, they look nice, they might feel nice, but we can't do it. So I will be opposing those amendments. I will be opposing them because we can't do that at this time.

What we can do is do the compromise we have reached. That is what we can do. And don't let anyone tell you this is a bad deal for students. This is not a bad deal for students. If we don't pass this, undergraduate students this year will pay 6.8 percent on their loans. With this bill, they will pay 3.86 percent. Tell me which is the best deal. Next year it is 4.26 percent, the year after that it is 5.4 percent, and the year after that it is 6.29 percent. It doesn't get up to 7 percent for 4 years, if CBO is right. In any case, for the next 4 years it is going to be lower than 6.8 percent for every undergraduate student in college.

Don't let anybody tell you this isn't a good deal for students. It is a good deal for students. This is why today we received an endorsement by the United States Student Association endorsing this bill, endorsing the compromise. They are not walking away from it. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has endorsed this bill. Any way you look at it, this is a good deal for students, and it is a good deal for their families. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.

Could there be a better deal? Well, I suppose. How about free money? That is always a good deal, free money. There is always something better out there. I say to my friends on the Democratic side, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Yes, there is probably a more perfect thing we could do. We can't afford it. We don't have the CBO scoring that would allow us to do that. Plus, we need the votes of our colleagues on the Republican side, so that is why we have to have a compromise. That is the way this place should run--on compromises. Legitimate, yes, hard-fought-out, but good compromises.

What Senator Manchin and Senator Burr have offered is that compromise--a good bill, a good, solid compromise, one that will make sure interest rates for undergraduate students will be lower for the next 4 years and under 6.8 percent. As Senator Alexander worked so hard to make sure we got into this compromise, when students get these loans at 3.68 percent this year, that is it for the life of the loan--that is a good deal--or next year at 4.26 percent or the next year at 5.24 percent. That is a good deal. So don't let what you might think would be more perfect take you away from voting for this bill. This is a good bill.

Again, I thank so many who are responsible for putting this together. I thank Senator Durbin, Senator Manchin, Senator King, and Senator Carper, who worked so hard through so many days and weeks to get this pulled together. Of course, I thank my ranking member and good friend Senator Alexander, who has been here from day one trying to find that sweet spot that we could all agree on and vote on. I thank Senator Coburn, Senator Burr, and all their staffs for all of their hard work and diligence in putting this proposal together. I thank President Obama and his team and Secretary Duncan and his team for working together, and all of our staffs.

This is the best we could do on a compromise for students given all the various priorities of this side, that side, the White House, and everybody else. This is a good deal. We shouldn't turn it down.

I will vote against the amendments offered by Senator Reed and Senator Sanders, well meaning though they are. As I said, they sound nice and they look pretty, but don't be lured into thinking that somehow that is going to happen. It is not. We have to stick with this compromise and get a good deal for the students, even though you may not think it is perfect. It is a good deal.

I support the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act. I encourage all of my colleagues to vote in favor of its passing and against amendments that would detract from it.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back with the exception of 2 minutes equally divided prior to each vote.

The Senator from Rhode Island knows I have the highest respect and affection for him. I might say that he makes excellent points.

As I said earlier, this amendment looks good, looks pretty, sounds pretty, and might be nice in a perfect world, but that is not where we are. Like my colleagues, like Senator Reed, I want to make sure we are only asking students and families to pay as much interest as needed in order to properly administer the program and no more. Student loans should not be a profit center for the Federal Government. As I said earlier, that is why we put into our underlying bill, the Manchin-Burr bill, a requirement that GAO report back to us in 4 months as to what it actually costs. My good friend from Rhode Island doesn't know what it costs. I don't know what it costs. No one really knows what the cost of this is.

As Senator Alexander said earlier, we are going to be looking at all of this in the Higher Education Act, what college affordability is.

Let me repeat. Under the bill before us, students pay less interest rates than 6.8 percent until 2017.

While the Reed bill may sound good, we are not there. We are not there to move on the Reed bill yet or anything like it. Plus, the offset he has for that, even though he has fully paid for it, is not acceptable to a lot of people here in the Senate Chamber.

Stick with the underlying bill and defeat the Reed amendment.

Mr. President, I can't support this amendment. By sunsetting this effort 2 years because CBO uses a 10-year window, the amendment would cost an estimated above $20 billion, and there is no offset to pay for it. So, again, the lack of that offset would violate the agreement we made under our bipartisan agreement of trying to get as close to deficit neutrality as possible.

Like Senator Sanders, I also want to make sure we make any needed changes to student loan interest rates before they become too high. Let me remind everyone, in the 1990s we had an 8.25-percent cap. We hit it five times. We got back in this agreement an 8.25-percent absolute cap.

Beyond that, for the next 4 years every student--subsidized and unsubsidized--in college will have a lower interest rate than 6.8 percent. In the outyears, who knows what the interest rates are going to be. We don't know that, and neither does CBO. But we do know what they are going to be this year and probably next year, and the students get a much better deal under the compromise.

So I say, don't support the Sanders amendment. Let's vote and let's keep the compromise in place and give our students a good deal, this year and next year and the year after and keep that 8.25-percent cap that we negotiated.

Mr. President, the vote comes on what we are going to do and that is--as my good friend Senator Manchin said--to keep interest rates low for students.

What this means for our students is that the student loans for all undergraduate students will be reduced from 6.8 percent to 3.86 percent this year. It will be lower than 6.8 percent for the next 4\1/2\-- almost 5--years.

Do our students and our families a favor. Vote for final passage. Keep the interest rates low and make sure our students are not paying a 6.8-percent interest rate this year, next year, and the year beyond.

Mr. President, 4 years ago today, July 24, 2009, was the last time the minimum wage was increased. It rose from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour. And it has been stuck there ever since. Four years is too long. It is time to raise the minimum wage.

To that end, I have introduced legislation along with Rep. George Miller in the House. The Fair Minimum Wage Act will gradually increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in three annual steps. Our bill will also link future increases in the minimum wage to the cost of living, using the Consumer Price Index, so that people who are trying to get ahead don't fall behind as our economy grows. Finally, our bill--for the first time in more than 20 years--will raise the minimum wage for workers who earn tips, from a paltry $2.13 per hour, today, to a level that is 70 percent of the regular minimum wage. This will be gradually phased in over the course of 6 years, which will give businesses time to adjust while providing more fairness for hardworking people in tipped industries.

While millions of workers have been without a raise these past 4 years, costs have continued to climb. Between 2009 and 2012, rent has gone up 4%, auto repair costs have climbed 6%, food is 8% more expensive, child care costs 9% more, and public transportation takes a 13% bigger bite out of workers' wallets.

I do not need to tell you that when you are taking in $1,000 a month, even a few dollars more at the grocery checkout line is a hardship. The tens of millions of working poor and low-wage Americans and their families know this. They know that the minimum wage, for many, is a poverty wage; it pays $3,000 less per year than what is needed to lift a family of three above

the poverty line. They know they can not survive on such meager wages. They know it because they live it.

