Floor Statements

Madam President, in these closing weeks of the 111th Congress, the Senate will be saying goodbye to a number of retiring colleagues. But, for my part, I will miss them all, but I have to be honest, the most poignant farewell will be to my dear friend, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut.

Chris and I have much in common. We are both proud of our Irish roots. We were both elected to the House of Representatives at the same time, in the famous post-Watergate election of 1974. Chris moved over here to the Senate in 1980, and I followed 4 years later. We both ran for President--with similarly unambiguous results. Over the years, we have collaborated on many legislative initiatives, including, most recently, the historic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--the health reform bill.

As we all know, Chris Dodd is almost literally a son of the Senate. With good reason, he is enormously proud of his father, Thomas J. Dodd, who was a lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and served two terms in the Senate, from 1959 to 1971. Chris worked as a Senate page at age 16, and was elected to the Senate at age 36. For three decades, Chris has embodied everything that is good about this body: a passion for public service, a sincere desire to reach out across the aisle, a great talent for forging coalitions and bringing people together, and a willingness to work extraordinarily long hours in order to accomplish big and important things.

Over the decades, Senator Dodd has been a leading champion of working Americans, fighting for safer workplaces, the right to organize, stronger public schools, better access to higher education, and, of course, quality health care as a right not a privilege. He was the author of 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which for the first time entitled every American to have leave from their job to take care of children or elderly relatives.

Make no mistake, Senator Dodd is leaving the Senate at the very top of his game. Last year, when Senator Kennedy fell ill, Chris picked up the torch of health care reform. When I became chair of the Health, Education, and Labor Committee, I asked him to continue to take the lead in forging the final bill, which he had led so expertly on before, and which will go down in history as one of America's great progressive accomplishments, on a par with Social Security and Medicare.

Even before final passage of health reform, Senator Dodd, as chair of the Banking Committee, was hard at work crafting yet another historic bill: the most sweeping reform of Wall Street and the banking industry since the Great Depression.

To be sure, other Senators played important roles in passing health reform and Wall Street reform. But it was Senator Dodd's dogged work and virtuoso skills as a legislator that ultimately won the day. These two landmark laws are a tremendous living legacy to the senior Senator from Connecticut. He has made his mark as one of the great reformers in the history of the U.S. Senate.

Chris Dodd has accomplished many things during his three decades in this body. But, in my book, the highest accolade is simply that Chris Dodd is a good, generous and decent person, with a passion for fairness and social justice.

For me, it has been a great honor to be his friend and colleague for the last 36 years. Our friendship, of course, will continue. But I will miss the day-to-day association with Chris here on the floor, in committee, and elsewhere here on the Hill.

Paul Wellstone used to say that ``the future belongs to those with passion.'' By that definition, our friend Chris Dodd has a wonderful future ahead of him. No question he is full of passion, passion for doing what is right for the people of this country. But no question, the Senate is losing a giant--one of our most accomplished and respected members. We are also losing a happy warrior in the mold of FDR and Hubert Humphrey. As the columnist E.J. Dionne has written, ``The happiness quotient in the Senate will definitely drop when [Senator] Dodd leaves.'' I couldn't agree more.

For 36 years in Congress, Chris Dodd has faithfully served the people of Connecticut and the people of the United States. And there is no doubt that he will pursue new avenues of public service in retirement.

As I said, I will miss his friendship and counsel here in the Senate. But I wish Chris, his wonderful wife Jackie, and their wonderful young children, Grace and Christina, the very best in the years ahead.

ted kaufman

Madam President, when our colleague Ted Kaufman, who is leaving, was sworn in as Senator in January 2009 to succeed the newly elected Vice President, Senator Joe Biden, he made it clear that he would not run for election in 2010. He noted that he had not

raised money to become a Senator and would not raise money to be elected 2 years later. He would be a free man, beholden to no special interest, determined to do only what is right for the people of Delaware and the United States.

