Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Sarah Watt and Erica Kaldenberg be granted floor privileges for the duration of S. 2343, the Stop Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act.

Mr. President, in a little over a half an hour we will have a vote on whether we are even going to proceed to the bill that will keep interest rates on our subsidized Stafford loans at 3.4 percent for the next year or whether they will go up double on July 1.

This is just a vote on going to the bill. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Republicans do not even want to go to the bill. Well, perhaps they are afraid if the vote really comes down to the bill itself and the, quote, offset, that maybe some of my friends on the other side of the aisle will think that students may be a little bit more important than a few wealthy people in this country who are not paying their fair share of taxes. But they are going to hide behind this motion to proceed. So that is what the vote is at noon. Are we going to even go to the bill so we can debate it, offer amendments, vote it up or down? Republicans do not even want to go there. They do not even want to proceed to the bill.

They have clouded it up in a lot of rhetoric about offsets and how we are going to pay for this. It comes down to a choice. We have a serious offer, a serious offer, a serious offset, one which is widely recognized as a terrible loophole. By closing that loophole--which affects a microcosm of individuals in this country--we are able to pay for keeping the interest rate at 3.4 percent for another year.

My friends on the other side of the aisle say, well, they want to keep the 3.4-percent interest rate, but they want to pay for it by eliminating--eliminating--killing the Prevention and Public Health Fund that goes to help make sure our kids do not get diabetes, to make sure we fight obesity, that we cut down on smoking in this country, that we make sure kids get their vaccinations--all the things that go to save us money in health care. That is the prevention fund. They want to take that money away from there. They want to end that program. That is their offset.

Well, if that is what they want, fine. But let's get to the bill. If they want to offer that as an offset, fine, we will vote on it. But they do not even want to go to the bill. Their priorities are not the students. Their priorities are protecting a small class of individuals in this country who use the Tax Code to avoid paying their fair share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.

We have heard all about: job creators, job creators; oh, we Democrats are going after these job creators. Well, the offset we have only affects subchapter S corporations, and only subchapter S corporations that have three or less stockholders--three or less. These are usually family members. They do not create any jobs--three or less. If you have five or ten or more, you are not covered by this; only if you have three or less, and only--only--if you have more than $250,000 a year in income. It is very narrowly drawn, very narrowly drawn. But the Joint Tax Committee scores this saying that over 10 years, by closing this loophole, we put $6 billion into the Medicare trust fund and $3 billion into the Social

Security trust fund. So there is $9 billion there of money where people using this loophole--a few people using this loophole--are able to escape paying their share of Medicare and Social Security taxes.

We are saying, let's close that loophole. Let's use those savings, put them into the Medicare and Social Security trust funds. Under the scoring system here, any revenue that is raised or mandatory cuts go to offset any increases in mandatory spending. Well, that is kind of budget jargon around this place. All it means is, by closing this loophole, we are able to do two important things: one, put more money into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and keep the interest rate for students at 3.4 percent for another year. Not a bad deal. I think a very good deal. But my friends on the other side are not going to go there. They want to kill the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. President, I yield the floor at this time and reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. President, how much time do we have?

Mr. President, I always enjoy engaging in good debate with my friend from Tennessee. He is a very thoughtful Senator, a very thoughtful member of our Committee too, and a good friend. Having been a former Secretary of Education, he has a depth and wellspring of knowledge about education, and I respect that greatly.

We obviously see things a little bit differently, but that is the nature of the animal here. I say to my friend that without getting into a point-by-point rebuttal, I wish to make it clear the President did put in his budget taking some money out of the prevention fund. I assume my friend knows I was not much in favor of that proposal. Then it was used later on to extend the unemployment insurance and also the payroll tax cut until the end of this year. That money was used for that. I was not very supportive of that. I thought we should have taken the money from elsewhere. At least the President has said that is it, no more. We will take a nick out of that prevention fund but no more. That is why he issued a statement of administration policy saying he would veto this bill if it had any cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

I used the analogy a while ago that the cut the President proposed, which was supported on our side, to extend the payroll tax cuts to the end of the year, I likened that to taking a couple pints of blood--we can take a couple pints of blood and still get our health back and go on. The proposal of my friend from Tennessee takes all our blood or all the prevention fund money. When we do that, we are dead. That is the analogy I have used. They took a couple pints of blood, which I was opposed to, but the prevention fund is still alive and healthy and is doing its job. It is going to do even more of its job in the future, as long as we don't take any more money out of it, and the President has said he will not do that.

I wanted to make that clear. That happened one time; no more. Even though Senators supported it on our side--and there were people who supported that on our side--they have said no more; we are not taking more out of that fund.

Lastly, I cannot help but also talk about this $61 billion the Senator from Tennessee keeps talking about. As I said yesterday, he is right in one way; that we did spend it. The question is, What did we spend it on? Well, as I said, $36 billion went to increased Pell grants. I don't think my friend from Tennessee would want to cut Pell grants. I think he is a pretty good supporter of Pell grants. That is where $36 billion of that went. And $750 million went to the College Access Challenge Grant Program, $2.55 billion went to historically Black colleges and universities, and $2 billion went for community colleges. So my friend may be right. Maybe we could reduce those interest rates a little bit. But what that money is being used for is basically students.

Now, I will be honest about this. Ten billion dollars went for decreasing the deficit. I don't think my friend from Tennessee would be opposed to that. And $9.2 billion went to other health care programs, including requiring dependent coverage in the health care bill. In other words, how many students now are covered under their parents' policies until they are age 26? They didn't have that before. Now they have it. So some of this money was used to invest in that or community health care centers. Yes, we did do that by providing some of the money from that--$9.2 billion of that--for some specific types of items in that health care bill.

Lastly, Mr. President, I just have to ask a question. Are we having a health care debate here or an education debate? I thought we were talking about education. We are talking about whether student loan interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans are going to double on July 1. Now it has morphed into some kind of big health care debate.

I have heard it said that the other side wants to keep the interest rates at 3.4-percent for a year. OK, fine. The question is, How do we pay for it? That is really the question. We have offered in good faith, I believe, a serious proposal: closing the loophole that affects a very small sliver of people in this country who are using this sort of a fog surrounding Subchapter S corporations to escape paying their fair share of Medicare and Social Security taxes.

Yesterday, someone on the other side said: Well, we can audit them. We can do IRS audits.

The IRS only audits one-half of 1 percent of subchapter S corporation filings. So if there is kind of a fog out there and I get to decide as a taxpayer, as a subchapter S corporation, whether I get paid or whether it is dividends, what am I going to say? Dividends. Because my odds are 95.5 percent that they are never going to audit me--95.5 percent. Those are pretty good odds.

That is why the Joint Tax Committee said that by closing this loophole--by closing this loophole--we save over $9 billion, put into the Social Security fund and Medicare fund, and at the same time be able to keep the interest rate for students at 3.4 percent. That is a serious offer. The offer from the other side is not serious. They want to kill the prevention fund. That is not serious at all, but that is where they are coming from.

Well, I say let's have a vote. Let's at least move the bill. That is what the vote is at noon, is moving the bill, getting it out there so we can have a debate on the bill and how we pay for it. Obviously, my friends on the other side of the aisle don't even want to bring up the bill. They do not want to bring it up. They are going to vote against cloture, against bringing up the bill to even discuss it and vote on it.

Mr. President, I will close by urging all Senators to support the cloture motion so that we can get to the bill and

students and their families will know that we are serious about this and that on July 1 their interest rates are not going to double on our middle-class families.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, here we are with an empty Senate Chamber, while families across the country are wondering whether they are going to have to come up with more money to pay higher interest rates on student loans beginning July 1. It is going to happen unless we take action.

We have tried to take action, but, frankly, my friends on the other side, the Republicans, won't even let us go to the bill. We had our vote almost 3 hours ago. We recessed for our party conferences, as we do every Tuesday. Here we sit, without being able to even proceed to the bill because the Republicans voted against closing down debate and moving to the bill and offering amendments and having an up-or-down vote.

The pattern is all too familiar, as we know, over the last few years: more and more filibusters, more and more cloture motions to end the debate. It is unfair to families and students all over America.

Here I address my comments to students. They are the ones who are trying to get a higher education, because they know that is the pathway, the gateway to middle-class America. Young people today know that the jobs of the future will require a higher education. They understand that. So many are scrambling to put together resources to pay for college. We had a young woman this morning, Clarise McCants, who spoke with us. She is the first in her family to go to college. She is from Philadelphia, and she goes to Howard University. She comes from a very poor background and a poor family. She relies on Pell grants, a work-study program, and summer work jobs, plus her subsidized loans. If I am not mistaken, she has somewhere in the neighborhood of $13,000 or $15,000 right now in debt. The last thing Clarise McCants needs is to have an additional $1,000 a year put on her student loan interest. That is what will happen on July 1, unless we act here. It is unfair to her and to millions of students all over the country that we sit here and do nothing, while they wonder whether they are going to have to pay more in interest charges on July 1. It is unfair.

We have on our side a solid proposal to keep the interest rates down for the next year at 3.4 percent, where they are now, rather than having them double to 6.8 percent. To do that, to pay for it, we have proposed that we close a glaring loophole in the Tax Code that applies only to subchapter S corporations. A lot of people say, what does that gobbledygook mean? A subchapter S corporation is for very small corporations. Compared to the giant corporations you normally think of, they are very small. Within that small universe of subchapter S corporations, as they are called, there is even a smaller universe. That small universe is comprised of professionals such as lawyers and accountants, people who give advice and do their own work, and they form a small corporation.

Because of the fog that surrounds whether someone is paid a salary or is paid from dividends, many people who form these subchapter S corporations are not paying their fair share of Social Security and Medicare taxes. We have proposed that we draw a bright line so that people know whether they are getting paid a salary or wages, or whether it is coming out of dividends. The Joint Tax Committee says this will raise for us $9 billion over the next several years. That is enough to help us pay for keeping the interest rates low. Our proposal is three things: closing the tax loophole, it puts more money into the Medicare and Social Security trust funds, and third, it helps us keep interest rates low for students in this country.

You would think that would be a no-brainer. I think most people would say that is kind of a no-brainer. But our friends on the Republican side refuse to let us even bring the bill up for debate and a vote. My Republican friends have suggested a different way of paying for this. They want to protect those few people in the subchapter S corporations--very wealthy people--from paying those taxes. They have suggested--the Republicans--that instead we take all the money to pay for keeping interest rates low out of the Prevention and Public Health Trust Fund--it is known as the prevention fund--which is in the Affordable Care Act. Again, that would drain all the money out. It would completely eliminate the program.

I suggest that people look at today's headline in USA Today this morning. It says that 42 percent of the adult population by 2030 is expected to be obese. Out of that, one out of four will be severely obese. The same report was also in the Washington Post this morning. The study predicts that 42 percent of Americans will be obese by 2030, which will shorten life, and they will incur large medical expenses. In fact, if obesity stays at its current level and doesn't increase, the savings and projected health care costs will be considerable--about $550 billion, $\1/2\ trillion. That is what the prevention fund is doing. It is out there working every day--it has only been in existence a couple years now--putting things in place to prevent people from being obese, to prevent kids from getting the adult onset of diabetes at 10, 11, and 12 years of age. In 1980, only 15 percent of Americans were obese. Today, it is about 34 percent.

What if we had in place in the 1980s, 1990s, and in the last decade the prevention fund that we have, which does all of the things necessary to help people make healthy choices and lead healthy lives and not become obese? Think of the savings we would have in our health care system today if we had a prevention fund like that in 1980, and rather than having 34 percent obese people in America today, we had 15 or 16 percent. Well, projecting that forward to 2030, if we don't act now, 42 percent will be obese. Again, it will cost us $550 billion in the next 20 years.

Preventing this, which we know we can do--we have evidence-based proof that certain interventions and programs work. Not only does it keep obesity down, but diabetes and heart disease, and related illnesses will be lessened, thus saving us even more money. The prevention fund is what the Republicans want to kill, eliminate. I think that is disappointing and disturbing, after all that we know and have seen in the past on prevention and public health and what we can do to prevent illness, obesity, and diabetes in children, to say we are not going to put the resources forward to prevent that.

We know that for every dollar we invest in prevention, we are reaping anywhere from $3 to $10, or more, in the first couple years. Here we are at an impasse again. Once again, the Senate is at an impasse because we cannot move to a bill. We can't amend it, vote on it, or debate it--other than talking about it right now as I am doing. The Republicans refuse to let us even get to the bill.

We will continue to tell the American people what is at stake here and what the differences are. These are policy differences. The American people should know what those policy differences are. The Republicans say they want to keep the student interest rate at 3.4 percent. We say we do, too. Well, OK, what is the difference? The policy difference is in how we pay for it, how we pay to make sure we keep the interest rates low.

I think the logical thing would be to have the bill come to the Senate floor and offer amendments. If the Republicans want to offer an amendment to take the money out of the prevention fund and kill and eliminate the fund, let them do it, and we will vote on it; we will see if we have the votes to do that. They can debate it if they want, and we will be glad to debate and discuss closing this tax loophole on subchapter S corporations. I think that would be a healthy debate and a policy difference that the American people should see, and they can decide between the two sources of how we are going to pay for this.

We are going to continue to talk about this because I think the American people should know what is at stake here in this filibuster that we have in front of us right now. I know my friends on the other side say that President Obama wanted to take some money out of the prevention fund. Well, that did happen, in order to extend for 1 year the unemployment insurance provisions and also the payroll tax cut this year. They seem to think that since we have already taken some money out of the prevention fund, we can kill the whole thing.

My analogy this morning was that it is one thing to take a couple pints of blood, but it is another to take all your blood. So they took some nicks out of the prevention fund, which I didn't support, but the fund is still healthy, alive, and doing its job. It could do more if it had more money. Nonetheless, it is still there doing its job.

The Republicans are saying drain all the blood out and kill the whole thing. I don't think the American people want to go there. It seems to me that it doesn't make common sense that we

would pit the health of the American people--and women's health especially, children's health, and the elderly, who are benefitting right now from this prevention fund. There are immunizations, childhood checkups, and provisions that go out into communities for healthier living in our communities. There is better nutrition for our kids in schools, fresh fruits and vegetables, and more physical activity. That is all in the prevention fund. That is what they want to do away with. It is too bad that they are trying to pit the health of women and children and the future against students. That is not right.