Unfortunately, the McDonald's corporation does not seem to understand. Last week, a budgeting brochure that McDonald's provides its workers went viral on the Internet. It seems that, as the folks at The Atlantic said, ``McDonald's can't figure out how its workers survive on minimum wage.'' Let's talk about McDonald's.

McDonald's is the third-largest employer of low-wage workers in the country, with 860,000 U.S. workers. According to Glassdoor, the average wage for a cashier is $7.72 and for a crew member is $7.68. That is just pennies above the minimum. Even managers only make around $9.50 per hour, sometimes less.

The McDonald's budget brochure shows workers how to add up their monthly expenses to determine their monthly household budget. But wages at McDonald's are so paltry that its sample budget had to assume that its employees work two full-time jobs to earn $2,000 a month. Never mind that most fast food jobs are part-time, and finding two jobs would be very difficult in today's economy with so many unemployed and part- time workers looking for full-time jobs.

On top of requiring two jobs, this budget's estimated costs are either out of sync with reality or simply missing. It estimated rent at $600 a month, when in reality rent costs $783 for a one-bedroom apartment and $977 for a two-bedroom, according to the National Low- Income Housing Coalition. Those are national figures; rent is much higher in many parts of the country. The McDonald's budget also doesn't include necessities like child care or food. And I don't know where someone is going to get health insurance for $20 a month. Even McDonald's charges $54 a month for its most basic plan for one employee with no dependents, and that is after a year of working there. With just one dependent, it is $140 a month. And that basic plan still has deductibles and copays on top of the premium.

This just shows how difficult it is for tens of millions of people-- folks who do some of the most demanding work in our country--to make ends meet. But it's not just low-wage workers who are hurt when they can't keep up with costs. This hurts our communities and our local businesses as well. When our neighbors can't afford to go to the grocery store or the auto repair shop or the hardware store, all of those businesses suffer. They lose customers and sales.

But imagine if the lowest wage workers all got raises. They would take their car in for that long-needed repair. They would pick up a few extra items at the store. They would buy a new pair of shoes for their growing son or daughter. And those local stores would all benefit.

And when we see that 30 million people across the country will get a raise thanks to the Fair Minimum Wage Act, all that extra spending really adds up. The local grocery might even have to hire new people to keep up with rising demand. In total, my bill will add $33 billion to our GDP over its 3 years of implementation. And it will create 140,000 new jobs over that same period.

It's simple: more money in consumers' pockets means more spending, which means more economic activity, which means more jobs.

In fact, the financial and economic experts know this already. I have seen article after article, interview after interview from financial experts saying that we need more consumer spending in order to get our economy really going. Just last month, the Wall Street Journal interviewed the president of Naroff Economic Advisors. He analyzed a recent consumer spending report and said, ``We're in a situation where we need much stronger increases in wages and salaries if households are going to have the money to spend and the economy's going to grow faster.'' He added:

We need wages to grow significantly faster. They're coming

up from where they have been, but we need them to really

begin to pick up. We need stronger job growth, but more

importantly we also need average salaries and hourly wages to

grow faster. Those have been largely flat and that's the

problem. Right now, income's growing because we're creating

more jobs, not because people are making more money. We need

the average person to see their salaries go up before they

can spend more and drive this economy forward.

Well, we can raise wages in this country, and we can provide those raises to the people who need it most--not to CEOs but to the people serving our food, watching our children, helping us when we call customer service, and assisting us at our local stores. These are the people who are earning wages so low, they work two jobs and still can't make ends meet. And these are people who will go out and spend just about every dime in their local stores, boosting their local economies.

Minimum wage workers want to support themselves. Ninety percent of the people who would benefit from my legislation are adults, not teenagers. They are often parents. In fact, one in five working parents in this country will get a raise under my bill, and a third of single parents. A total of 18 million children have parents who would get a raise. Think about that. All of those millions of families with a little more money to spend. What a help that will be to those growing kids.

We owe it to millions of low-wage families struggling to just have a glimpse of the American Dream, to make sure that they get a raise and can support their families. But we also owe it to ourselves, to our economy. Our system works best when everyone has the opportunity to support themselves, to be productive, and to participate in our larger economy.

Raising the minimum wage is a simple and effective way to do this. And we know we can do it in a responsible way, with no unintended consequences. My bill would phase in an increase in three steps, giving businesses time to adapt. And because the minimum wage will apply to all businesses, no single business will be at a competitive disadvantage.

Also, my proposal is in line percentage wise with previous increases in the minimum wage. Decades of solid economic research shows us that these increases have not caused job losses. In fact, businesses stand to benefit from increased wages, because raises result in significantly lower turnover rates, which in turn saves those businesses money.

Four years without a raise is 3 years too many. We have to make sure that working families can keep up with the economy. That is why linking future increases in the minimum wage to the cost of living is so crucial. Small annual increases will be easy to absorb, but will make a big difference to American families. And it will help our businesses on Main Street as well as our national economy.

Mr. President, it is time to raise the minimum wage and link it to inflation for the future. It is the right thing to do, and it is the responsible thing to do. And it will give a much needed boost to both local economies and our national economy. I urge my colleagues to support this long-overdue legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Gabe Sandler, Madeline Walker, Katie Kasten, and Megan Miraglia of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Madam President, I am pleased we are finally at the point where we can vote on the nomination of Thomas Perez to serve as Secretary of Labor. Indeed, it seems as though the most important question before us today has gotten lost in all of the debate. Will Tom Perez be a good Secretary of Labor? The answer is unequivocally yes. There is no question that he has the knowledge and experience needed to guide this critically important agency.

His outstanding work in Maryland as their secretary of labor has won him the support of the business community and workers alike. Here is a quote from the endorsement letter from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce:

Mr. Perez proved himself to be a pragmatic public official

who is willing to bring differing voices together. The

Maryland Chamber had the opportunity to work with Mr. Perez

on an array of issues of importance to employers in Maryland,

from unemployment and workforce development to the housing

and foreclosure crisis. Despite differences of opinion, Mr.

Perez was always willing to allow all parties to be heard and

we found him to be fair and collaborative. I believe that our

experiences with him here in Maryland bode well for the

nation.

That is a pretty strong endorsement by a chamber of commerce for a nominee whom the minority leader this morning characterized as a ``leftwing ideologue . . . willing to bend the law to achieve his ideological ends.'' That is what the minority leader said this morning. That grossly unfair characterization is manifestly inconsistent with the experiences of the Republican leaders and business leaders who have actually worked with Tom Perez. These people clearly disagree with the minority leader's assessment of Mr. Perez's qualifications and character. I am informed that the minority leader never met with Mr. Perez. Mr. Perez offered to meet with him, but the minority leader said no. Yet the minority leader comes down here and makes these kinds of judgments as to his character and his integrity?

We have heard a lot of discussion about the controversy surrounding Mr. Perez's nomination over the last couple of days on the Senate floor. His integrity and character have been viciously and unfairly attacked.