As I have said many times--and keep saying--I have heard from the other side that we are going after job creators. If we raise the taxes, you see, on subchapter S corporations--if we close that loophole, we are hurting job creators. First of all, the provisions in our bill on subchapter S only affect a corporation with three or fewer stockholders--hardly job creators. I mean, if somebody wants to start a corporation with 5, 10, 15, 20, that is different. This doesn't touch them. It only touches someone who has less than three shareholders, if their income is over $250,000 a year as a joint filer, and if they are a subchapter S corporation.

Some say: Well, you know, they can get audited. I had an example I used the other day of a person who was claiming he didn't have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes because he wasn't a subchapter S corporation. The individual was pretty ingenious. He had set up a subchapter S corporation, and he contributed--donated--his time.

In exchange he got dividend payments--profits--from this subchapter S, as did his wife and his child. There were three--he, his wife, and child, and he did not pay Social Security taxes. Well, he happened to get audited, and the Justice Department took him to court, to Tax Court, and the Tax Court found out he really was being paid. He was making a salary, an income, and he had to pay Social Security taxes on that.

Well, when I used that example, my friends on the Republican side said: Well, that is just it. All we have to do is just audit them, and we don't have to close this loophole. I had to point out that only \1/ 2\ of 1 percent of all filings of subchapter S corporations are ever audited. So if someone is out there and there is not a bright line as to whether they are salaried or are getting dividends--it is kind of a fog out there--why wouldn't they err on the side of saying: I don't have to pay those taxes because the odds are 99.5 to 1 they will never get audited. Those are pretty good odds--99.5 percent of the time no one is ever audited. If they are audited, they get a slap on the wrist, pay a little fine, and move on.

So what our bill does is to provide certainty. It provides certainty to subchapter S corporations that if they fall on this side of the line, they are salaried, if they have less than three shareholders. If they fall on the other side, they can get dividends, and that way they don't have to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. Quite frankly, I think that would be in the best interest of everyone, including the subchapter S corporations.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article that appeared in the Washington Post this morning by David Brown--the study that predicts 42 percent of Americans will be obese in 2030.

Mr. President, I hope the Republicans will talk among themselves. I hope they will listen to the students and their families who don't want to be hung out there this week and next week and on and on and on not knowing whether they are going to have to pay higher interest rates on their student loans. Let's have cloture. Let's bring up the bill, and then let's vote on it. If they have amendments, fine, we will vote on them. But at least let's move the bill.

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

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``The High Cost of High Prices for HIV/AIDS Drugs and the Prize Fund Alternative.''

For further information regarding this hearing, please contact the subcommittee on (202) 224 5480.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Identifying Opportunities for Health Care Delivery System Reform: Lessons from the Front Line.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224 7675.

Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in open session on Thursday, May 17, 2012 at 10 a.m. in SD G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Beyond Seclusion and Restraint: Creating Positive Learning Environments for All Students.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 228 3453.

committee on indian affairs

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 8, 2012, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 8, 2012, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Expanding Refinancing Opportunities to Improve the Housing Market.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 8, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 8, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Airland of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 8, 2012, at 3 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Marissa Wizig of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: We are now on the Stop The Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012, is that not correct?

Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. President, I can't emphasize strongly enough the importance and the urgency of the legislation before us--the Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012--which the majority leader spoke about. On July 1, unless Congress intervenes, the interest rate on Federal student

loan debt is set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. More than 7.4 million American students, including an estimated 255,000 students enrolled in Iowa colleges and universities, will be required to pay an average of $1,000 more per year of school.

The bill before us is straightforward and it is fully paid for. It keeps the interest rate at 3.4 percent, and the cost is offset by closing a tax loophole that benefits certain high-income professional service providers.

I wish to thank Senator Reid for his leadership in advancing this critical legislation. I also thank President Obama for making this legislation an urgent priority and for visiting college campuses across the country to speak out on this urgent problem facing our Nation's students and their families.

In today's global knowledge-based economy, an education beyond high school is no longer an option but a necessity. A worker with a bachelor's degree earns 85 percent more, on average, than a high school graduate. Almost two-thirds of the job vacancies between now and 2018 will require some postsecondary education, and more than half of those jobs will require at least a bachelor's degree.

You can see by this chart, as I said, 63 percent of the jobs will require at least some college education--either some college, an associate's degree or bachelor's degree or more. And that is by 2018. The demand is going to grow even beyond that. These statistics convey a very clear message: Higher education is the key to entry not only to the middle class but to a middle-class life.

Another message is equally clear, and that is America's economic competitiveness and growth depends on a highly educated and highly skilled workforce. That is why the ever-growing mountain of student loan debt is a major concern to me as the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and also a major concern for families all across America who are struggling to get by. It is a shocking fact that total student loan debt has now surpassed total credit card debt for the first time ever, with $867 billion right now in student loans, auto loans at $734 billion, and credit cards at $704 billion. So for the first time ever, American families now owe more on school loans than they do on their car loans or on their credit cards.

Again I want to bring this closer to my own home. It affects Iowans profoundly. Nearly 72 percent of Iowa's college graduates have debt-- the fourth highest percentage in the Nation. And those borrowers have an average of $30,000 in student loan debt, which is the third highest level in the Nation.

Over the past 3 years, President Obama and Congress have taken robust steps to improve college affordability and help our students succeed. From the Recovery Act and its unprecedented support for our education systems, to the student loan reforms that enabled us to help more students through larger Pell grants, and most recently our efforts to make it easier for students to repay their loans--this all happened in the last few years--we have made major strides toward the President's goal--and I hope it would be our shared goal--of reclaiming America's standing by 2020 as the country with the highest proportion of college graduates. Needless to say, it will be much harder to reach this goal if Congress allows interest rates to double on July 1.

As I said, more than 7.4 million American students will be required to pay an average of $1,000 over the lifetime of their loan for each year they borrow. Again, if you look at this chart, it shows what is happening. If the interest rate is paid at 3.4 percent, we are looking at about $883 in interest over the life of the average loan. Double that interest rate and it goes to $1,876. That is at 6.8 percent. So the average savings to the average student would be almost $1,000 a year.

I might add that the 255,404 borrowers in Iowa will save an estimated total of $254 million with this bill in front of us.

With today's tough economy, and given the very high unemployment rate among young Americans, it is absolutely unacceptable to ask middle- class families to shoulder sharply higher student loan interest payments. We must not allow this to happen.

If we look closer at the characteristics of students who will be impacted by this interest rate hike, we see that it affects middle- class families and vulnerable students from disadvantaged backgrounds at the very time when they are under enormous financial strain. If we look at who gets the subsidized loans, from this chart we can see, by family income, dependent students, their family income is less than $60,000 a year.

If we look at the independent student loan borrowers, their income is less than $50,000 a year, and 89 percent of them earn less than $50,000. Of the dependent student loan borrowers, 60 percent are from families who earn less than $60,000. I might also add that 7 out of 10 of those independent students here reported under $30,000 a year in income.

So allowing the interest rate to double would also disproportionately affect minority students who account for 40 percent of these borrowers. So 40 percent of these borrowers are minority students. This bill, again, would prevent the interest rate from doubling on July 1 for those borrowers.

So with the bill before us, we are considering a pragmatic and fiscally responsible solution to this problem that will keep interest rates low for more than 7.4 million students. Again, the bill is fully paid for, and we offset the cost by raising revenues in a way that will provide a solution to a longstanding problem in the Tax Code that has been subject to widespread abuse.

Now, let me just define how this measure is paid for. For many years we have seen avoidance of properly owed Social Security and Medicare taxes by some subchapter S stockholders who can declare that a portion of their income is effectively profit and therefore not subject to Social Security or Medicare taxes. This is not supposed to be a choice that is made at the whim of the taxpayer. It should be based on objective facts. The offset in this legislation does just that. It creates a bright-line test for a small share of subchapter S shareholders--basically, those engaged in professions such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants and lobbyists--whose financial gains they have come from the work they do.

It is narrowly tailored to cover only those subchapter S organizations in which there are three or fewer stockholders, and only for those earning $250,000 on joint filings. With this bright-line test, the Medicare and Social Security trust fund will receive the funds that are properly owed, which are not received today because they are counted not as income but as profits.

My friends on the other side of the aisle have proposed a different offset to pay for keeping the interest rate at 3.4 percent. The bill that passed the House of Representatives and the legislation proposed by Senator Alexander of Tennessee would offset the cost of this bill by eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund which was created by the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act.

In short, rather than put an end to a widespread abuse of the Tax Code, my friends on the other side of the aisle are proposing that we eliminate the sole dedicated source of Federal funding for critical investments in preventing disease and keeping women and children and elderly families healthy. They want to eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

Many of my Republican colleagues have acknowledged the critical importance of investing in prevention and wellness, which makes the use of this offset that is eliminating it all the more troubling. Preventing disease, expanding access to screenings, encouraging people to stop using tobacco--these used to be bipartisan goals strongly supported by a vast majority of Republicans and Democrats alike. So in the affordable care act we created the prevention fund, with the express goal of ramping up our investments in these prevention and wellness initiatives, again, with Republican support.

Here are quotes from two Republican leaders. Senator Kyl, on July 12, 2010, just a few months after we passed the affordable care act, said:

One of the things we did in the health care legislation was

to provide a lot of different incentives for preventive care,

for screening to try to help people avoid illnesses on the

theory that it would be a lot cheaper if we didn't do a lot

of treatment that was unnecessary.

I couldn't agree more.

The Republican leader, Senator McConnell, said in an op-ed the same year, 2010:

Congress should be able to work together on our practical

ideas that the American people support, such as . . .

encouraging wellness and prevention programs that have proved

to be effective in cutting costs and improving care.

That was less than 2 years ago, right after passage of the health reform law. But now Republicans are making outrageous partisan attacks on the prevention fund. I find this deeply disturbing and disappointing. It is not hard to imagine the message gurus, those who hone messages, telling Republicans: Here is all you have to do. Just smear the prevention fund by calling it a slush fund.

How many times have I heard that: the prevention fund is a slush fund? I have heard it in committee, I have heard it on the floor, I have seen it in print, Republicans calling the prevention fund a slush fund. Well, this is shameful. That term ``slush fund'' is a malicious untruth. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is the prevention fund has been a giant step forward for public health in our Nation.

Typically, prevention and public health initiatives are an afterthought. This means important community-based interventions often go unsupported. The prevention fund is making it possible for us to make national investments in evidence-based programs that promote physical activity, improved nutrition, and reduced tobacco use. Well, these are the investments we make.

This prevention fund, which Republicans want to eliminate, invests $226 million to reduce chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. That minimizes the $440 billion a year in health care costs from heart disease alone. It invests $93 million for antitobacco education and support campaigns to minimize the fact that over 6 million kids will die from smoking if the current rates persist. It invests $190 million for childhood immunization programs, again, to minimize the $3 billion a year in unnecessary health care costs right now.

I might just add the lead editorial in today's New York Times said, ``No Longer Just `Adult Onset'.'' That is the head of it. I will not read it all, but I think there are a few pertinent paragraphs in the Times editorial. It starts off by saying:

A study of diabetes in overweight and obese youngsters

bears an ominous warning about future health care trends in

this country. It found that Type 2 diabetes, a new scourge

among young people, progresses faster and is harder to treat

in youngsters than in adults. The toll on their health as

they grow older could be devastating.

This new study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Reading further:

Some experts suggest that young patients at risk of

diabetes need to be detected earlier and treated more

aggressively. But the long-term goal should be prevention of

obesity and of diabetes.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are bent on

dismantling health care reforms that could greatly assist in

curbing the obesity epidemic. The Republican-dominated House

last month narrowly passed a bill that would eliminate a

Prevention and Public Health Fund, established under the

reform law, in part to pay for lowering the interest rate on

subsidized student loans for this year.

The fund is already providing grants to state and local

governments to help pay for programs to fight obesity and

prevent chronic diseases, including diabetes, in the

community, the workplace and among minority groups that have

high rates of obesity and diabetes. Killing off this program

would be hugely costly to Americans' health and future health

care costs. There is no explanation for this move, except for

the usual anti-health care reform demagoguery.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the full editorial.

I don't know that I can make it any more clear than the New York Times editorial, and there is not the time to mention all of the ways this fund is already making Americans healthier. But I want to mention several representative investments that are happening, again, right now.

I mentioned those right here, the $226 million for diabetes and heart disease, the $93 million for antitobacco education, the $190 million, again, for childhood immunization programs.

I might just go back to that first on the heart disease because heart disease disproportionately affects women. Most people don't know that. I think most people would say the No. 1 cause of death in women today might be breast cancer. Not so. The No. 1 cause of death for women in this country is heart disease. Some 42 million women in America are currently living with some form of heart disease, and the World Health Organization estimates that a staggering 80 percent of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke could be prevented just from changes in smoking, nutrition, and physical activity alone. That is what this prevention fund is doing right now.

Moreover, this investment by the prevention fund isn't only saving lives, but it is saving money. Right now, heart disease costs our Nation about $440 billion a year. We can reduce those costs.

I might also mention smoking. Cigarette smoking also kills an estimated 173,000 women every year. If current smoking rates persist, more than 6 million kids will die from smoking.

The new national antitobacco ad campaign called Tips From a Former Smoker is being supported by this prevention fund. I think many of us probably have seen these ads. They are extremely powerful and effective ads, and they are going to save lives. In fact, this ad campaign is expected to inspire a half million quit attempts and help at least 50,000 Americans quit smoking forever.

I might just add that within 2 days of these ads first appearing, the number of phone calls to quit-smoking lines tripled from people who wanted help in quitting smoking.

I mentioned the immunization programs for kids. These investments from the prevention fund aren't just at the national level, they are also in our communities. This fund is helping States and cities and towns to implement evidence-based programs that meet their particular local needs.