I take particular issue with the minority leader's suggestion this morning that Mr. Perez doesn't follow the law or believe it applies to him. I respectfully suggest that the minority leader needs to check his facts. Those allegations couldn't be more to the contrary. Tom Perez believes deeply in the law. He believes that all the laws on the books, especially those that protect our most important rights--the right to vote, the right to be free from discrimination in the workplace, the right of people with disabilities to live in their own communities--Tom Perez believes strongly that these rights should be respected and enforced. These are the same laws that I sometimes think some on the Republican side would like to forget are on the books, but these laws matter. Voting rights matter. Fair housing rights matter. The rights of people with disabilities matter. And Tom Perez has fought for that.

We shouldn't shy away from using every tool in our arsenal to strengthen our enforcement of civil rights laws. These laws are part of what makes our country great. I am incredibly proud of the work Mr. Perez has done at the Department of Justice to make these rights a reality again after years of neglect. He should be applauded, not vilified, for the service he has provided to this country.

He is a leader whose career has involved passionate and visionary work for justice. Yes, he has had to make difficult decisions. He has faced management challenges. As we now know, he has been the target of accusations, mudslinging, and character assassination. I have looked carefully into Mr. Perez's background and record of service, as the chair of the authorizing and oversight committee. I can assure Senators that Tom Perez has the strongest possible record of professional integrity and that any allegations to the contrary are unfounded. They are simply unfounded allegations. There is absolutely nothing that calls into question his ability to fairly enforce the law as it is written. There is absolutely nothing that calls into question his professional integrity, moral character, or his ability to lead the Department of Labor.

I am particularly disappointed that Republicans continue to raise concerns regarding Mr. Perez's involvement in the global resolution of two cases involving St. Paul, MN--the cases called Magner and Newell. I spoke about that at length, and Republicans have talked about it. This has been debated exhaustively. Quite frankly, there is nothing there.

This is an issue the HELP Committee and the Judiciary Committee have thoroughly examined and found no cause for concern. The House Oversight and Judiciary Committees have also thoroughly explored the underlying facts. In fact, both the majority and minority staff on the House Oversight Committee have released reports on the matter. What the reports revealed is that the evidence is clear--Mr. Perez acted ethically and appropriately at all times. Indeed, he had clearance to proceed as he did from the appropriate ethics officers at the Department of Justice. Noted experts in legal ethics have confirmed this.

There is no foundation for any allegation of wrongdoing by Mr. Perez in these cases involving St. Paul, MN. Yet they keep being drummed up. But they are just allegations. Anybody can make an allegation-- especially here on the Senate floor. Members can make all kinds of allegations. I simply ask for proof. Back up those allegations. There is no proof. There is nothing to back up those allegations that somehow Mr. Perez acted unethically or in violation of law.

I am also deeply disappointed that my Republican friends are suggesting that Mr. Perez has been unresponsive to requests for information by Members of this body. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Perez has been as open and aboveboard as he possibly can be with both my committee and Members of the Senate. He has met with any Member personally who requested a meeting. He requested a meeting with the minority leader, and the minority leader said no. He appeared before our committee in a public hearing. He answered more than 200

written questions. He bent over backward to respond to any and all concerns raised about his work at the Department of Justice.

This administration has also been extraordinarily accommodating to my Republican colleagues--especially to their concerns about Mr. Perez's handling of the Magner and Newell cases while at the Department of Justice.

The administration has produced thousands of documents. They have arranged for the interview of government employees and access to transcripts of inspector general interviews. They have provided access to Mr. Perez's personal e-mails. They have facilitated almost unprecedented levels of disclosure to alleviate any concerns. They have responded to every request for information, including the letter by Chairman Issa that Senator Isakson submitted for the Record this morning.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the response to Chairman Issa's letter from the Department of Justice at this point.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute to conclude my remarks.

In short, the Department of Justice has made all e-mails available for review. It is true Congressman Issa has continued to repeat his requests, but that doesn't mean Mr. Perez and the administration have not been responsive, because they have.

The fact is this nominee has been more than thoroughly vetted. He has the character and the integrity and the expertise to lead the Department of Labor. The President has chosen Mr. Perez to join his Cabinet, and there is absolutely no reason why the Senate should not consent to this choice.

I am proud to support Mr. Perez's nomination. He will be an asset to the Department of Labor and to our entire country. I look forward to the opportunity to work with him in his new position to help all working Americans.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Tuesday, July 23, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Hearing on National Labor Relations Board Nominees.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Sarah Cupp of the committee staff on (202) 224-5441.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in executive session on Wednesday, July 24, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to mark-up the nominations of Kent Yoshiho Hirozawa, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board and Nancy Jean Schiffer, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board, as well as any additional nominations cleared for action.

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the Committee at (202) 224-5375.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Mr. President, is there a unanimous consent request pending?

Then I ask for 1 minute following the Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, the contentions made by the Senator are absolutely wrong. We had a hearing on this. We explored it in our committee. Instead of the 1,200 e-mails they cite, we are talking about that over a 3\1/2\-year period there were 35 e-mails located on his personal emails that touched Department of Justice business and were not forwarded to the Department of Justice, and those have been looked at, and none of them demonstrate that he acted improperly or unethically. When they were discovered, the e-mails were immediately forwarded to the DOJ server and are now part of the DOJ record retention system.

I might add that the 35 e-mails were made available to the House Oversight Committee staff prior to Mr. Perez's confirmation hearing, and the Senate HELP Committee staff have also been offered access to review all of those e-mails.

The contentions made by the Senator from Florida are just absolutely wrong.

Mr. President, today the Senate is now considering the nomination of Thomas Perez to serve as Secretary of Labor. It has been a long road to get here. I am pleased that we finally have the opportunity to consider Mr. Perez's nomination on its merits.

Tom Perez's life is a story of the American dream. The child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, he lost his father at a young age. He worked very hard at not very glamorous jobs to put himself through Brown University, working at a warehouse as a garbage collector and the school dining hall.

His incredible work ethic helped him graduate with honors from the Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. With such an impressive resume, Tom Perez could have done pretty much anything with those degrees and accomplishments. He could have made a lot of money in the private sector. But, instead, Mr. Perez chose to become a public servant.

He has dedicated his career to ensuring that every American has the same opportunity he had to pursue the American dream. From his early years at the Department of Justice, where he helped to prosecute racially motivated hate crimes and chaired a task force to prevent worker exploitation, to his time at the Maryland Department of Labor, where he helped struggling families avoid foreclosure and revamped the State's adult education system, Mr. Perez has demonstrated his unwavering commitment to building opportunity for all Americans.

It is this commitment to building opportunity for all that makes Tom Perez an ideal choice for Secretary of Labor. Of all the executive agencies, it may be the Department of Labor that touches the lives of ordinary Americans the most on a day-to-day basis. The Department of Labor ensures that every American receives a fair day's pay for a hard day's work and can come home from work safely in the evening.