For example, in Illinois, the State has made improvements to its sidewalks and has marked crossings to increase levels of student physical activity. Because of these improvements, the number of students who are walking to school has doubled. That is a good thing. So not only is this good for their health; it is expected to save the school system about $67,000 yearly on bus costs.

In Mobile, AL, Mobile County officials enacted a comprehensive smoke- free policy expected to protect 13,000 residents and visitors from being exposed to secondhand smoke.

All across America, the prevention fund is investing in proven, locally developed programs that promote health and wellness. These evidence-based programs not only improve health but, as I said, will help us save money in health care costs.

According to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, programs such as the National Diabetes Prevention Program could prevent or delay nearly 885,000 cases of type 2 diabetes, saving our health care system about $5.7 billion over the next 25 years. The National Diabetes Prevention Program is a public-private partnership of health care organizations working together to prevent the type 2 diabetes the New York Times editorial was talking about. Given that in 2007 diabetes alone accounted for $116 billion in direct medical costs, it is critical we continue these investments.

Again, here is how this investment is returned, the return on investment for public health care spending. For every $1 spent on childhood immunizations, we save $16.50--proven; tobacco control programs, for every $1 we save $5; for chronic disease prevention, for every $1 we save $5.60; for workplace wellness programs, $3.27. If we want to look at it just in terms of dollars and not just in terms of lives, we are saving money also.

The prevention fund's investments in cancer prevention also provide an opportunity to save lives and money. In 2007, the direct and indirect costs of cancer, which account for nearly one out of every four deaths in the United States, totaled about $123 billion. Earlier this year, researchers found nearly half of U.S. cancer deaths could be prevented--again, through the kinds of programs the prevention fund is funding today. Preventable U.S. cancer deaths, about 50 percent; preventable deaths from heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, about 80 percent. This is what the prevention fund is going after. For the life of me, I have never understood those who want to get rid of the prevention fund, yet are willing to pump untold billions, trillions of dollars into patching, fixing, mending surgery and health care costs down the line. Perhaps my friends on the other side of the aisle never learned the old axiom of Ben Franklin about an ounce of prevention is worth about a pound of cure. Here, an ounce of prevention is worth about 10 pounds of cure or more.

The list goes on. Recently, the Trust for America's Health released a study showing that a 5-percent reduction in the obesity rate could yield more than $600 billion in savings on health care costs over a 20- year period of time--a 5-percent reduction. Studies such as this one confirm what common sense tells us, that prevention is the best medicine for our bodies and for our budgets. That is why nearly 800 organizations have spoken out against these misguided efforts to slash or eliminate the prevention fund. These organizations, such as the Young Invincibles, the U.S. Student Association, the American Diabetes Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, have all said: No, don't cut, don't eliminate the prevention fund.

Despite misguided efforts to cut or eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, most Americans understand what is at stake. Prior to the prevention fund, for every $1 spent on health care, 75 cents went to treating people with chronic illnesses and only about 4 cents went to prevention: 75 cents taking care of people later on with chronic diseases that are preventable, only 4 cents out of every $1 went to prevention. This underinvestment has had devastating consequences. Nearly half of American adults have at least one chronic condition. Yes, you heard me right. Nearly half of American adults have at least one chronic condition, and two-thirds of the increase in health care spending between 1987 and 2000 was due to the increased prevalence of chronic diseases. So two-thirds of our budget, of the increase in spending, is on chronic diseases. Yet since we can reduce those chronic diseases through prevention, one would think we would want to increase that 4 cents a little bit--4 cents on the $1 we are spending right now. This prevention fund gives us an unprecedented opportunity to bend the cost curve.

How many times have I heard about bending the cost curve in medicine? The best way to do it is to prevent chronic diseases. The transformation of America into a true wellness society, a society that focuses on preventing diseases, saving lives and thereby money is the most cost-effective way to proceed. As we can see, to slander the prevention fund as a so-called slush fund is a shameful mischaracterization. This fund is saving lives and saving money. Eliminating this fund--as proposed by my friend from Tennessee--would be bad public policy, a serious case of misplaced priorities. The very idea that Republicans would slash prevention in public health care so a small group of high-income taxpayers can continue to abuse the Tax Code I find simply unacceptable.

Before I close my remarks, I would like to address an egregious mischaracterization that I have heard from the other side of the aisle. Some Republicans claim Democrats, in our historic reform of the student loan program, took money that had been going to students and used it to pay for the health care bill. I have heard that a lot of times. Again, that is simply not so. The reforms passed by Democrats in Congress--I might add over vehement Republican opposition--did not take a single dime from students. Instead, the

bill eliminated wasteful, taxpayer-funded subsidies to banks by converting all new Federal student loans to a more stable, reliable, cost-efficient direct loan program and redirected that money to students, to deficit reduction, and some important health care reforms.

The money did not come from students. The money came from the subsidization we have been giving to banks. Specifically, thanks to the huge savings generated by eliminating wasteful subsidies to banks, what we were able to do with that--we provided increases in the maximum Pell grant award to keep up with inflation. We provided funding for minority-serving colleges and universities. We made a major investment in community colleges, creating a community college and career training grant program. We were able to make loan repayment more manageable by capping a new borrower's loan payment at 10 percent of their net income and, for some, forgiving any remaining debt after 20 years of payment.

That was all done by stopping these wasteful subsidies to banks and putting it into the direct loan program. Again, we provided more than $10 billion in deficit reduction at the same time we were able to expand the Community Health Center Program to ensure access to lifesaving medications and to expand vital consumer protections to millions of Americans with private health insurance--protections we put in such as banning lifetime limits, requiring dependent coverage, prohibiting cancellation of coverage due to an illness. In other words, thanks to the education reform bill, students benefited, the middle class benefited, taxpayers benefited, and health care consumers benefited. For my friends on the Republican side, had they had their way and had those reforms been defeated, only the banks would have benefited.

Indeed, I kind of detect a pattern. When we Democrats were fighting to end this subsidy to banks so we could dramatically increase college grants and loans for middle-class and disadvantaged students, my friends on the other side of the aisle stood with the banks and did everything they could to kill the reforms. Likewise, today Democrats are fighting to prevent a 100-percent student loan rate hike. We want to fully pay for it by correcting a provision in the Tax Code that allows a small group of wealthy Americans to avoid paying some Social Security and Medicare taxes. Republicans are going to the mat to prevent those wealthy taxpayers from having to pay their fair share. Instead, how do they want to pay for keeping the interest rate down? By gutting the prevention fund, killing it, eliminating it--the very fund that is investing in initiatives to fight cancer and heart disease and to protect the health of our children, our women, and our elderly.

What they are proposing is bad public policy. It is bad priorities. We need to be putting the middle class first. We need to be putting students struggling to pay for college first. We need to be putting public health care and prevention first--put all those out there. To make these things possible, we should ask a small group of wealthy Americans to put their country first and stop abusing this provision, this loophole in the Tax Code. I urge my colleagues to support the Stop The Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act and to support the offset currently in the bill.

Five years ago, the original law that reduced the student loan interest rate to 3.4 percent passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed by a Republican President. I hope we can find common ground to pass this new legislation with that same kind of broad and bipartisan support.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side?

Mr. President, am I correct the time for debate under this bill will expire at 4 p.m.?

I thank the Chair. Mr. President, after listening to the previous three speakers, it is hard to know where to begin to correct the record with all the misstatements. Maybe I will kind of work backward. My good friend, the Senator from Wyoming, gave a whole list of different things about where this money was spent. He mentioned something about California and fast food construction. I did not get it all. But I am informed there was absolutely no money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund that went for that program.

If the Senator from Wyoming has any evidence to the contrary, I would be more than delighted to look at it. Then there was the one about the dogs and cats in Nashville, TN. I thought the newspaper article that was in the Hill newspaper put that one to rest, but I guess it did not. It just goes on and on.

That money actually was funded by private grant money. I guess PetSmart, from what I am told, put that money in for pet spaying and neutering in Nashville, TN. Again, that money did not come from the Prevention and Public Health Fund. If the Senator from Wyoming has evidence to the contrary, I would like to look into that. Then the Senator from Wyoming mentioned the New York Department of Health using $3 million to lobby in New York for a soda tax initiative. First of all, I will tell my good friend, the Senator from Wyoming, there is an absolute prohibition on Federal moneys being used for lobbying. So if anyone has any evidence of Federal funds being used to lobby, please let us know. We would like to take them to task for that and sic the Justice Department on them.

That did not happen. It was not CDC funding. This was funding by the New York State Department of Health. Again, none of the CDC money we used in the prevention fund was used for that. Those were just three of--I do not how many examples my friend the Senator from Wyoming had, but those are just three of them there that absolutely had nothing to do with the Prevention and Public Health Fund, but somehow this has gotten out in the popular press.

The city of Nashville received a $7.5 million grant to provide free pet spaying and neutering. You put that out there and the radio talk shows pick up on that and all that kind of stuff. Then they bat this around and it gets everyone upset. My God, we are using tax money now to neuter dog and cats in Nashville, TN. Who would not be opposed to that? It is not true. That is all. It is simply not true. As I say, if anyone has any evidence to the contrary, please let me know and we will get the Justice Department after them.

Again, I say to my friends on this side of the aisle that talk about seriousness of whether--how we are going to pay for this. I heard it said by the previous three speakers we all agree the interest rate should not go up. OK. We have before us, as I understand, two choices right now. The Republican choice is the one passed by the House of Representatives a couple weeks ago, which would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund and put that money in to keep the interest rate down at 3.4 percent rather than letting it go up to 6.8 percent.

So they would eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund, about which I spoke at length a little while ago. Our bill would close a loophole in the Tax Code that allows certain subchapter S corporations to avoid paying their FICA taxes, their Social Security and Medicare taxes, because of the way they are arranged.

I am going to get into that in a minute and try to explain exactly how that is set up. We are not going after small businesses at all. We are simply providing more of a bright line on what are legitimate dividends from a corporation, which does not have to pay FICA taxes, and what are wages and salaries that they do have to pay FICA taxes on.

Right now, in certain subchapter S corporations, it is kind of cloudy. It is kind of cloudy. As someone on the other side said, we have seen this big increase in subchapter S corporations. Well, of course. People who have had partnerships before or sole proprietorships all of a sudden are rushing to establish subchapter S corporations, with very few stockholders, to get away from paying their legitimate taxes on Social Security and Medicare.

Our bill would close that loophole. We have these two choices in front of us. Which do we want? If those are the only two, do we want to eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund or do we want to put a bright line on subchapter S corporations and say if they cross that line they have to pay their Social Security and Medicare taxes? Maybe we can have that vote. Maybe we have to actually have that vote here.

I would like to see if my Republican friends want to eliminate the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Earlier this year, from our committee I passed out to every Member of the Senate how much money went to the individual States and what it was used for in the Prevention and Public Health Fund because I wanted to be transparent and above board. So I pointed out, for example--these are not private things; these are public. I pointed out to my friend from Tennessee that $4,669,362 was made available to Tennessee in this Prevention and Wellness Fund for fiscal year 2011. I listed all the things it went to: community programs to promote healthy living, detection and prevention of infectious diseases, clinical preventive services, strengthening of public health infrastructure, tobacco prevention programs, some to East Tennessee State University for the training and preparing of a public health workforce, Vanderbilt University Medical Center for clinical preventive services.

I get right down to the dollar, where it all went. I am not trying to hide anything. I say to my friend from Tennessee, ask these people where did this money go. We know where it went. Does my friend propose that we cut out all this money that went to the State of Tennessee?

Here is Arizona: $7,758,944 went to Arizona in 2011. I gave this to my friend from Arizona listing exactly where it went and what it went for in prevention and wellness. Does my friend say this ought to be eliminated? Wyoming got $1,785,534. Every bit of it is listed here, exactly where it went.

If we accept the Republicans' proposal, we do away with all of that, all prevention and public health. It has been said on the other side that even our President wanted to do away with or take money out of it. I point out that the President did propose earlier this year as a pay- for for the extension of the unemployment insurance program and for other things to keep tax rates from going up that we take $5 billion out of this program over the life. But I think the President made it very clear that was it.

In fact, we have a Statement of Administration Policy on this bill which states unequivocally that the President will veto this bill if there are any cuts in the Prevention and Public Health Fund. While I was personally opposed to the $5 billion that the President proposed taking out--and was taken out of the fund--I can say that, well, that ought to be the last penny taken out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund. Now we see that the President agrees, no more. We took $5 billion out and that is the end of it.

People keep calling it a slush fund. I have here where every dollar went in all of the States, what it went for. It did not go to neutering dogs in Nashville, TN, regardless of how many times we may read it or hear it on Rush Limbaugh or Joe Scarborough or anyplace else. It is not true. I challenge anybody, if they have that evidence, let's see it.

Again, I just think what the Republicans have offered as an offset is not serious. I cannot believe they want to do away with the Prevention and Public Health Fund. On the other hand, is our proposal serious? Do we want to really close this loophole for professional corporations under subchapter S? Yes, we do. I think that is serious. There has been a lot of abuse of people using the cover of subchapter S to avoid paying their taxes. A number of cases have come before us that I have seen where people have used subchapter S as a means of not paying their fair share of taxes.

One of the examples that just came through was former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, a former Member of this body, a former Presidential candidate and Vice Presidential candidate. I will not get into his personal life; that is something else. But former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina claimed, over a multiyear period, that $26 million in revenue from his subchapter S corporation was unearned. He claimed he didn't really work for a large share of his income from winning court cases. By making this argument, he avoided nearly $750,000 in payroll taxes.

That is not fair. That is an inappropriate gimmick. It is a gimmick when we allow a professional to give his or her spouse and children 95 percent of the stock in their subchapter S corporation and then declare it their profit and not their work as an accountant or as a lawyer that is responsible for the income. That is a gimmick. That is why people are rushing to form these subchapter S corporations.

We have a recent case where the taxpayer was an S corporation, an accounting practice owned by a CPA and his wife. The CPA served as the corporation's president, treasurer, director, and only full-time accountant but received no salary. Imagine that. He received no salary. Instead, the CPA ``donated'' his services to the corporation and withdrew earnings from the entity in the form of dividend distribution. During the years under audit, the CPA worked for the corporation approximately 36 hours per week. In addition to testifying that his work was crucial to the continued success of the corporation's business, the CPA also indicated that dividends were drawn in lieu of salary to reduce employment taxes. Imagine that. The corporation asserted that the CPA was not an employee, and even if he was an employee dividend distributions cannot be taxed as wages.

Well, he was caught in an audit. But, we know audits are few and far between. So the court found the shareholder to be an employee who performed significant services. His wages encompassed all remuneration for services, and it constituted all wages for tax purposes. That is what is happening. That is what is happening out there.

What does our bill do? Right now, if you are in a subchapter S corporation, you, the person, get to say whether what you are making is income or dividends. I heard mentioned something about Warren Buffett. I don't know his whole deal, but it seems to me that most of his income is from dividends and capital gains. We are not talking about that. We are talking about--this would be--if we took the subchapter S situation and applied it to C corporations, which Mr. Buffett would be in, then Mr. Buffett would face a board with independent people making a decision on officers' salary.

Now with subchapter S corporations with only one, two or three stockholders, they are making their own decisions on their personal taxes, whether they are dividends or salary. What do you think people decide?

Again, an accountant tells a subchapter S corporation it can do 40 percent and it would not get audited, they do 40 percent and don't get audited, and they don't have to pay Social Security or Medicare taxes on what is really gain.

What do we do in this bill? We say: Look, if you are a professional subchapter S corporation and you have three or fewer shareholders, then we draw a bright line. If your income is over $250,000 a year for a joint filer, and if in fact there was earned income, then it would be subject to FICA taxes. That is the bright line that we are drawing. In fact, what it will do is give subchapter S corporations a better idea of whether profits are earning money or dividends.

Quite frankly, not only are we helping to raise money for the Medicare

and Social Security trust funds, we are actually making it better for people out there who may not know where they fall. Is it dividends or is it earned income? Our bill only covers a very narrow share of S corporations. It deals only with certain professional corporations. It doesn't touch manufacturing or retail activities. It doesn't touch real estate activities. It covers the area where the abuse is most prevalent right now.

I want to speak for a minute on what Senator Alexander was talking about earlier about the money that came from students and whether it was given back to students. He said that instead of 6.8 percent, it would have been 5.3 percent. We voted on that and it failed. So we did speak on that.

Again, what I point out is that most of this money--most of the money that we had in that $61 billion, most of that indeed went for students. I think I had it here--of that $61 billion, $36 billion went to Pell grants, helping raise Pell grants; $750 million went to bolster college access for students through the College Access Challenge Grant Program; $2.55 billion went to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and minority-serving institutions; $2 billion went to community colleges; about $10 billion was used for deficit reduction; $9.2 billion, as I said, went to certain health care activities.

Guess what one of those was that was paid for. Requiring dependent coverage--saying that a young person can stay on his or her parents' health care policy until age 26. Does that help students? Of course it helps students. How many young people who go off to college, and they are in college and maybe drop out a little while to make some money and then go back to college and maybe even graduate, but they don't have a full-time job--they can stay on their parents' policy until they are age 26.

I cannot tell you how many people I have heard from in my State of Iowa who have said what a godsend this is to them and their kids who are students. I make no apologies for the fact that some of this money out of that $61 billion that went to subsidize banks went to help students stay on their parents' health care policy.

When they say some of the money came from students, it didn't. The $61 billion all came from cutting the subsidy to banks. The great bulk of it, all but about--well, $10 million went to pay the deficit down, and $9.2 billion went to things such as banning lifetime limits, requiring dependent coverage, expanding community health centers, that type of thing. So none of it actually came from students themselves. It all came from closing the loophole where banks were making on that money.

The next thing that was said I wanted to correct was that the Medicaid expansion in the affordable care act--100 percent of that expansion is paid for in the Federal side, not the stateside. Senator Alexander talked about this and was saying we are expanding Medicaid, which is a burden on the States. That would be true, but for the fact that 100 percent of this expansion is paid for by the Federal Government. I think that phases down to 90 percent in the future, but it never comes below 90 percent.

If the Senator would like to debate whether Medicaid should be all Federal, or Federal and State, we can do that and maybe even find some common ground on that, but that is not the case before us. I didn't think the debate on this bill to keep student interest rates low would now morph into a debate on health care. But if you want to have a debate on health care, I will be more than happy to do so, and whether or not we should use money from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to pay for it.

So, again, I would say no money--no money--comes out of the Medicare trust fund to pay for this bill--none--and certainly none comes out of the Social Security trust fund. The money that is raised goes to the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund. None of it is actually diverted from the trust funds.

Under the budget rules we are operating under, money raised can be used as an offset even though that money is raised for Medicare. I want to make it crystal clear that the money we are raising from closing this loophole on subchapter S corporations, none of it--none of it-- actually comes out of the trust funds for student loans or to keep the interest rate low. It does go to the Medicare and Social Security trust funds.

Under the Republican proposal, we would not get any more money into Medicare or Social Security. They would just do away with the Prevention and Public Health Fund and take that money and use it to offset keeping the interest rates low, but not one nickel of that would go to Medicare or Social Security. Our bill would help those trust funds.

So our bill really has three benefits: First, it closes a tax loophole, provides for more definitive application of what is subchapter S income or dividends for a narrow class of companies-- earned income or unearned income; second, it provides money to the Social Security trust fund and Medicare trust fund, which is needed; and third, it allows the student interest rate loans, Federal subsidized loans, to stay at 3.4 percent for the next year.

Sometime in the next year, obviously, we are going to have to figure out a long-term fix for this or what we want to do on these subsidized loans in the future and how we are going to pay for this down the road. In the meantime, as everyone has said on both sides, we both agree it ought to stay at 3.4 percent for the next year.

So I guess the debate does revolve around how we pay for it. Again, from my viewpoint--not my viewpoint; the House already voted last week to kill the Prevention and Public Health Fund, and that is what the Republicans are proposing here.

Again, to refer back to where I started earlier this afternoon, I think the lead editorial in the New York Times today was quite clear in talking about the findings found in the New England Journal of Medicine about what is happening with type 2 diabetes and how devastating that is going to be in the future. They said the long-term goal should be the prevention of obesity and diabetes. The editorial said:

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are bent on

dismantling health care reforms that could greatly assist in

curbing the obesity epidemic. The Republican-dominated House

last month narrowly passed a bill that would eliminate a

Prevention and Public Health Fund, established under the

reform law in part to pay for lowering the interest rate on

subsidized student loans for a year.

The editorial noted that there is no explanation for this move except for the usual anti-health care reform demagoguery and noted that the fund is already providing grants to state and local governments to help pay for programs to fight obesity and prevent chronic diseases, including diabetes, in the community, the workplace, and among minority groups.

So I guess that is really the argument--how do we pay for it? It comes as no surprise, I am sure, when I say that I think closing this loophole is much better than doing away with the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I say to my good friend from Wyoming--and he is my good friend, and we do a lot of good work together--I wish we could have this bill in our committee. I think we could work it out. But the fact is, to raise the money, it has to come from the Finance Committee, and we don't have jurisdiction over that. If we had jurisdiction over that, we could probably work it out. We have a good way of working things out in our committee. But we don't have jurisdiction over finance on this darned thing. If we did, we could probably figure it out.

Well, I think that is where this came from. I don't know.

I would also say to my friend from Wyoming, because I was listening to him, I think it is fair, if we are going to have a vote on ours, that we ought to have a vote on yours. I think that if we are going to have a vote, we ought to have a vote on ours, which is the subchapter S corporation, and see how that falls, and have a vote on whether we want to end the Prevention and Public Health Fund and use that money. I would like to have that vote. I would love to have that vote. I would love to see how my friends on the other side of the aisle want to vote on whether they want to kill the Prevention and Public Health Fund.

I would also say that on this subchapter S corporation issue, the IRS right now audits about one-half of 1 percent of the returns from subchapter S corporations. So they have to think, what are the odds they are ever going to catch me, and if they do, they pay a fine and that is it. The IRS doesn't have the personnel to do everyone.

What we are doing, I wish to say again, just to make it very clear, that because of the sort of fog that surrounds subchapter S corporations right now, the IRS simply can't audit them all. They don't have the personnel to do that, and some claim that there is a lot of questions about whether something is income or dividends. But let me repeat again what our bill does.

We create a bright-line test that affects only a narrow class of subchapter S corporations. It affects only professional subchapter S corporations, those engaged in professions such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants, lobbyists, where the gain is due to the professional work. This provision does not include subchapter S gains from unrelated retail, wholesale or manufacturing activities.

The provision only covers subchapter S corporations where there are three or fewer stockholders. It only covers those earning more than $250,000 a year as a joint filer, and it only covers gains when 75% or more are attributable to 3 or fewer stockholders.

So if a subchapter S company has income that is partially from professional activities, such as lobbying, and partially from other activities, such as real estate investments, the investment income does not fall under the rule.

The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Treasury Inspector General for

Tax Administration have both issued reports that show that underreporting of earned income subject to FICA taxes is a significant issue. Using IRS data, the Government Accountability Office in 2009 calculated that in 2003 and 2004 tax years the net shareholder compensation underreporting amounted to nearly $23 billion. Since then, the number of subchapter S organizations has been increasing rapidly, and I would suggest that is a main reason why.

Lastly, I just wish to point out for the record, to my friend from Wyoming, that the House bill did not go through the committee either. They brought it directly to the floor. It did not go through the Education Committee. It only went through the Rules Committee and then to the floor. So they did the same thing. They didn't go through their committee either. Again, I am hopeful we can work this out. But if we can't, I say to my friend, I hope we do have an up-or-down vote on both provisions.

There was one other thing I wished to mention before I leave the floor this afternoon and leave this debate on the student interest rate bill; that is, I heard time and time again from the other side about the fact that the President took $5 billion out of this and the fact that I said earlier: Yes, and that was the limit and that was all and he didn't want any more taken out of it. Someone said, but he has $4.5 billion in his budget to take out.

What happened, the President did put $4.5 billion in his budget to take out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund--which I hope comes as no surprise to anyone. Then, when the House and Senate earlier this year were engaged in negotiations on extending the unemployment compensation and also the payroll tax deduction, when we were engaged in that, they put that on the table. The President stuck with his $4.5 billion, the Congress added another $500 million, and they come up with a $5 million cut to the Prevention and Public Health Fund. The President said: That was in our budget. If you want to use it for that, use it for that but no more.

As I said, we have a statement of administration policy that says that if the elimination or any cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund are in here, he will veto the bill. I just wanted to make clear that the $5 billion and the $4.5 billion are one and the same. They are not $9.5 billion that he wanted to take out of the Prevention and Public Health Fund. I wanted to make that clear.

I see my friend from Florida is here, and 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 Thursday, May 10, 2012, at 10 a.m. in SD 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Beyond Mother's Day: Helping the Middle Class Balance Work and Family.''

For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the committee on (202) 224 5441.

Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

For more than 1 year, I have been working on a series of hearings, both in Washington, DC, and in Iowa, focusing on the state of the American middle class.

We have learned that the American middle class is disappearing, falling into the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The people who do the real work in this country are being squeezed to the breaking point. Their paychecks aren't rising. Their benefits are disappearing. Their pensions are disappearing. Their jobs are being shipped overseas.

When we looked into the causes of this crisis, we found that the middle class is not disappearing due to some inevitable effect of forces beyond our control such as globalization and technology. In fact, the decline of the middle class is primarily due to policy failures. We have failed to respond to our changing economy, while at the same time we have allowed many of the underpinnings of a strong middle class, such as a fair minimum wage, strong overtime laws, and defined benefit pensions to disappear.

One of the biggest factors in this downward spiral has been the decline of American unions. As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explained when he testified before the HELP Committee last year, when unions were strong, the middle class thrived and our country prospered. In the mid-1950s, more than one-third of all American workers in the private sector were unionized and the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie. Nonunionized companies, fearing their workers would otherwise want a union, offered similar deals. As employers boosted wages, the higher wages kept the machinery of our economy going by giving average workers more money to buy what they produced. That is what the former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said.

But now, unfortunately, that productive cycle has broken down. Workers have lost their unions, and they don't have money in their pockets to spend and help grow the economy. That is costing us the jobs and holding back our economy.

There are lots of reasons for the decline in unions, but I think again this chart which I showed yesterday is instructive. If we look at the chart, from 1973 to 2010, we will see, first of all, in the green line is the number of workers

covered by collective bargaining agreements. Look how unionization has declined. Here is the union membership. These are the ones covered by collective bargaining agreements. Here is union membership going down the same way. The red line is the middle class share of national income. Look how it tracks it. So as union membership and collective bargaining has decreased, the middle class share of national income has decreased also, almost parallel. Again, lots of reasons, but I think a big one is the broken union election process. It has become so riddled with abuses that people are giving up on it altogether. As I mentioned in my remarks yesterday, the number of union representation elections has declined by an astounding 60 percent between 1997 and 2009. When workers do file for an NLRB election, 35 percent give up in the face of extreme employer intimidation and withdraw from the election before a vote is even held, and that is after they have already signed the card to petition for the NLRB to have an election, one-third of them never get to an election.

The rule we are discussing today cannot solve all of these problems, but as I said yesterday, it is a step in the right direction. It addresses some of the most abusive situations where unscrupulous companies are manipulating the process and creating delays so they can buy more time to intimidate workers.

The primary way management can cause delay is to raise challenges at the preelection hearing. Some of these disputes, such as challenging the eligibility of an individual voter, can certainly wait until after the election to be decided. That is what we do in elections across the country. If a voter's eligibility cannot be confirmed, they vote a provisional ballot until their eligibility can be verified. We don't stop an election from happening until every voter's eligibility can be confirmed. We don't do that. If there is a challenge, they vote a provisional ballot and after the election they see whether they were qualified to vote. Some of these challenges are downright silly, but they have their intended effect, and that is to delay.