It helps ensure that a working mother can stay home to bond with her newborn child and still have a job to return to. It helps workers who have been laid off, veterans returning from military service, others who face special employment challenges to build new skills and build opportunities for a lifetime.

It helps guarantee that hard-working people who have saved all of their lives for retirement can enjoy their golden years with security and peace of mind. As our country continues to move down the road to economic recovery, the work of the Department of Labor will become even more critical. The Department will play a vital role in determining what kind of recovery we have, a recovery that benefits only a select few or one that rebuilds a strong American middle class where everyone who works hard and plays by the rules can build a better life.

Now more than ever we need a dynamic leader at the helm of the Department of Labor who will embrace a bold vision of shared prosperity and help make that vision a reality for American families. I am confident that Tom Perez is up for that challenge.

Without question, Tom Perez has the knowledge and experience needed to guide this critically important agency. Throughout his professional experiences and especially during his work as the secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation--that would be Maryland's equivalent of our Secretary of Labor. During that time, he has developed strong policy expertise on the many important issues for American workers and businesses that come before the Department of Labor each day. He also clearly has the management skills to run a large Federal agency effectively. Perhaps most importantly, Tom Perez knows how to bring people together to make progress on even controversial issues.

He knows how to hit the ground running, how to quickly and effectively become an agent of real change. That is exactly the kind of leadership we need at the Department of Labor. The fact is, Tom Perez is an extraordinary nominee to serve as Secretary of Labor. I hope the Senate will overwhelmingly confirm him to this vital position.

This is not the first time this body has considered Mr. Perez's qualifications. In October 2009, on a bipartisan 72-to-22 vote, the Senate confirmed Mr. Perez to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. In more than 3\1/2\ years in that position, Mr. Perez has skillfully and vigorously enforced our Nation's civil rights laws and has revitalized the Civil Rights Division.

As has been documented by numerous inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility reports, as well as congressional investigations, the Bush administration had decimated the Civil Rights Division, failed to properly enforce our most critical civil rights laws, and politicized hiring and decisionmaking. That has changed dramatically under Mr. Perez.

As Attorney General Holder has said, Mr. Perez made it clear from the moment he was confirmed that the Civil Rights Division was ``once again open for business.'' During Mr. Perez's tenure as head of the Civil Rights Division, he stepped up enforcement of civil rights laws and restored integrity and professionalism.

I wish to review some of the successes under Mr. Perez's leadership at the Civil Rights Division.

That division settled the three largest fair lending cases in the history of the Fair Housing Act. Let me repeat that--three largest cases in the history of the Fair Housing Act.

As a result, the division in 2012 recovered more money for victims under the Fair Housing Act than in the previous 23 years combined. In total, $660 million in monetary relief has been obtained in lending settlements.

Later in my remarks I will go over some of the allegations made by Senators on the other side about Mr. Perez's handling of another situation of the Civil Rights Division that was also covered by the Fair Housing Act.

I wish to make this clear, that Mr. Perez, as I said, settled the three largest fair lending cases in the history of the Fair Housing Act. This shows he was vigorous in enforcing the Fair Housing Act.

The Civil Rights Division has been involved in 44 Olmstead matters in 23 States, matters that ensure that people with disabilities have the choice to live in their own homes and communities, rather than only in institutional settings. These efforts included four settlement agreements the division has signed with the States of Georgia, Delaware, Virginia, and North Carolina.

The Civil Rights Division obtained a $16 million settlement, the largest ever, to enforce the Americans With Disabilities Act. Reached in 2011, the settlement requires 10,000 bank and financial-related retail offices to ensure access for people with speech or hearing disabilities. Imagine that, almost 20 years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, we had banks and financial offices that were not making their services available to people with disabilities. The division had to go after them and, as I said, obtained a settlement, $16 million, the largest ever in the history of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The Civil Rights Division handled more new cases under the Voting Rights Act in 2012 than in any previous year ever. The division increased the number of human trafficking prosecutions by 40 percent during the past 4 years, including a record number of cases in 2012.

The division, since 2009, brought 46 cases to protect the employment rights of servicemembers, a 39-percent increase over the previous 4 years of the Bush administration.

Based on his stellar record of achievement at the Department of Justice alone, Mr. Perez deserves to be confirmed. But despite these accomplishments, some of my Republican colleagues have claimed Mr. Perez should not be confirmed. In fact, we had about 40 who voted against Mr. Perez to move to cloture. Now they are trying to say we should not confirm him.

As the chairman of the committee with oversight jurisdiction, and as chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Department of Labor, I can assure you I have looked carefully into Mr. Perez's background and record of service. I can assure everyone that Tom Perez has the strongest record possible of professional integrity and that any allegations to the contrary are totally unfounded.

What is clear is that Tom Perez is passionate about enforcing civil rights laws and protecting people's rights. In my view, that passion makes him not only qualified but the ideal person to be Secretary of Labor.

I do wish to address some of the specific claims we have heard and probably will continue to hear about Mr. Perez.

First, some have harped on the Justice Department's enforcement decision involving the New Black Panther Party. I hope my colleagues don't choose to rehash this matter. Mr. Perez had no involvement in this case, zero. Mr. Perez was not at the Department of Justice when the decision concerning the Black Panthers occurred. The charges were dismissed in May of 2009. Mr. Perez was not confirmed until October of 2009.

Second, some have questioned several enforcement actions related to the Voting Rights Act and the motor voter law, most notably in Louisiana, Texas, and South Carolina. They have pointed to these cases to claim that Mr. Perez is somehow biased in his enforcement of the law.

Again, I hope my colleagues don't try to rehash these meritless claims. The Department of Justice inspector general, an independent inspector general, investigated these claims and recently concluded: ``The decisions that Division or Section leadership made in controversial [voting] cases did not substantiate claims of political or racial bias.''

The inspector general specifically noted that ``allegations of politicized decisionmaking . . . were not substantiated.'' Anybody can make allegations, but you have to substantiate

them. The allegations that he was acting in a politically motivated or biased manner were never ever substantiated.

In fact, in the election-related cases Mr. Perez's critics have focused on, the courts ended up agreeing with the Department of Justice's conclusions that the law had been broken. This means that some oppose Mr. Perez's confirmation precisely because he did his job by enforcing newly enacted laws and by pursuing meritorious cases.

Is our confirmation process here so broken that the act, that act of enforcing duly enacted laws, becomes grounds for opposing a nominee?

Third, some Republicans assert Mr. Perez masterminded an improper deal whereby the City of St. Paul dropped an appeal in a case related to the Fair Housing Act in a case called Magner. In return, the Department of Justice decided not to intervene in a False Claims Act brought by a St. Paul resident in another case called the Newell case.

During this debate, I expect we will hear a lot about the alleged millions of dollars Mr. Perez himself personally cost the Federal Government in lost damages because the government did not intervene and prevail in the Newell case.

It is clear from all of the investigations we have done that rather than being the scandal as some Republicans claim, the evidence shows that Mr. Perez acted ethically and appropriately at all times. I wish to go through this because it is important to set the record straight from these kinds of phony allegations that have been made by some here about Mr. Perez.