In 2002, one employer raised a preelection challenge arguing that the International Association of Machinists was not a ``labor organization'' within the meaning of the statute. The NLRB actually held a hearing on this question and, of course, found that the machinists who had been representing workers since 1888 are indeed a labor union. But the election was delayed by a month to address that one issue.

Some anti-union consultants bragged openly about their ability to abuse the process and create delays. One union-busting law boasted on its Web site how a 27-day hearing contributed to a 5-month delay between filing of a petition and the election at a Massachusetts hospital organizing drive.

Why is delay so important to management who do not want to bargain in good faith with workers? Well, by delaying an NLRB election, they give themselves more time to conduct an anti-union campaign and make it more likely they will win.

One former anti-union consultant wrote a book that is very instructive. Everyone should read it. It is called ``Confessions of a Union Buster.'' He described his strategy as ``[c]hallenge everything . . . then take every challenge to a full hearing . . . then prolong each hearing'' as long as possible, then ``appeal every unfavorable decision.'' The consultant explained that ``if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers . . . lose faith, lose interest, lose hope.'' Let me repeat that. This is from an anti-union consultant who wrote this book called ``Confessions of a Union Buster,'' and he said, ``if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers . . . lose faith, lose interest, lose hope.''

The impact on workers is clear. In 2000, workers at Dillard's distribution center in Little Rock, AR, began efforts to organize a union with the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees, UNITE for short. The campaign involved a unit of between 500 and 600 workers employed as pickers, packers, forklift drivers, loaders, other warehouse workers, many making just over the minimum wage.

Dillard's management began talking with workers about the union almost immediately after workers began signing cards--before the petition was even filed. Aware that the company was likely to quickly escalate its campaign, UNITE, the union, filed an election petition in the spring of 2000, a couple of weeks after it began meeting with workers. At the time it filed for the election, UNITE had signed union authorization cards from 65 to 70 percent of the workers to join a union.

Well, what happened? Soon after the union filed the election petition, the company began holding mandatory captive audience meetings and one-on-one meetings with all workers. Basically threats were made that if the union were to succeed, the distribution center might lose its competitiveness and be forced to shut down.

The employer also launched legal challenges to the workers' petition. Get this. The management claimed that all professional and white collar workers should be in the election unit--even those at the corporate headquarters in a separate building adjacent to the distribution center.

Well, the company forced a dispute that took months to resolve. The company didn't want the white collar workers in the union, but by challenging it and saying they should be in it, forced the NLRB to have a hearing that took months to resolve.

The company took advantage of this delay to continue its anti-union campaigning. It isolated union supporters by excluding them from captive audience meetings and changing their shifts or job locations. It distributed and posted anti-union literature and continued one-on- one meetings.

Support for the union began to wane as workers' fears grew. Workers felt they were under surveillance at work and could not discuss the union at the worksite or even outside the distribution center before or after their shifts. Workers grew too scared even to accept union materials that their fellow workers handed out outside of the plant gates. Attendance at general meetings and organizing committee meetings fell sharply over the months leading up to the election. After facing 2\1/2\ months of intense anti-union campaigning, workers voted against union representation by a margin of two to one. About 3 months before that, over 65 percent to 70 percent of the workers had signed a petition to form a union, but less than 3 months later, they voted two to one not to have a union.

The NLRB has put in place reasonable rules to limit the kind of game playing that the workers from Dillard's experienced. The NLRB hasn't tried to advantage or disadvantage workers or stop employers from spreading their message. All the board has done is send a clear message to employers. They cannot abuse the process to buy themselves more time to intimidate their workers. They get a fair period of time to convey the message, and then the workers deserve their day at the ballot box.

This is not the radical act of an out-of-control board. It won't even affect most employers, union or nonunion, one bit. As I pointed out yesterday, 90 percent of all of the petitions that are filed succeed without having NLRB input anyway. Management and workers get together and work things out. But it is in those 10 percent of companies that go on this massive campaign to intimidate and frighten workers, that is what this rule is aimed at.

Preventing abuses of our laws that keep workers from having a union is a small step in the right direction to help putting the middle class back on track.

When I talk about this, a lot of people say, well, isn't it against the law for management to fire workers for union activities? And I say, yes, it is. But what is the penalty? The penalty is basically nothing.

I pointed this out yesterday, and I will say it again. There was a young man in Iowa who had been organizing a union and was fired. He filed a petition with the NLRB and it took him about 3 years to settle the case. He found out that he had been fired because of union activities and the penalty for the company was to give him all of his back pay minus whatever he earned in between.

How many people can go for 2 or 3 years and not take care of their family and pay their mortgage and pay to put food on the table without having a job? So, of course, that intervening time this person had to work, all the wages were subtracted from whatever the

company had to pay him, and it turned out basically it was nothing. So there is no penalty. As I said, all the employer has to do is pay back wages minus an offset of whatever the worker made in between the time he was fired and the time the decision was made by the NLRB, so there is no penalty for the employers to do that.

So, again, allowing our labor laws to be abused is a policy choice. As I said in the beginning, a lot of the reason for the decline of the middle class in America is because of policy choices that are made here. We have tolerated these policy choices for far too long, these abuses. Working families have suffered as a result; union membership has declined. As I pointed out, the number of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements has declined, and the middle class has declined right along with it. There is much more we need to do to move these trends back in the right direction.

I recently introduced a comprehensive bill, the Rebuild America Act, that I think presents a bold agenda for restoring the American middle class. That agenda--everything from investing in the infrastructure to job retraining, better educational benefits, better pensions, raising the minimum wage--also has restoring the right to form a union to workers who have been unfairly denied this basic freedom. It would provide real penalties for employers who abuse and fire workers to bust unions and would try to restore real voice for the people who do the real work in this country.

I hope that once we vote today and uphold the NLRB's eminently sensible actions, we can move on and have a real debate about some of these important ideas about restoring the middle class in this country and building an economy that works for everyone.

I was listening to the comments made by my good friend from South Carolina, and he alluded to the recent situation with a complaint filed with the NLRB by the attorney for the NLRB. A year or so ago the general counsel's office filed a complaint with the NLRB that the Boeing company in Seattle had retaliated against its workers for union activity, that type of thing. The fact is the NLRB--the body my colleagues are attacking today--never acted on that. The company and the workers settled it. Isn't that what we want? But somehow to listen to my friend from South Carolina, he is saying he is even opposed to letting the general counsel file a complaint. Well, that takes away the basic right of anyone to have their grievances heard. So I hope that is not what my friend from South Carolina meant. I want to point out that I think there was a lot of abuse of the NLRB during that process even though the NLRB was doing exactly what we told them to do: Take into account all of the factors, look at all the evidence before you make a decision. That is what they were doing when it erupted here on the floor and a lot of political pressure was put on the NLRB. There were a lot of threats on the NLRB. And as it turned out, it all worked out because the union and Boeing got together, settled their differences and we moved ahead. That is the way it ought to be in our country.

We should not cut off the right of people to actually file a complaint if they have a complaint. The duty of the NLRB is to investigate and to take into account all of the factors before they issue any findings. But that never happened in that Boeing case because Boeing is a good business. Boeing is one of our great businesses in this country and does a lot for America. So you get the good businesses, and the Machinist Union is a great union, and they worked it out. That is the way things ought to be done, and 9 times out of 10 that is the way it happens.

What we are talking about here is the rules for NLRB to take care of those bad actors who are out there, and to give people who want to form a union at least a level playing field without having all of these abuses and delays and intimidations and things like that.

That is what the issue is about, and hopefully this afternoon we will have a good, affirmative vote to uphold the ability of the National Labor Relations Board to issue this ruling.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield whatever time he may consume to my good friend the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. President, a couple things.

I keep hearing it stated that: ambush elections. I want to point out, there is no timetable set in these rules--none whatsoever. I keep hearing: 10 days and 7 days and all that. That is not set. There are no timetables at all. As I pointed out, 90 percent of NLRB elections are conducted under voluntary agreements between the parties, and those procedures are unchanged.

The current median time right now between when a petition is filed and when an election occurs is 37 to 38 days. Jackson Lewis, the Nation's biggest management-side law firm, said that--their attorney Michael Lotito told the Wall Street Journal he thinks the time under these rules would be shaved to between 19 and 23 days. Joe Trauger, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, says the elections would be held in 20 to 25 days under the new rules--hardly an ambush election.

The other issue I want to briefly mention has to do with the contacts--contacting and the right of privacy I heard here. Right now, the only way a union can contact people is at their homes--at their homes. The only information the union is allowed to get after the petition is filed is the addresses of the workers, their home addresses. What the Board is considering--but has not implemented--is allowing unions to have access to e-mail addresses and/or phone numbers. Well, it seems to me that is a lot less intrusive than going to someone's home.

Now, again, it is much harder, obviously, for a union organizer to go to a home. People go to their homes. They are with their families. They have their children. They are busy. That is more intrusive than e- mailing them, it seems to me. So I would hope we would look upon the possibility that they might say that having their e-mail addresses and phone numbers is less intrusive than going to their homes.

But that is not part of these rules whatsoever. They would still have to contact them at their home, and the only information the employer would have to give would be their home addresses.

Again, keeping in mind what these rules are--they are very modest rules. I keep hearing that: Well, there have only been three rules since the Board was comprised in 1938. Quite frankly, the Supreme Court and appeals courts have said, time and time again, they should do rulemaking because it is open, it is transparent, parties get to be heard. So I think this Board is being more open and more transparent than any Board before it.

This is not anything overwhelming, but it is a step in the right direction to make sure we level the playing field and we do not have these undue delays where the management can intimidate--intimidate--and I gave some examples of it, and I have a whole ream of examples of where management has delayed and delayed and delayed in order to intimidate workers so they would eventually vote not to form a union.

Again, an employer has the right to communicate to their employees all day long--in captive audiences, one-on-one meetings with supervisors. The union can only contact the worker at that worker's house, in the evening or on a weekend. So already the employer has much more opportunity to converse with and to get its views known to its workers than the union has--much more, all day long, at the job, on the job, through supervisors, one-on-one contacts, group meetings, over the loudspeaker, whatever it might be. So already there is much more ability for the management to weigh in on this than it is for the union.

The one thing we are trying to do with these rules is to say: Fine, you can continue to do that. There will still be that disparity between the ability of management to communicate to the workers and the union to communicate, but what these rules are saying is, fine, you can do that, but you cannot continue to do it month after month after month and wear the workers down and intimidate them, make them afraid of losing their jobs. And if you fire one person for union organizing, that sends a chill across everybody else. You say: Well, but that is illegal. Well, it may be illegal, but as I have pointed out, time and time again, there are no penalties for that. It may be illegal, but there are not much penalties for that. Management can always find some excuse--that they may have fired someone for something other than union activity, but everyone would know that person was fired because that person was trying to organize a union.

We are saying you cannot just continue to drag these things out month after month after month. The proposed rules simply say we will have elections, and if there are challenges, if there are challenges by the management as to who can vote in that election, then those challenges would be held until after the election and then see whether those individuals so challenged were really part of that unit and could vote or whether they could not and whether that would even make a difference.

Again, if there were 100, let's say, who signed a petition to form a union, and that was 50 percent of the workers out of 200, and the employer was challenging 5 of those, well, as it is now they could challenge those 5, have a hearing, appeal the hearing, appeal that, and just keep appealing it.

Well, the rules would say, OK, they can say those 5 are not part of it, their ballots would be set aside, and they would have the election. If the election was, let's say, 150 to 20 that they wanted to form a union, those 5 would not make a difference one way or the other. If, however, the election was very close and those 5 would make a difference, then the results would be held in abeyance until such time as it is determined whether those 5 so challenged were part of that bargaining unit or not.

To me, this is a much more fair and decisive way of moving ahead rather than these constant delays and intimidations that go on right now in some of the places--not all, not all, but in some of the places. It is like a lot of times we pass laws not because there are, let's say, broad-based incursions on a person's freedoms or certain things we want to address, but a lot of times we pass laws because there are a few bad actors out there one way or the other and we want to make sure those bad actors are not able to act unreasonably, kind of in violation of what was intended by the National Labor Relations Act.

So that is what they are all about. They are very modest and, I think, lend themselves to a much more reasonable path forward in union organizing and voting.

I ask unanimous consent if there is a quorum call that both sides be charged equally on the time.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. President, there are just a couple of things I wish to bring up in response to some of the statements that have been made on the floor.

First of all, I wish to make it very clear that the NLRB has scrupulously followed all legal and procedural requirements for rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act, and by increasing the use of rulemaking, it has been the most inclusive and transparent Board in history--in history. This process has given all sides abundant opportunity to provide input to the NLRB. There was opportunity for written comments, written responses to other comments, and even a public hearing.

I would like to point out again that there is no requirement in the Administrative Procedure Act to facilitate a dissent. Even though there isn't, the NLRB's traditional practice has given Member Hayes an opportunity to dissent. He was given that chance. But these practices do not allow him to filibuster or run out the clock to thwart the actions of his colleagues.

The Board filed a notice of proposed rulemaking on June 22, 2011, provided 60 days for filing public comments, and received over 65,000 comments, of which, I might note, all but around 200 were form letters. There were 65,000 comments, and all but around 200 were form letters. But still there were 200 comments, ensuring a wide range of views and stakeholder input. The Board arranged an opportunity for staff from Member Hayes's office to brief congressional staff on his dissent from the notice of proposed rulemaking, and, although not required to do so, the Board also provided an opportunity for oral public comments at a hearing conducted on July 18 and 19, 2011, in which over 60 labor and management lawyers, public interest groups, employer and labor organizations, workers, and other related constituents participated. The Board provided an additional 14 days following the 60-day comment period in which to file written reply comments. Again, this is not required by the APA--the Administrative Procedure Act--or any other law. Then the NLRB held a public vote on a final rule on November 30 and published the final rule in late December. So quite frankly, under the Administrative Procedure Act, which all other agencies follow, the NLRB bent over backward to be transparent and to allow dissent.

I have heard it said that Member Hayes was not allowed enough time. Well, he had his first dissent. But from June 22 until November, Mr. Hayes had all that time to file a dissent if he wanted to--to write a dissent. I mean, is that not enough time to write a dissent? It seems to me that is more than enough time. But that was not done. So I just want to make it clear that I think Mr. Hayes was given more than enough time to write his dissent if he wanted to. He did write one dissent over the proposed rules, but he had the additional opportunity from June 22 until November. Again, the APA, under rulemaking, doesn't entitle him to dissent, but the Board allowed him to

have a dissent if he wanted to. They had access to public comments on the proposed rules. They were given summaries and copies of specific comments the other members found informative. His office had months to incorporate those comments and write a second dissent but chose not to. That was his own choice. That was his own choice. He was not prevented from doing so. That was his own choice.

There are a lot of little items like that which I think are kind of being misinterpreted, but here is the essence of it, right here. Here is the essence of what this is all about. Stripped of all the falderal and all of this and all of that and which Board member was for card check and who wasn't and on and on and on, this is what it is about, right here, this statement. This is Martin Jay Levitt, who was an anti- union consultant who wrote a book called ``Confessions of a Union Buster,'' published in 1993. ``Confessions of a Union Buster.'' Here is what he said:

Challenge everything . . . then take every challenge to a

full hearing . . . then prolong each hearing . . . appeal

every unfavorable decision . . . if you make the union fight

drag on long enough, workers lose faith, lose interest, lose

hope.

That is what it is about. It is about denying people their right under the National Labor Relations Act to fairly and expeditiously have a vote on whether to form a union. This is not new. This has been going on since the 1940s and 1950s, since Taft-Hartley. There have been forces at work in this country since the adoption of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 to break unions. They do not want to give workers a right to have a voice in collective bargaining. They will go to extreme limits to deny union members their rights. They will do everything they can to try to break up unions. Taft-Hartley was the first of that, and we have had several things since that time.

Our job is to try to make it a level playing field--as level as possible, anyway--and to give workers a right that is not just a right in name only or in words but a real, factual right to form a union and have the election without challenging everything, taking every challenge to a full hearing, prolonging each hearing, appealing every unfavorable decision. As I quoted earlier, if you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers lose faith, lose interest, and lose hope. And I might add, if you drag it on long enough, it gives the employer every opportunity to intimidate workers so they won't join a union or maybe fire people who were active in the union organization drive--to find some reason why they should be fired, anyway. That is what this is about.

What the NLRB has finally done, through an open process, through a rulemaking process, through perhaps one of the most open and transparent processes in the history of the NLRB, is to say: Let's have a system whereby certification votes can be held within a reasonable amount of time. There was no time limit put in there. There is no 7 or 10 days. That is what Mr. Hayes said in his dissent. He just plucked that out of thin air. But that is not in the ruling. That is not in the ruling at all. Most people who have looked at it have said: Well, it may shorten it to 20 to 30 days, somewhere in there. It seems to me that is fair enough. That is fair enough.

But that is really what this is all about, and I hope Senators, when they vote, will recognize that what the Board has done is to take the unfair process we have had for so long and made it more fair for everyone.

I will point out one last time that the procedures the NLRB has come up with, which are under fire right now from the other side, apply to certification votes as well as to decertification votes. If a company wants to decertify a union, then the union can't drag that out days and months at a time. They can't drag that out for decertification either. So it seems to me that on both sides--certification and decertification--we have a level playing field, and neither side can drag it out interminably to try to frustrate the real desires and wishes of the workers.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the past 2 days my Republican colleagues have raised several arguments about what the NLRB rule will do. I now want to respond to their points and to clarify once again: this is a modest rule that simplifies preelection litigation in the small number of cases where the parties don't reach agreement and must resort to litigation.

First, my colleagues across the aisle have pointed out that unions have recently won about 71 percent of elections, and so, they argue, the current system is completely fair to unions. This is an incredibly deceptive statistic. Unions have filed far fewer petitions in recent years--down from over 4,100 in 2001 to just over 2,000 in 2011. And in almost a third of cases where petitions are filed, the petition is withdrawn before an election. In other words, the process of getting to an election can be so slow, and employer anti-union attacks so potent, that unions are discouraged from going through the entire election process. For the most part, only in the rare cases where support is truly overwhelming or the employer does not oppose the union do unions win.

In a related vein, Republicans have argued that elections are currently held promptly--on average, between 30 and 40 days after a petition is filed--and therefore no change in the rule is needed. But this argument misses the point of the rule. Currently, in the 10 percent of cases that are litigated, it takes around 124 days to get to an election. It takes around 198 days when parties exhaust their appeal rights. This rule addresses those situations where employers engage in excessive--and often frivolous--litigation to slow down the process. Without question, in those cases, it takes far too long and these new NLRB procedures are a desperately needed fix to shorten that time period for the 10 percent of cases that are litigated.

I have also heard the argument that if employers engage in misconduct that interferes with workers' choice during a long election campaign, the NLRB can rerun the election. But the time it takes to get to a second election only compounds the frustration and loss of hope workers suffer when their opportunity to make a choice is delayed for too long. Many unions won't bother to seek a second election, even if there was employer misconduct, if workers are too discouraged.

One of the major improvements in this bill--deferring challenges to voter eligibility until after the election when they are small in number--has also been mischaracterized. Opponents of the rule claim that workers will be confused about who is in the bargaining unit with them. The reality is, challenged voters will be deferred only when they are small in number relative to the size of the bargaining unit. So there will be little or no confusion about the exact individuals in the unit. Moreover, workers will know full well the essential identity of the group they are a part of; individual employees may come and go over time as workers retire or find new jobs, but the identity of the unit is what remains constant. The unit identity is what workers need to know to be able to make an informed choice about whether to vote for a union.

I hear a lot from the other side how this rule will dramatically shorten the time to an election and how it will lead to so-called ambush elections. There is no basis for this prediction. Opponents of the rule can't even agree among themselves how much time the rule will shave off an election. Senator Enzi suggested that this rule will lead to an election in 10 days; Senator Barrasso suggested it will almost halve the current median time of 38 days. An attorney from the management-side labor law firm Jackson Lewis told the Wall Street Journal that he thinks the time would be between 19 and 23 days. The vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers predicted a hearing 20 to 25 days after the petition is filed.

The reason there are so many different numbers floating around is because the rule simply does not say anything about a timeframe for elections. Certainly it is true that in the 10 percent of cases that are litigated--where the process is abused and delays are rampant--the rule likely will shorten the time period by instituting more efficient procedures. But as to the 90 percent of cases where there is voluntary agreement, the NLRB will continue to work with parties as it always has to arrive at a reasonable election date.

In connection with their undue speculation about timing of elections, supporters of this resolution have also argued that employers will not have enough time to communicate with workers under the rule. Because the rule does not actually address timing of an election in the great majority of cases, this is pure speculation as well. Moreover, it is well-known that election campaigns begin long before a petition is filed. If employers wish to mount an anti-union campaign, they will almost certainly do so when they learn a drive is happening. They will not wait until a petition is filed.

Similarly, my colleagues have argued that workers will only hear the union's side of the story under this rule. I must point out that it is employers who continue to have the right to hold ``captive audience'' meetings. They can hold meetings on work time where they can require workers' attendance, and they can browbeat workers about why they think unions are bad. Unions have no such access to a workplace. The playing field for communicating with workers is currently dramatically skewed in favor of employers. It will remain skewed in favor of employers after this rule goes into effect. All this rule does is to put some limits on those employers who would drag out elections to better exploit their communications advantage.

My colleagues on the other side argue that small businesses will have to confront election issues and familiarize themselves with the law in a very short timeframe. As I have said repeatedly, there is no reason to expect an election will occur any more quickly in the great majority of cases. Employers would have ample time to review the law. What the new rules do is to put small businesses on the same footing with large employers that can afford excessive, all-out litigation of preelection issues. The process is simplified so that all employers have to deal with straightforward and presumably cheaper procedures that give them all a fair and equal chance to address preelection issues.

My colleagues have argued that this rule creates an uncertain business climate. In fact, the rule does just the opposite. It creates a very predictable process because it applies uniform procedures designed to cut down on pointless litigation.

My Republican colleagues also suggest that this rule will cause more litigation because unions will have less incentive to reach voluntary agreements. But, in fact, unions will continue to have every incentive to have an agreement on election issues. Hearings still take time and resources even though they are now more streamlined than before. Unions would not want to undergo the expense, uncertainty, and delay of a hearing even though the process will be much improved under this rule. I am confident the great majority of cases will continue to be resolved by voluntary agreement.

Let me stress that this rule treats both sides the same way--the rule applies to elections to decertify a union as well as elections to certify one. Although it has been pointed out that there are certain times, such as the first year after a certification vote, when workers are not permitted to petition to decertify a union, the NLRB does provide adequate, defined time periods when workers are permitted to file a decertification petition. Workers' right to file such a petition during those time periods is well-established, and workers who don't want a union have a clear method to vote the union out.

Finally, it has been pointed out that the NLRB recently lost a court battle over its rule requiring a notice posting. But the reality is, the NLRB won this court battle in one district court and lost in another. One court upheld the core of the rule--that the NLRB can require a posting of workers' right to form a union. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has now blocked the rule to avoid confusion over who has to implement the rule and who doesn't. That court likely won't issue a decision resolving this matter until the fall, but it has absolutely no bearing on the legality or legitimacy of the rule we are debating today. Indeed, the furor over notifying employees of their rights is a perfect example of the extremity of Republican opposition to worker rights. My colleagues have all spoken about the importance of workers being informed about the pros and cons of unionization, but they object to a simple poster that explains workers' rights under the law.

To conclude, this rule will cause no real change for the vast majority of businesses that approach the NLRB election process in good faith. It imposes no new requirements at all for parties who come to the process in good faith and negotiate an agreement. The rule simply addresses the small number of employers that abuse the NLRB election process and deliberately cause delay to buy themselves more time to bombard workers with an anti-union message. The rule also makes NLRB preelection litigation more efficient, saving government resources. It is a commonsense reform that deserves our full support. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote down the resolution disapproving of this NLRB rule.

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

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

Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. President, I will, obviously, yield to my good friend, Senator Enzi, for his closing remarks, but I again just want to point out that this ruling by the NLRB is imminently reasonable.

They went through rulemaking, as I have said before, one of the most transparent boards we have ever had in history. Rather than going through the adjudicative process, they went through rulemaking and a comment period. People were allowed to come in, and they even had an oral hearing which is not even required by the Administrative Procedure Act. Mr. Hayes was allowed due time for filing dissents. He chose not to do so for whatever reason. So everything was complied with. In fact, they bent over backwards to even do more than what the Administrative Procedure Act requires under rulemaking. So that is No. 1.

No. 2, the essence of the rule is eminently fair. It applies both to certification and decertification. There is no 10 days. I keep hearing about this 10 days. Mr. Hayes put that in his dissent, but there is nothing in the rule that requires a 10-day election. Nothing.

Lastly, again, what is this all about? I will say it one more time. This is what it is about, this is it: This is Mr. Martin Jay Levitt who wrote a book, ``Confessions of a Union Buster.'' He was a consultant to businesses that didn't want to have unions formed, and here is what he said in his book. Here is the way they should do things if they don't want to have a union:

[C]hallenge everything . . . then take everything

challenged to a full hearing . . . then prolong each hearing

. . . appeal every unfavorable decision. If you make the

union fight drag on long enough, workers . . . lose faith,

lose interest, lose hope.

That is what it is about. It is about establishing a level playing field now so workers do indeed have their full rights--not a paper right but a full viable right to form a union and to have an election within a reasonable period of time.

Mr. President, I yield the floor. If my friend needs some more time, I yield him whatever time I have remaining.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m. to conduct a committee hearing entitled ``The Collapse of MF Global: Lessons Learned and Policy Implications.''

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 Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``The Emergence of Online Video: Is It the Future?''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Anatomy of a Fraud Bust: From Investigation to Conviction.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., to hold an African Affairs subcommittee hearing entitled, ``U.S. Policy to Counter the Lord's Resistance Army.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the Constitutionality and Prudence of State and Local Governments Enforcing Immigration Law.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 24, 2012, at 10:15 a.m. in room SD 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Paul Edenfield a member of my staff, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. President, I yield myself whatever time I may consume.

Mr. President, I also want to clear up one parliamentary question. The occupant of the chair stated we had 2 hours evenly divided. I believe that is today. But on the agreement for the entire debate on the Congressional Review Act, if I am not mistaken, it is 4 hours evenly divided.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, this Congressional Review Act challenge is the latest chapter in an unprecedented Republican assault on unions. The amount of time this Congress has wasted scrutinizing and bullying the National Labor Relations Board over the last 2 years is simply astonishing. This time the debate is about whether the NLRB acted appropriately when it streamlined its procedures for setting up a union election and eliminated unnecessary bureaucracy to make the agency more efficient.

This seems like a commonsense and logical step that if taken by any other agency my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would be applauding as a step forward for good government and efficiency. But because these reforms were put forward by the NLRB--an agency my Republican colleagues seem to do anything to undermine--we are all standing here today debating the merits of this eminently sensible action. It is a real shame.

At a time when we should be working together to rebuild our economy and addressing the real challenges facing working families across this Nation, instead Republicans are distracting this body with partisan attacks on the National Labor Relations Board and on unions.

I would welcome the opportunity to spend this time on the Senate floor debating how to make life better for middle-class families. I would even welcome the opportunity to have a real debate about unions and the important role they play in our country. What I deeply regret is that we are instead going to spend time discussing the wild misinformation that has been spread about National Labor Relations Board rules that were properly undertaken, well within the agency's authority and completely sensible. So let me take a moment to try to set the record straight.

In December, after receiving public input, the NLRB announced that some internal agency procedures governing union elections would be changed. These are modest changes that not only make the procedures more rational and efficient but also ensure that workers and employers alike will have an opportunity to make their voices heard in an environment free of intimidation. These changes, while modest, are desperately needed. They will address the rare but deeply troubling situation where an unscrupulous employer uses delay and frivolous litigation to try to keep workers from getting a fair election. Let me briefly explain how the process works and how the new rules will help.