The Magner case was a case involving the Fair Housing Act. In 2011, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether that act permits a disparate impact claim. This is a claim challenging actions that are not intentionally discriminatory but, in essence, having a discriminatory effect, called the disparate impact claim.

The case involved an unusual set of facts. Instead of minorities and low-income persons using the Fair Housing Act to challenge improper lending practices, zoning laws, or real estate practices, as is typical with the case with most Fair Housing Act litigation, this specific case involved slumlords--not low-income renters or people being taken advantage of. This case involved slumlords in St. Paul using the Fair Housing Act to challenge the city's efforts to better enforce their housing codes against those slumlords.

Let's look at this case. Lawyers make strategic judgments all the time about which cases should be appealed. Here it is clear why the Department of Justice had a strong interest in this matter. As they have often said, as we all learned in law school, bad facts make bad law. The Justice Department did not want the Supreme Court to consider the viability of the disparate impact principle in a case where slumlords were trying to abuse the law to their advantage. There was too much at stake here.

The Civil Rights Division, under Mr. Perez, had used, applying disparate impact principle, a standard of law recognized under the Fair Housing Act by each of the 11 courts of appeal to address the issue. They had used this, as I mentioned earlier, to reach settlements totaling $644 million against lenders who discriminated against potential homebuyers in violation of the Fair Housing Act. As I said earlier, that is more money for victims under the Fair Housing Act than in the previous 23 years combined. I think it is very clear that Mr. Perez led his division in applying the disparate impact principle to gain a lot of settlements and to help people who were discriminated against.

It was vital to preserve this valuable enforcement tool. Civil rights leaders, as well as Mr. Perez, encouraged the City of St. Paul to withdraw the appeal. Mr. Perez encouraged the City of St. Paul not to appeal the case to the Supreme Court against something entirely appropriate and entirely in the interests of the United States.

When Mr. Perez reached out to the city, the City of St. Paul raised the Newell matter, another case. This was the first time Mr. Perez had heard about the case. At that time the city suggested, the City of St. Paul, suggested it would drop its Magner appeal if the Department of Justice did not intervene in Newell, an unrelated False Claims Act case in which a St. Paul resident, Mr. Newell, had alleged--had alleged-- that the City of St. Paul had not met its obligation to provide sufficient minority job-training programs despite certifying to HUD that it was doing so. As I said, it is a little complicated.

At this point, the evidence further demonstrates that Mr. Perez acted with the highest integrity and ethics. After this became known to him, Mr. Perez consulted two ethics and professional responsibility experts at the Department of Justice. It was made clear to him that because the United States is a unitary actor, the two matters could be considered together as long as the Civil Division, which deals with False Claims Act matters, retained the authority over the Newell case, which was a false claims matter, not a civil rights matter.

A written response Mr. Perez received said--this again is from the ethics people at the Department of Justice--``There is no ethics rule implicated by this situation and therefore no prohibition against your proposed course of action''--your proposed course of action, which was to get the City of St. Paul to drop its appeal. At all times, Mr. Perez acted appropriately within the ethical guidance he received.

Further, contrary to some Republican claims, Mr. Perez was not responsible for the Department's decision not to intervene in Newell. In fact, the decision not to intervene in Newell was made by career attorneys and experts on the False Claims Act within the Civil Division--not by Mr. Perez, who was head of the Civil Rights Division. The head of the Civil Division Tony West at all times retained the authority to make the decision regarding the Newell case.

At the time the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Magner case, both HUD--Housing and Urban Development--and the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office had recommended intervening in the Newell matter.

After learning of the Department of Justice concerns with regard to the Magner appeal, the general counsel for HUD--Department of Housing and Urban Development--told the House that she reversed her recommendation, stating:

If the decision had been totally mine in October, and there

weren't any dealings with the Department of Justice that I

needed to worry about in terms of a relationship with the

Department of Justice, we never--we never would have

recommended intervening, and if it were my decision whether

to intervene or not, I never would have intervened.

At the same time, the person who led consideration of the case in the Civil Division was a very senior career attorney and an expert on the False Claims Act, Mr. Mike Hertz. Although Mr. Hertz has since passed away, colleagues testified that he told them after meeting with the City of St. Paul that Mr. Hertz said, ``This case sucks,'' meaning the Newell case. Again, this was the view of the Newell matter by Mr. Mike Hertz, the leading career expert on the False Claims Act.

So upon learning that HUD had reversed its position, the U.S. Attorney's Office became concerned about the ability to proceed with the case. Staff in the U.S. Attorney's Office told staff at the Department of Justice they were also likely to change their position on intervening in the Newell case.

As the ultimate decisionmaker in the Newell matter, the head of the Department of Justice Civil Division, Tony West, told the House:

[B]y early, mid-January, there was a consensus that had

coalesced in the Civil Division that we were going to decline

the Newell case. . . . My understanding is that certainly was

Mike Hertz' view, it was Joyce Branda's view, and that

represented the view of the branch, U.S. Attorney's Office.

Also, I think around that time period would be included in

that consensus, it was my view too. It was the view of the

client agency, HUD.

So what he is saying is, when we looked at this, we found the Newell case was not a very good case. Earlier today, it was suggested Mr. Perez tried to cover up the fact that the Magner appeal played a role in the Department's decision not to intervene. This is not correct.

Despite indicating that they intended to change their recommendation, by mid-January the U.S. Attorney's Office formal decision memo recommending not intervening in the Newell case had not been received. Mr. Perez reached

out to an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving a voice message suggesting that the Magner case should not be included in that formal recommendation.

When he was asked about the voice mail, Mr. Perez explained to the House his concern was not with the specifics of what was in the memo but rather was directed at trying to resolve an issue he thought might be the source of the delay. Mr. Perez told the House that when he ultimately spoke to the U.S. attorney:

[He] promptly corrected me and indicated that the Magner

issue would be part of the discussion. I said fine, follow

the standard protocols. But my aim and my goal in that

message and in the ensuing conversations was to get him to

communicate that, so that we could bring the matter to

closure.

In early February, the Civil Division formalized the decision not to intervene in the Newell case with a written memo. Unsurprisingly, that memo was completely transparent and clearly indicates that the Magner appeal was a factor in the decision not to join the Newell matter, but that the decision is largely based on the flaws in the Newell case.

As Mr. West noted:

[Declining to intervene] was a view we had all arrived to

having taken into consideration the numerous factors,

including the Magner case, as really as reflected in our

memo. I think the memo--the declination memo that I signed,

really does encapsulate what our view was.

Republicans claim Mr. Perez singlehandedly cost the United States millions of dollars. But the damage award received from a losing case is zero--zero. According to the Justice Department's leading expert on the False Claims Act, that is likely what the Newell matter was worth-- zero. So Republicans say we lost millions of dollars. How can you lose millions when the experts say their chances of succeeding at it were zero?

When the general counsel of the Department of Housing and Urban Development was asked about HUD's interest in recovering funds from the City of St. Paul, she said:

As a hypothetical matter, sure. Did we actually think that

there was the capability to do that in this case? No.

To summarize, Mr. Perez consulted with two ethics and professional responsibility experts. Those experts made clear it was appropriate to advance a global resolution of the two cases as long as the Civil Division retained authority over the Newell matter, which it did at all times. Senior career Civil Division attorneys believed the Newell case lacked merit, and the lack of merit to that case was the primary reason for the Civil Division's decision not to intervene.

Based on these facts, I do not know what the controversy is. Mr. Perez acted appropriately and ethically to advance the interests of the United States.

It is no surprise that experts in the legal community have made clear Mr. Perez acted appropriately. As Professor Stephen Gillers, who has taught legal ethics for more than 30 years at New York University School of Law, wrote, the Republican report issued last month suggesting that Mr. Perez acted improperly ``cites no professional conduct rule, no court decision, no bar ethics opinion, and no secondary authority that supports'' this argument. In fact, no authority supports it.

So you can make all kinds of allegations, and the House majority report made allegations, but they have no professional conduct rule, no court decision, no bar ethics opinion, and no secondary authority that supports their allegation. No authority supports it.

So the confirmation process has been thorough. Mr. Perez has been thoroughly vetted. He has been fully responsive, forthcoming, and cooperative, including during a thorough confirmation hearing in my committee, the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. Mr. Perez's nomination was officially received on March 19, nearly 5 months ago. In contrast, Ms. Elaine Chao was confirmed as Secretary of Labor the very same day her nomination was received in the Senate--I might add under a Democratically led committee.

These allegations are simply that--allegations made of whole cloth. Quite frankly, Mr. Perez has acted ethically and appropriately at all times. Perhaps that is why some are opposed to him. He has been vigorous in enforcing our civil rights laws, vigorous in going after slum landlords and lending agencies that abuse poor people who are trying to get decent housing. Yes, he has been vigilant at that--very vigilant, as I said, getting some of the biggest settlements ever in the history of this division.

Perhaps they are afraid Mr. Perez will be vigilant and strong in his tenure as the Secretary of Labor. We can only hope so. We can only hope he will continue in the tradition set down by the former Secretary Hilda Solis, who did an outstanding job as our Secretary of Labor. A former Member of the House of Representatives, Hilda Solis turned that department around from a department that had been moribund for 8 years.

I can assure everyone that Mr. Perez will always act appropriately and ethically, but he will always act forcefully to defend the rights of people to make sure our laws are enforced--those laws that protect the health, the education, the labor, and the pensions of the American people.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Carly Rush and Colby Steele, interns with my HELP Committee staff, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the debate on the confirmation of Thomas Perez.

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

Mr. President, I have some comments and statements to make regarding filibuster reform and nominees. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 30 minutes.

Mr. President, I wish to take the floor to talk about these critical nominations the Senate is currently considering. In all of the talk about these nominations, about the politics of recess appointments and everything, one thing that has been missing is a real consideration of who these people are. Let's bring it down to the personal. Who are these people? What have they done? What can they do to serve our country?

We seem to have forgotten, in all this chaff that is out there and all the arguments going on, what we are supposed to be doing to fulfill our constitutional responsibility to advise and consent to Presidential nominations. As I understand it, we are supposed to look at the qualifications of the candidates, determine if they are fit to serve, and beyond that, that is it. The answer with all of the nominees before us is an unqualified yes. They are qualified, they are fit to serve, and the President should be allowed to put together his team. That should be the end of our task. We should confirm them all today--or tomorrow, I guess, when they come up--and move on to the many other important issues facing this body.

I am going to talk in a little bit about the whole filibuster issue itself, but first I would like to talk a little bit about one of the first of the nominees who is up, and that is the President's choice to be our Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez. Without question, Tom Perez has the knowledge and experience needed to guide the Department of Labor-- one of our key Cabinet posts.

Through his professional experiences, especially his work as secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation--yes, he was basically the secretary of labor for the State of Maryland, and he developed a very strong policy expertise about the many issues that confront American workers and businesses. He spearheaded major initiatives on potentially controversial issues, such as unemployment insurance reform and worker misclassification, while finding common ground between workers and employers to build sensible, commonsense

solutions. It won him the support of the business community and worker advocates alike.

To quote from the endorsement letter of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce:

Mr. Perez proved himself to be a pragmatic public official

who was willing to bring differing voices together. The

Maryland Chamber had the opportunity to work with Mr. Perez

on an array of issues of importance to employers in Maryland,

from unemployment and workforce development to the housing

and foreclosure crisis. Despite differences of opinion, Mr.

Perez was always willing to allow all parties to be heard and

we found him to be fair and collaborative. I believe that our

experiences with him here in Maryland bode well for the

nation.

That is from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.

Tom Perez has dedicated his professional life to making sure that every American has a fair opportunity to pursue the American dream. Most recently, as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, he has been a voice for the most vulnerable, and he has reinvigorated the enforcement of some of our most critical civil rights laws. He has helped more Americans achieve the dream of home ownership through his unprecedented efforts to prevent residential lending discrimination. He has stepped up the Department of Justice efforts to protect the employment rights of service members so that our men and women in uniform can return to their jobs and support their families after serving their country.

As the Senate author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I am particularly pleased with Mr. Perez's long history of leadership on disability rights issues. While at the Department of Justice, he helped ensure that people with disabilities have the choice to live in their own homes and communities rather than only in institutional settings and to receive the support and services to make this independent living possible.

Like any leader whose career has involved passionate and visionary work for justice, Tom Perez's career has been one of making difficult decisions and management challenges. He has been the target of a lot of accusations and mudslinging and misperceptions. But we have looked--I have looked carefully into his background and record of service, and I can assure my colleagues that Tom Perez has the strongest possible record of professional integrity. Any allegations to the contrary are totally unfounded.

Again, Mr. Perez appeared before our committee. He was willing to answer any and all questions. To those who were at the committee, those who submitted letters--he has answered more than 200 written questions. He made himself available to any Senator who wanted to meet with him. He has been most accommodating, and I can say that the administration has provided all the access people have wanted to his personal e-mails. In fact, this administration, I can say from my experience in the last 29 years, has gone further in providing access to even the personal materials of Tom Perez than any President has ever done before, any administration has ever done before.

Again, he has been thoroughly vetted. He has the character, integrity, and expertise to lead this Cabinet, and the Senate should vote on it. When I say the Senate should vote on it, we should vote on it with a majority vote, but, no, Mr. Perez has been filibustered and held up to a 60-vote threshold. We know Mr. Perez has well over 50 votes--the majority--but because my friends on the Republican side are stonewalling this, he may not have 60 votes. But why should it take 60 votes, I ask? Why shouldn't it be a majority vote, up or down?

The same is true for our nominees to the National Labor Relations Board. Again, these are three exceptionally well qualified candidates.