Ever since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, workers have had a Federally protected right to choose whether to form a union, and our national policy, as stated in that act, has been to encourage collective bargaining. Workers who are interested in forming a union can request an election if at least 30 percent of the workers in that workplace sign a petition and present that to the National Labor Relations Board. About 90 percent of the time, the employer and the union reach an agreement covering when the election will be held, the timing of it, and who is in the bargaining unit.

That is the ideal situation. That is what happens the majority of the time. Although we would never know it from the rhetoric surrounding these rules, the new procedures address only the roughly 10 percent of situations where these preelection issues are in dispute and the rules say nothing about 90 percent of the elections, where the two parties reach a voluntary agreement on election terms.

This chart shows us only a tiny fraction of election petitions will be affected by these rules. As I said, 90 percent of the time the proposed union and the employers reach an agreement when the election is going to be held, how it is going to be held and other procedures. They voluntarily agree on that. Only 10 percent of the time do we have employers, some that are highly unscrupulous that will do anything to prevent their workers from having any kind of a voice in the running of the facility, that go to extreme lengths to frustrate the will of those who want to form a union. Again, the rules we are talking about don't even affect 90 percent of the businesses.

This 10 percent of the time when the parties can't reach an agreement, the NLRB then holds a hearing to decide who should be in the bargaining unit. The NLRB's proposed rules deal with the mechanics of that hearing and they attempt to cut back on the frivolous litigation that has plagued the hearing process. That is the proposed rule. They deal with the mechanics of that and cut back on this frivolous litigation. Under the old rules, management could litigate every single issue they could imagine at the preelection hearing. They could file posthearing briefs over any issue no matter how minor, and they could appeal any decision to the NLRB here in Washington. In many cases, the election would be put on hold while the Board reviewed the case. The workers then had to wait for the resolution of this litigation before they could even vote.

When the management side took advantage of every opportunity for delay, the average time before workers could vote was 198 days. Again, we are talking about this 10 percent. When management took advantage of every opportunity, the average time before workers could even vote was 198 days. We have some cases where it has been as long as 13 years before employees were able to vote in a union election. While the election process drags on, workers are often subjected to harassment, threats, and, yes, firing.

A study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that, among workers who openly advocate for a union during an election campaign, one in five is fired. We know what kind of signal that sends to the rest of the workers. A Cornell University study found that workers were required to attend an average of ten anti-union meetings during worktime before the election. By law, workers have the right to organize. As I said, our official policy, as stated in the National Labor Relations Act, is to encourage collective bargaining, but in practice we allow delay and intimidation to make that right meaningless.

The current NLRB election reforms do not solve this problem entirely, but nevertheless they are an important step forward. They help clear the bureaucratic redtape that has wasted government resources and denied workers the right to a free choice. Under the new rules, employers and unions can still raise their concerns about the petition at a preelection hearing, but they can't play games to stall the election. For example, under the new rules, employers can't waste time before the election arguing over whether an individual worker is eligible to vote. That worker then can vote a provisional ballot, and the two sides can debate the issue after the election if it matters to the outcome. What we have had in the past is, let's say we had a proposed bargaining unit that was 200 people. Let's say they got 100 of them to sign a petition. They usually try to get about 50 percent. They present it to the NLRB. Management then says: Person A shouldn't be in that bargaining unit because they are a supervisor, and person B over here shouldn't be in here because that person is a clerk and not a handler--or whatever it might be that wouldn't correspond to the bargaining unit.

Let's say they raise that issue on five people. Under the present situation, they could then take this to the NLRB, have hearings on each one of those. If they didn't like the outcome, they could then take it to Washington, DC and drag it out.

Under the new rules, what they would say is: OK. If management is challenging those five people, we will set their ballots aside, and we will have an election. If the election was 150 to 20 that they form a union, then those 5 wouldn't make any difference one way or the other. But if the election were close and those five would, then the NLRB would step in and say: Wait a minute. The certification would be put on hold until they decided whether those people were rightfully in the bargaining unit to vote. Again, these are some of the games that have been going on.

Another example is appeals. All parties still have the right to appeal any decision they disagree with. But now, all appeals would be consolidated after the election, which allows the Board to conserve its resources and keep the election process moving forward.

These commonsense changes remove unnecessary delays from the process, they cut down on frivolous legal challenges, and give workers the right to a fair up-or-down vote in a reasonable period of time. The new rules don't encourage unionization and they don't discourage it. They just give workers the ability to say yes or no, without having to wait several months or even years to do so.

There is rampant misinformation about this rule. To be clear, the rule does not allow a so-called ambush election, where an employer is taken by surprise and has no ability or opportunity to communicate with workers about the pros and cons of a union. As anyone who has ever been around a workplace that is part of an organizing drive would know, employers always know what is going on, and they have ample opportunity to express their views. They can require their workers to listen to an anti-union message all day long every day, and that is perfectly legal, while the union isn't even allowed into the facility to talk to other workers.

This rule also does not change the content of what an employer can or cannot say to its workers. It doesn't restrict an employer's free speech rights in any way.

Finally--I wish to make this clear--the rule does not mandate that elections be held within any particular

timeframe. For anyone who has actually read the new rules, it is clear it does nothing of the sort.

What these rules do accomplish is to help ensure that employers and employees have a level playing field, where corporate executives and rank-and-file workers alike have an equal chance to make their case for or against a union. Some workplaces will choose a union, some will not. But protecting the right of workers to make that choice brings some balance and fairness to the system. Indeed, many employers have recognized that the new rules are fair and balanced. Catholic Health Care West, a health care company with 31,000 employees, filed comments stating:

Reforms proposed by the NLRB are not pro-union or pro-

business. They are pro-modernization.

Further, Catholic Health Care West said they will:

Modernize the representation election process by improving

the Board's current representation election procedures that

result in unnecessary delays, allow unnecessary litigation,

and fail to take advantage of modern communication

technologies.

Mr. Willie West, founder and owner of West Sheet Metal Company in Sterling, VA, wrote an article in the Hill newspaper stating that:

[t]hese seemingly minor changes certainly do not create

uncertainty for me and they will not affect my ability to

create jobs. In fact, if the NLRB standardizes the election

process, it seems to me this will reduce uncertainty and

turmoil in the workplace--especially for small businesses.

Mr. West is exactly right. The rules are an improvement for small businesses and for those who want a cooperative relationship with their employees. Again, keep in mind, 90 percent of the time they have no problems. We are only talking about this 10 percent of the time. That is what these rules are aimed at.

The new rules promote consistency among NLRB field offices. They simplify procedures for all parties, making it easier for businesses to plan. The old rules gave an advantage to the businesses with the most money and those most willing to manipulate the system to frustrate their employees' right to vote. Some of these businesses in that 10 percent could afford expensive lawyers to exploit the system and delay elections. The old rules worked well for anti-union law firms--I will grant you that--but not for small businesses on a budget.

By creating a fair, more transparent process, the NLRB is leveling the playing field for small businesses.

Most important, the rules also take a small step to level the playing field for ordinary Americans. The people who do the work in this country deserve a voice in the decisions that affect their families and their futures. Polls show that 53 percent of workers want representation in the workplace, but fewer than 7 percent of private sector workers are represented and one of the reasons is the broken NLRB election system. Even though more workers than ever are expressing an interest in having a voice on the job, the number of union representation elections conducted by the NLRB declined by an astounding 60 percent between 1997 and 2009.

When workers do file for NLRB elections, 35 percent give up in the face of extreme employer intimidation and withdraw from the election before a vote is even held. Let me repeat that. Workers have gone around, they have gotten signatures, they have gotten the requisite 30 percent. They usually get a lot more than that, 40 to 50 percent. They file with the NLRB. One out of every three of those give up in the face of extreme employer intimidation. Why? Because one out of every five is being fired because there is no real penalty against the employer for firing someone for union organizing. It is against the law to fire an employee because they were exercising their right to form a union, to be in union organizing. But it happens all the time. Why do employers not worry about it? Because there are no penalties. The penalty is backpay minus any offsets.

I had a young man in Iowa I remember very well up in Mason City. He had been involved in organizing a union at his workplace. He got fired. He filed with the NLRB saying he was wrongly dismissed because of his union-organizing activities.

They had a hearing. It dragged on for 3 years before the NLRB could reach a decision, and the decision was, yes, he was fired because of his union-organizing activities.

What was the penalty on the employer? They had to pay him 3 years' backpay minus whatever he earned in the meantime as a worker.

How many people can go through years without working? Of course, he had to work. He had to go to work, and he had to show how much money he made in the meantime that had to be deducted from what his employer had to pay him. Therefore, they had to pay practically nothing. Yet using that as an example, they were able to frustrate the organizing of a union. One-third give up in the face of extreme employer intimidation. These are the problems that need to be addressed.

It is not just a problem for unions either, but for our entire middle class and for the future of our economy. If we take a look at what is happening to the middle class in America, it is being decimated. The American people are insisting--even though we are not doing much of it in Washington, I can assure you the American people are insisting that we have a national dialog about the growing division between the haves and have-nots in this country, about the detrimental impact this is having on the standard of living of American middle-class families. This has led to important discussions about tax loopholes for corporations and millionaires. But as we learned from battles from Wisconsin to Ohio and beyond, it is very much a conversation about workers' rights.

Unions have always been the backbone of the American middle class since we started having a middle class. Since 1973, private sector unionization rates have declined from 34 percent of the labor force to 7 percent; from 1 out of every 3 workers in America belonging to a union to now only 7 percent, 1 in about 15. While unionization rates declined, so did the middle-class share of national income.

During some hearings we had last year--we had a number of hearings in our committee about this. When we track union membership--this, the blue line, from 1973 to today--and track the percent of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements, and then track the middle-class share of national income, look how they all go down the same. As unionization declined the number of workers in collective bargaining declined, and so did their share of the national income. That is what has happened to the middle class in America. Simply, the fate of America's unions parallels the fate of America's middle class.

Unions are not a relic of a bygone era, they are a vital element of a fair and successful 21st-century economy. If we want to strengthen our economy and rebuild the middle class, we should try to figure out how to make unions stronger, how to get more people in collective bargaining, not attack collective bargaining rights across the country. We should be fighting to ensure that every hard-working American has a right to be treated with dignity and respect on the job--and, yes, to have a voice on that job. The current NLRB election reforms may fall short of that lofty goal, but, as I said, they are an important step forward, and they deserve support.

I urge my colleagues to vote no on this Congressional Review Act challenge to NLRB's rules. Now that these rules are to go into effect-- and I am confident they will go into effect--it is time for this body to stop wasting time, using the NLRB as an election year political football.

I think these attacks on this modest rule go right after the intelligence of working Americans. These attacks urge this body to help prevent unions from being organized. But ordinary Americans and the middle class want us to stop this political posturing and move forward on building economic opportunity for the middle class--and, yes, to support the right of people who want to form a union, to get rid of all these delays, and to make sure we have rules in place which basically reflect 90 percent of the employers in this country.

Ninety percent of the employers reach agreements with their employees on having an election. It is that 10 percent that gets to be frustrating. This is the purpose of this rule, to make everybody sort of falls in the 90 percent, so

we have a fair and expeditious election process, one that is understandable, one that does not lead to all this frivolous litigation and delay.

We have another couple or 3 hours of debate on this matter. After this is over, I hope we can start focusing on ways to genuinely help the middle class in America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, how much time do have I remaining?

Mr. President, we are going to have a lot of time to flush out some of these arguments again tomorrow when the vote gets near, but I thought I might pick up on a couple of things here that my good friend from Wyoming said. We do a lot of work together, and he is a great Senator and a good friend of mine. He just happens to be wrong on this issue, but other than that, he is a good friend of mine. This is a good, healthy debate on policy.

There is a lot of talk about these ambush elections. Now we are going to have ambush elections. Well, that is not so. The current median time from when a petition is filed and when the election occurs is about 37 to 38 days. Again, I heard from my friend saying this could be ambush elections, and all that kind of stuff. Even one of the Nation's largest management-side law firm disagrees. One of the attorneys from Jackson Lewis told the Wall Street Journal that he thinks the time would be shaved between 19 and 23 days under the proposal.

Mr. Trauger, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said the elections would be held in 20 to 25 days under the new rule. So that is not an ambush election at all. All this rule does is remove these extra legal hurdles that can cause excessive delays.

We keep hearing about rulemaking, and saying: Well, this board has only issued three of these rules in the past 75 years, two of these rules in the last couple of years. It makes it sound as though the NLRB has ridden off the range here in terms of reasonableness. But the fact is that when the board promulgated rules in the past, they did it through the adjudicative process, not through rulemaking.

The Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeal have criticized the board in the past for underutilizing its rulemaking authority. Courts have said the rulemaking process is more transparent and more inclusive. So through rulemaking this board has solicited broader public input in its decisions.

What the NLRB has done in the last couple of years is opened up the process for comment periods and rulemaking through the Administrative Procedures Act, something the courts have been asking and advising the NLRB that they should have been doing all along rather than relying on the adjudicative process.

So, yes, my friend may be right about two of the three last couple of years, but actually that is a move in the right direction. That is a move for transparency and openness and letting all different sides have their comments before they issue a final rule rather than doing it through adjudication.

There was this quote about John Kennedy about a 30-day waiting period. Well, I don't know, I have not looked at then-Senator Kennedy's entire record. I suppose there are some things I might agree with him on and some things I probably would not agree with him on. I don't know what his thought processes were. All I can tell you is that no matter what he said at that time as a Senator, the final bill did not have a waiting period. The Senate put it in, the House did not, and when it went to conference, they dropped it. So I think the rejection of that proposed amendment could be more reasonably understood as an indication that Congress did not believe a minimum time between petition and election is necessary.

Sure, you can quote Kennedy, and I guess I can quote President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and here is what he said:

Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of

the right to join a union of their choice.

Well, we better not try to prevent them from joining a union of their choice.