Mark Pearce has been a board member since 2010 and Chairman since 2011. He was previously a union-side attorney in private practice. Before that he was a career attorney at the National Labor Relations Board. Richard Griffin, Jr., is former general counsel of the Operating Engineers Union and, again, a former career attorney at the NLRB. Sharon Block served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Congressional Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor and before that was staff on our HELP Committee. She was the senior counsel for Chairman Kennedy when Senator Kennedy was chairman of our committee, and she is a 10- year veteran of the NLRB.

Again, I have yet to hear one Senator question their qualifications. Indeed, even the ranking member on the HELP Committee conceded at the hearing that these candidates are exceptionally well qualified and that he admired their qualifications and their distinguished backgrounds.

They have been thoroughly vetted. They met with any Senator who asked. They have each answered more than 100 written questions. They have come before our committee in a public hearing, which is not typical for all NLRB nominees. They produced every document requested and answered every question they have been asked.

Again, if we concede that they are all exceptionally well qualified and well vetted, why can't we vote for them with an up-or-down majority vote? Some time ago my friend Senator Graham when speaking about the Senate's role and the nomination process said:

Our job, as I see it, is not to say what we would do if we

were President. Our job, as the Constitution lays out for us,

is to advise and consent by a majority vote to make sure the

President . . . is not sending over their brother-in-law or

sister-in-law or unqualified people.

So no one on this list is anyone's brother-in-law or sister-in-law, and everyone is exceptionally well qualified.

Again, if we are doing our constitutional duty, we would confirm all of these nominees tomorrow and move on to our legislative work.

Why aren't we doing that? Because my friends on the Republican side are hijacking these nominations and this nomination process to try to make changes to laws they know they could not change through regular order. Many times a single Senator or a handful of Senators might hold up a nominee not because the nominee is not qualified but because they want some changes made someplace else that they don't feel they can get through the regular order of business in the Congress.

For example, my friends on the Republican side don't like the National Labor Relations Board. So what do they do? They can't repeal it, so they make it inoperable. They make it inoperable by not letting us confirm nominees. In fact, one of my Republican colleagues announced his intention to filibuster the NLRB nominees 6 days before their nominations were announced.

In fact, he went on to say that an inoperable NLRB would be good for the country. If that is the way they feel, offer amendments to defund it, do away with it, and repeal the law. But to hold up qualified nominees from carrying out the law--the National Labor Relations Act is the law of the land. The National Labor Relations Board is constituted under that law to carry out its functions. So to hold up qualified nominees because they want to change the law, again, is to try to get something done that they couldn't otherwise do through the regular order.

This level of obstructionism is unprecedented in the nomination process. Repealing laws by fiat is not and was never intended to be a part of the Senate's advise and consent function. A Senator's dislike for a particular law or a particular agency certainly was not intended to prevent qualified and dedicated people from answering the President's call to serve their country.

Again, it is not only the nominees but the American people suffer from these unprecedented abuses of the process. The laws that these boards and agencies and departments enforce are important laws designed to protect people. When the system breaks down--or in this case, intentionally undermined--real people are hurt.

Let's take the example of the National Labor Relations Board. They have to have a quorum of three members to act. If there are fewer than three members at any time, the Board cannot issue decisions and must essentially shut down. The Board currently has three members, but Chairman Pearce's term expires in August--next month. At that point the National Labor Relations Board would be unable to function unless we confirm additional members.

Keeping the Board open is vital to employees, employers, and our economy. Without the Board workers cannot seek justice if they are discharged

or discriminated against for, say, talking with colleagues to improve their working conditions or for joining or assisting a labor union or for organizing a labor union. The only avenue available to these employees to file a grievance and have their grievance heard and adjudicated is to file a charge with the National Labor Relations Board. Without it, they have no options at all.

If the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, cannot function, workers effectively don't have no rights. Yet my Republican colleagues said an inoperable NLRB would be good for the country. Imagine leaving workers without any forum or recourse to have their grievances heard.

I could also say the same is true for the Consumer Financial Protection Board. As we know it was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act with a simple idea in mind: Consumers deserve to have a watchdog looking out for their best interests when using financial products and services from mortgages to credit cards, to student loans, to payday loans. Without the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consumers don't have that cop on the beat looking out for their well-being.

Mr. Cordray, who has been chosen by the President to head this agency, has carried out his mission admirably. If Republicans have their way, he will never be confirmed. Not only will they lose his leadership but the ability to adequately oversee these financial services and financial products in order to protect the American consumer.

By refusing to confirm Mr. Cordray--and if I am not mistaken, I believe his nomination has been pending for over 500 days. His nomination has been held up for 500-some days. By refusing to confirm him, the Republicans are using this nomination process to thwart the intent of the Dodd-Frank law, and that brings us to the crux of what is going on around here. It has been in the press so much lately. We are going to have an unprecedented caucus of the Democratic Senators and Republican Senators out here in the old Senate Chamber at 6 p.m. tonight to air these grievances.

As we know, last Thursday the majority leader laid down a number of these nominees and filed cloture on them. We will bring them up tomorrow. If the Republicans continue to filibuster, the majority leader has made clear his intention to change the rules of the Senate by using 51 votes to provide that nominations for executive branch positions are not subject to the filibuster rule.

So what we are talking about is the nullification of laws which are already on the books through the abuse of the Senate's power to advise and consent to nominations--nullification. Read your history books about nullification. It is one of the issues we fought the Civil War over: Could States nullify, on their own, Federal laws?

What we are seeing are the Republicans saying we can nullify the essence of laws or what boards are supposed to do by abusing the advise and consent clause of the Constitution. It is appalling and something has to change.

I first took to the floor on this issue in 1995. This is the Congressional Record, and it is dated January 4, 1995. It was an interesting time. The Democrats had lost control of the Senate and the Republicans were in charge. I--along with Senator Lieberman, Senator Pell, and Senator Robb, from the great State of Virginia--proposed a change in the rules that wouldn't end the filibuster but would keep the filibuster as it was kind of intended, a method whereby the minority could ensure that they could amend or offer amendments on legislation.

The right of the minority should be the ability to offer--not to have them adopted--thoroughly debate and vote on amendments. Secondly, to make sure the filibuster could be used to slow things down but not to be used to stop something. That is why I proposed on January 4, 1995, I said: It is getting worse. I also said: I believe in the long run it will harm the Senate and our Nation if this pattern continues. I went on to talk about the rising tide of the filibusters. I said: Clearly, this is a process that is out of control. We need to change the rules. We need to change the rules, however, without harming the longstanding Senate tradition of extended debate and deliberation and slowing things down.

When I laid down the proposed rule, I went on to discuss about how dysfunctional this place was becoming. If you thought it was bad in 1995, you should see what it is like now. Never in my wildest dreams did I think in 1995 that 18 years later the Senate would come to this point where we simply can't do anything unless we have 60 votes.

We now have a system whereby 41 Senators decide what we do. Essentially, that is what they do, and through the use of the filibuster, a handful of Senators can truly thwart the will of the Senate.

There has been a lot said about different nominees and what is going on here. There has been this accusation and that accusation. We have to cut through all that fog and all that haze. I referred to it in 1995 as sort of like the fog of war. It is sort of like the fog of war; we have to cut through it.

There is only one question we and the American public need to ask ourselves: Should a person selected by the President, any President, Democratic or Republican President, to be a part of his or her team-- after being thoroughly vetted, after having a thorough committee hearing, and after making sure there is nothing terribly wrong with this person and they meet the qualifications--have an up-or-down vote by the Senate with a majority vote or is it going to require 60 votes?

Again, the Constitution of the United States very clearly points out that there are only five times when the Senate needs a supermajority to act, such as impeaching the President, expelling a Member, adopting a treaty, joining a treaty, approving a treaty, and things such as that. For all other things, the Constitution envisions a simple majority vote. That is the real question. There is no other real question before us.

Before I yield the floor, I just wish to address an issue that has come up regarding the National Labor Relations Board nominees. I wish to set the Record straight. I have taken the time to put this in the Record. There have been accusations made on the Senate floor--I shouldn't say accusations. There have been comments made that two of these Board members are serving illegally and were illegally put on the board by President Obama. I am talking about Sharon Block and Richard Griffin.

Let's look at a little history. They were appointed by the President in January of 2012 as a recess appointment because the Republicans had already announced they would not let us have an up or down vote on them. Since we needed a National Labor Relations Board to function, the President gave these two people a recess appointment in January of 2012. They have been serving since that time.

They were taken to court to decide if the President had the authority to appoint them as recess appointees. The DC Circuit Court issued an opinion. The reasoning they used was contrary to any other court reasoning in the past about recess appointments. The DC Circuit said, No, the President could not make those appointments and, furthermore, the President can only make a recess appointment during the intervening times from one Congress to another for vacancies that arise between sessions. No other court has ever held that. There was another court that agreed the President couldn't make these recess appointments, but it didn't go quite that far; it just said that the appointment had to be made between sessions. Other courts, including the Second, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuit Courts, have all decided these things differently in the past.

What we have here is a decision by one court--the DC Circuit--taking a position that has never been taken before by any court. We have another court--the Third Circuit--that also narrowly defined the President's power. Then we have other circuit courts that have defined the President's power more broadly.

So what happens now? This case goes to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will decide this during the 2013-2014 term.

Sharon Block and Richard Griffin are on the NLRB. They took an oath of office to carry out their responsibilities. Some of my Republican friends are saying they should resign; they should get off the board because they are serving illegally. They are not serving illegally

until the Supreme Court has made a final decision. I have said before, the contention of some of my friends on the Republican side is like Alice in Wonderland: First the verdict, and then we have the trial. I don't know what the Supreme Court will decide. We don't know. We have had precedents in the past. There is a longstanding NLRB precedent when the agency faces a split in circuit court opinions. When the DC Circuit Court ruled in Laurel Baye v. NLRB that the NLRB needed three members to have a lawful quorum to act--again, this was contrary to the decision of other circuits--the two-member board, consisting of Republican Peter Schaumber and Democrat Wilma Liebman, continued to issue decisions until the legal issue was finally resolved in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, No, they need more than two. They have to have at least three people to make decisions.

The two-member board, during that interim time, issued decisions in hundreds of cases after the DC Circuit's adverse ruling, yet not one Republican Senator called on either member to resign. So what happened? After the Supreme Court issued its decision and the board now had more than three members, they went back and looked at these decisions, and if there were still open contentions they reviewed them and they issued another decision.

Some of the decisions were accepted by both sides and people moved on. Those that weren't were redecided by the board, including the two people who had served on that board during that interim period of time.

Again, we have a recent precedent--and this was just within the last 5 years, if I am not mistaken. So we have a recent precedent that demonstrates that both Block and Griffin are acting appropriately by remaining in place and that the NLRB is acting appropriately by continuing to issue decisions pending the resolution of this issue by the Supreme Court. They cannot and they should not resign because they took an oath of office to fulfill their duties, and they must fulfill that oath. After President Obama made these appointments, each new board member took an oath of office promising to fulfill their duties as a member of the NLRB.

I wanted to clear that up. They are not illegal. We await the Supreme Court's decision. I have no idea how they are going to decide because there has been a split of the circuits. As I have shown, this issue has come up before where we had a case split in circuits. Two board members continued to issue decisions. No one here asked them to resign, and this was in the last 5 years. No one asked them to resign. But now, for some reason, my friends on the Republican side want to deny the President his choice of people to serve on the NLRB. Two of those people, Ms. Block and Mr. Griffin--let's say the Supreme Court says the President couldn't appoint people during that recess. Well, OK. We are not talking about that now; we are talking about an appointment that is going to take place right now, and he should be allowed to have who he wants, as long as they are thoroughly vetted and qualified.

As I said, no one has questioned their qualifications. The President should have the right to have his NLRB board put in place now, and the question of whether the decisions made in the last year and 5 or 6 months--those decisions, just as the ones before in the case of the two member Board--went back and were revisited and the court issued its decisions. The same thing can happen here. So we shouldn't let anyone tell us these nominees are illegal. That is absolutely not true. People may think it is true, but it is not true.

I keep hearing: Well, now there are overtures from the Republican side to make some deals--to make a deal on not having the vote tomorrow on doing away with the filibuster rule on nominations. Oh, I have heard all kinds of things floating around: This deal here, that deal there, and we have a little deal here. Since I took the floor in 1995 as a Member of the minority, I might add, to propose a change in the filibuster rules, this issue has come up several times. It has come up several times since 1995. Every time there is always a deal. There is always some little deal made so we don't fix what is wrong with the Senate. We sort of paper it over and move on. I hope that doesn't happen again. Every time a deal was made and it was papered over, things got worse--every single time they got worse. They might have been OK for a little bit, but then we go right back to our old ways again. The old ways won't work any longer around here. They just won't work.

I hope the only deal that is struck is the Republicans agree--we all agree--that any President should have his or her right to put their team in place by a majority vote of the advise and consent of the Senate. They first should be thoroughly vetted with committee hearings and answering questions, but they are entitled to an up-or-down vote, with a majority vote in the Senate. That is the only deal that will get us out of this trap in which we find ourselves. I think it is the only thing that will reassure the American people that, once again, the Senate is going to function; it is going to do its job; it is not going to be thwarted by a handful of people--one or two or three or four people--and that we can actually move this country forward and let this President and the next President, who may be a Republican, have his team. I said that in 1995 when I was in the minority, I have said it in the majority, I have said it in the minority, and I say it once again as a Member of the majority.

I hope tomorrow we finally put an end to this nonsense of the filibuster on nominations, at a bare minimum. I would like to see the filibuster changed even more than that, but at a minimum get rid of the filibuster on nominations to the executive branch.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 15, 2013, at 3 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Strategic Sourcing: Leveraging the Government's Buying Powers to Save Billions.''