I have also heard this charge that somehow these rules tilt this more in favor of the unions than management. No, they don't. Again, we have mostly been talking here about the certification process. When union organizers get the signatures, they file with NLRB and we have an NLRB process. Basically that is what we are talking about here. But I would point out to my friend on the other side of the aisle that these procedures we are talking about also apply to decertification elections as well. So since the same rules will apply to decertification elections, the proposed rule will ensure that employees who have union representation will be able to have a timely up-or-down vote to also get rid of the union. So, to me, it is both. It is both on the certification and the decertification side. It makes for things to be much more expeditious, much clearer, and more understandable. That is why I think many management firms and businesses see this as a reasonable rule because when they would try to decertify, they don't have to go through all of this frivolous litigation on the other side. It applies to both certification and decertification, so it doesn't tilt the playing field one way or the other.

Again, I applaud the National Labor Relations Board for moving in the direction of more rulemaking, making it more open, making it more transparent than what they have done in the past. But you know what it boils down to? As long as I have been here, since 1985 in this body, we have had ups and downs on the National Labor Relations Board. Let's face it, what happens is the National Labor Relations Board has three members from the President's political party and two from the other side. So when you have a Democratic President in, then NLRB gets attacked by Republicans. When a Republican President is in, it gets attacked by Democrats, and it becomes kind of a political football. I understand that, and we should all understand that is what this is too. That is what this is all about.

I was just notified that a Statement of Administration Policy, SAP, from the administration just came through. It said even if this vote were held and the other side won--if it was voted to overrule the NLRB--the President would veto it. And, surely, no one thinks there is a two-thirds vote here to override the President's veto on this issue. We are kind of wasting our time here. It is sort of another political shot when there are so many important things we should be talking about in terms of jobs, job creation, the economy, fair taxation, keeping our jobs from going overseas, education, job retraining, and yet we are spending our time talking about this. Well, be that as it may, the facts are on the side that this rule is eminently reasonable, fair, and I think will lead to a more predictable and less litigious and less conflicting process when people want to form a union in this country.

As I said, 90 percent of the time we don't have these problems. But for those 10 percent, it can be devastating, and it can thwart individual workers who want to form a union. So I am hopeful we can have a little bit more debate on this. I hope the vote tomorrow will be conclusive and that we will turn this down and move ahead with more important business confronting this country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this side yields back the balance of our time for today as well.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Paul Edenfield, a member of my staff, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of today's session.

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

Mr. President, I just had a very wonderful phone call from a young Matt Rutherford, a 31-year-old man. I have spoken about him on the floor on a couple of occasions. He just made it safely home on his boat, the St. Brendan. He just crossed the finish line, coming out of the Atlantic Ocean into the Chesapeake Bay.

For those of you who have not followed this story, about 309 days ago young Matt Rutherford, on a 27-foot sailboat--a 36-year-old sailboat to boot--left the Chesapeake Bay on one of the most audacious adventures ever undertaken. It has never been done before. He sailed his little boat out of the Chesapeake Bay. He sailed it in the Atlantic Ocean, up around Newfoundland, Labrador, by Greenland, and sailed that little boat through the Northwest Passage, from the Atlantic Ocean over to Alaska. He has been certified now as the first person to ever do so solo in a small sailboat.

He sailed around Alaska. He sailed it from Alaska down to Cape Horn. Mind you, he is by himself on a 27-foot boat. He rounded Cape Horn and came up the east coast of South America, sailed up through the Caribbean, and is back, as of just a few hours ago, into the Chesapeake Bay--solo, nonstop, all by himself. He never touched land in all these days. He will set foot on land this Saturday at a homecoming in Annapolis at the National Sailing Hall of Fame dock in Annapolis, this Saturday around noontime. I am sure it will be a big welcome for Matt Rutherford.

To add frosting to the cake of what he did--which, again, is an incredible, incredible adventure--he did it to raise funds for CRAB, Chesapeake Region Accessible Boating, which is an organization that helps people with disabilities, including wounded warriors from our armed services who have service-connected disabilities, to get them out

on boats that will teach them how to sail, to let them know they too can participate in that recreational activity.

So to Matt Rutherford, who has done something that has never been done before, welcome back. I am glad you are safe. I am glad you made it OK.

To those of you who want to catch up on this incredible, incredible journey--I mean, think about Robert Peary going to the North Pole. Think about Roald Amundsen going to the South Pole. Think about Sir Francis Chichester sailing around the world in the Gypsy Moth IV, who, by the way, stopped once, or Joshua Slocum, who was the first person to sail solo around the world. Think about Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mount Everest. These are the kinds of people whom Matt Rutherford now stands alongside of in sailing solo. You can go to the Web site to catch up on this. It is www.solotheamericas.org. To think about him sailing all the way around by the North Pole, all the way down, almost, to the South Pole, back up to America again--nonstop, never touched land, never stopped, and did it solo in a small 27-foot sailboat--it is one of the great adventures of our time--of any time.

So I am happy he is back and he is safe and will be back on dry land this Saturday.

Rebuild America Act

Mr. President, as chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I have come to the floor on a number of occasions over the last year to express my concern about the distressed state of the American middle class. I do so again today in order to share with my colleagues my ideas for how we can rebuild the middle class in America and make our economy work for those who work for a living.

Over the past year, while Washington has been gripped by a fear of budget deficits, I gave speech after speech here on the Senate floor pointing out an even more serious deficit: the deficit of vision in Washington, our failure to confront the current economic crisis with the boldness earlier generations of Americans summoned in times of national challenge.

By this economic crisis, I do not just mean the current economic downturn. Instead, I am referring to the economic crisis that has taken place over the last 30 to 40 years that has resulted in a shrinking middle class, rising inequality in our country, a weakened economy, and a sense that the American dream is slipping away. This is the fundamental challenge--the fundamental challenge--facing our Nation today: rebuilding the American middle class.

Altogether, I now have chaired five HELP Committee hearings on the crisis of the middle class. Last year my State staff visited all 99 counties in Iowa to gain greater insight into the challenges facing working Americans. During these events, I have heard from a diverse array of Americans, including economists, employers, union members, community college students, and everyday, hard-working, middle-class families. Not surprisingly, we found that more and more people are struggling just to make ends meet. Their jobs are insecure, their savings and pensions have shrunk, and they see an economic system that is rigged in favor of the very rich and the powerful.

At a hearing last June, I invited Amanda Greubel, a social worker in her local Iowa school district, to share her story with the HELP Committee. During her testimony, she defined what it means to be in the middle class in this way:

My husband and I didn't have dreams of great wealth. We

never expected to have summer homes or expensive cars or

vacations on the Riviera. We chose careers that inspire us,

knowing that we would never make six-figure salaries. All we

have ever wanted is security and a little comfort . . . to

know that our bills are paid, our needs are met, that we can

have a getaway every now and then, that our children can

pursue higher education without the burden of student-loan

debt, and that someday we can retire and enjoy our final

years together in the way we choose. . . . When I think back

over our adult lives, it strikes me that we did everything we

were always told to do in order to have the American dream. .

. . We did everything that all the experts said we should do,

and yet still we're struggling. When you work as hard as we

have and still sometimes scrape for the necessities, it

really gets you down.

That was Amanda.

Unfortunately, those of us in Washington have not listened enough to people such as Amanda. People such as Amanda do not feel this way because of factors such as ``globalization'' or ``technology change.'' Indeed, harnessing those developments has helped to make the U.S. economy the envy of the world.

Instead, the crisis of the middle class can be traced largely to unwise policy choices made here in Washington. For starters, for the last three decades, too many here in Washington have bought into the failed economic doctrine that says if we give more and more to the very wealthy and to the largest corporations, then prosperity will somehow trickle down to the rest of us. That idea has utterly failed to work for the American people. It is time we get back to policies that are premised on how our economy really works. A strong, vibrant middle class with money in their pockets to spend drives the economy forward because, very simply, businesses will not make things if they do not have any customers.

As Mr. Nick Hanauer, a very successful private sector investor, put it in a recent Business Week column:

Rich business people like me don't create jobs. Middle-

class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses

grow and profit.

So what is the best way forward? Instead of the slash-and-burn approaches of the past year and the failed economic doctrines of the past few decades, we need a way forward that rebuilds the middle class by reflecting the hopes and the can-do spirit of the American people, people such as Amanda Greubel.

To meet the great challenge of our day, restoring and revitalizing the middle class, after having a number of hearings last year, as I said, and countless visits with people throughout my State, I recently introduced sweeping legislation called the Rebuild America Act. It now has a number, S. 2252. This legislation provides comprehensive solutions to rebuilding the American middle class.

Some will say it is too bold and too ambitious, but I disagree. The sweep of this legislation is commensurate with the extraordinary challenge it addresses. The bill aims to rebuild the middle class in four broad ways: creating jobs, investing in the future, helping families, and bringing balance back into our tax system. Let me touch briefly on those four principles.

One, we need to create jobs for all Americans, including for groups of Americans such as people with disabilities who have been especially hard hit by the recent recession. With the official unemployment rate over 8 percent, and some unofficial measures as high as 17 percent, the middle class will continue to lose ground.

When jobs are scarce, workers do not have the leverage to demand fair treatment, paychecks stop growing, or even fall, and even people who are fortunate enough to have a job become fearful of losing it. People have less discretionary money in their pockets or the confidence to spend it. In the absence of robust consumer demand, businesses choose not to expand or invest.

Secondly, we must invest in our future. Not only will investing in our infrastructure help create badly needed jobs in the short term, these investments will lay the groundwork for sustained economic growth in the long term. So my bill tackles this challenge head on by providing for robust new investments in America's infrastructure, including, of course, time-tested things such as roads and bridges, energy efficiency systems, also rebuilding and modernizing our public schools, rebuilding our manufacturing base in America.

In addition, there is also the investment in the human infrastructure: helping prepare great teachers, providing better pathways to good jobs for workers, job retraining so that the old jobs that are now gone, we can now take those workers and retrain them for the future jobs, to ensure that current and future workers will have the education and skills they need to be successful and to be in the middle class.

Three, we need to do more to help middle-class families succeed. It is time for us in Washington to wake up to the harsh reality that middle-class families have been living in for the last few decades. Unfortunately, the programs and policies that helped create

the middle class have been either intentionally discarded or have fallen victim to neglect.

For example, the real value of the minimum wage has declined for the last four decades, dragging down all workers' paychecks. In 1968, that was the height. That was when someone making the minimum wage had the highest purchasing power ever since we had a minimum wage--1968. Since that time, it has fallen in real terms. If, in fact, the minimum wage had kept pace just with inflation from 1968 to today, the minimum wage would be slightly over $10.30 an hour. Right now the Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. So think of it this way: The same class of people that was making the minimum wage in 1968 is basically the same class of people making the minimum wage today: young people, minorities, people in businesses that are just starting, people who are not highly educated, new immigrants to this country, for example. So the same people who are making the minimum wage then are the same kind of class of people making the minimum wage today.

But think about it this way. That same class of people today--today-- has 30 percent less buying power than that same class had in 1968--30 percent less. Think about that. That same person making the minimum wage today is making 30 percent less than his or her counterpart in 1968.

So what my bill does is basically over a stage raise that minimum wage and then peg it to inflation in the future so we do not have that erosion again in the future. Also families and workers have seen basic rights, such as the right to organize and to bargain collectively, eroded. It is harder and harder and harder all the time for people to organize and join a union in this country.

The right to overtime pay has been eroded under the Fair Labor Standards Act. So a lot of these things have been eroded by misguided regulations, bad court decisions, and years of lax enforcement.

The fourth part of the bill. It is essential that we put balance back in the economy through a balanced tax system that will help reduce our deficit, get our fiscal house in order over the longer term. To do so, among other provisions, my bill includes a tax on Wall Street trades, often called a financial transaction tax. At just 3 cents per $100 dollars in trade value, that would raise $350 billion over 10 years.

Again, you might say, well, is this something now? No. We had a transaction tax, a financial transaction tax, in this country until 1966. Then it was done away with. Well, that is again one of the reasons why we have seen this terrible inequality grow in our society where more and more of our wealth goes to fewer and fewer people.

A small transaction tax would do two things. It would raise money. It would also discourage a lot of the spinning and the churning of transactions on Wall Street whereby some of these traders make hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, megamillions of dollars a year, but not adding much to our economy at all. So it's a small transaction tax.

In addition, the bill requires high-income taxpayers to pay their fair share. Well, sort of like the Buffett rule that the present occupant of the chair, the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island, championed the other day that we voted on here. It got voted down on party lines. I do not understand this, that we cannot even ask those who have the most in our society to pay their fair share.

Well, just because we lost the vote on the Senate floor the other day does not mean we have to give up on it. I am sure the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, is going to continue his efforts, as he always has, to make sure that we have more fairness in our tax system. So that is in our bill also.

Restoring balance and fairness to the Tax Code is critical to the success of our economy and is critical to the rebuilding of the middle class in America. So in sort of broad strokes, that is my Rebuild America Act, S. 2522.

Over the last few years, the American people have heard from too many of us politicians and talking heads that our country is broke, that we can no longer afford the investments that make for a strong middle class. You know, that is sort of the premise of the Ryan budget in the House, cut and slash. The premise is one that has been in favor around this town for far too long. Here is the premise. The premise is that we are broke, the United States of America is broke and we cannot afford to do these things.

This is false. The United States of America remains a wealthy Nation. We are the wealthiest Nation in the history of the world. We have the highest per capita income of any major country. So one might reasonably ask: If we are so rich, how come we are so broke? Think about that. If we are the richest Nation in the history of the world, if we have the highest per capita income of any major country, then why can we not afford to invest in our infrastructure, invest in better teachers, make sure our kids get a good education without a mountain of debt on their heads? Why cannot we invest in making new energy systems that are cleaner and more productive for the future?

We can. We can do these things. The problem is not that we are broke, the problem is that because of actions or inactions by this government over the last 30 years, America's wealth has not been spread among our people in a reasonable way. The wealth has been concentrated in fewer and fewer and fewer hands. And the middle class in the meantime has been decimated.

I submit that there can be no sustainable economic recovery to America, no sustained return to fiscal balance, without the recovery of the middle class. That is exactly the aim of the Rebuild America Act. It is comprehensive. Yes. Ambitious. Of course. But it rises to the challenge of our time.

I urge my colleagues to join me in advancing this legislation and doing all we can to restore the American middle class. It is the fundamental challenge of our time.

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