Senator Kaufman has made good on that pledge. He may no longer be a Member of the Senate since the swearing in of the new Senator from Delaware, Mr. Coons, but in just 2 years in the Senate, he left his mark--both legislatively and in the esteem of Senators on both sides of the aisle.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that Ted Kaufman excelled in this body, and had influence and clout far beyond what is typical for a reshman Senator whose tenure was only going to be 2 years. After all, he came to this body with a distinguished and diverse background in government, business, and the academy. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Duke, which led to a job with DuPont chemical company. He went on to earn an M.B.A. from the Wharton School and taught at Duke University's schools of law and business. And, of course, as we all knew Ted before, he served for 20 years on the staff of Senator Joe Biden, most of that time as chief of staff.

Like most Senators, I have enormous respect for the role of the Senate's professional staff members. In fact, we often joke that Senators are ``a constitutional impediment to the smooth functioning of staff.''

In Senator Ted Kaufman, we saw the best of both worlds, combining the expertise and competence of a veteran staffer with the leadership and political skills of a first-rate Senator. This made Senator Kaufman a formidable presence in this body for the last 2 years.

No question, Senator Kaufman's influence was felt most impressively in the effort to reform Wall Street in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008.

Soon after becoming Senator, he cosponsored, along with Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley, a bill to give Federal prosecutors more effective tools for rooting out financial fraud. President Obama signed that bill into law in May of last year.

And when the Senate undertook the sweeping reform of the financial system earlier this year, Senator Kaufman quickly stepped forward as one of the toughest critics of Wall Street, giving speech after speech here on the floor proposing and demanding fundamental changes in America's broken financial system.

I listened with particular interest to his explanations and criticisms of high-frequency trading and other opaque trading practices of hedge funds and big Wall Street firms.

I was proud to cosponsor the SAFE Banking Act, cosponsored by Senator Kaufman and Senator Brown.

This legislation would have dramatically reduced the size and concentration of the largest financial institutions, thereby making our financial system safer. I was disappointed this proposal was not included in the financial bill. But getting 33 votes for this ambitious measure was no small feat, and, no question, Senator Kaufman's tireless efforts helped to rally support in the Senate for reforming our financial institutions. Thanks in no small measure to Senator Kaufman's expertise and relentless advocacy, the worst aspects of Wall Street's casino capitalism have been eliminated, and our financial system is better able to allocate capital to areas of the economy that need it the most.

So the junior Senator from Delaware was true to his word. For the last 2 years, he was a Senator's Senator, giving his all, beholden to no interest, serving the people of Delaware and the United States with competence, character, courage, and, I might add, with rock-solid integrity.

I have valued Ted Kaufman's friendship and counsel here in the Senate, as I said, going back for nearly 20 years. I look forward to continuing that relationship now that he has departed from this body. So I join with the entire Senate family in wishing Ted and Lynne much happiness and success in the years ahead.

George Voinovich

With the close of the 111th Congress, the Senate will lose to retirement again one of our most seasoned and respected Members on the other side of the aisle, Senator George Voinovich of Ohio.

Senator Voinovich and I have much in common. We are both proud midwesterners. But here is what we really have in common: My mother immigrated to America from what is now Slovenia, the nation of Slovenia, and George's mother was a first-generation American of Slovenia descent. Both of us were--and I think we are the only two Senators ever--awarded the Golden Order of Merit by the Republic of Slovenia, in part for our efforts to assist Slovenia in its campaign to rid the world of landmines and to assist the victims of landmines. We both care very deeply about the success of democracy in Slovenia, a very small nation that has set a powerful example of political stability, economic reform, true democracy, and ethnic inclusiveness in the Balkans.

For nearly 4\1/2\ decades, George Voinovich has devoted himself to public service at just about every level of government--quite amazing-- as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, Cuyahoga County commissioner, Mayor of Cleveland, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, Governor of Ohio, and, for the last 12 years, U.S. Senator from the State of Ohio. Across those 44 years of service, he has been respected for his independence, his pragmatism, and his insistence on putting ideology and partisanship aside in order to accomplish important things for ordinary working Americans.

Another constant in the career of George Voinovich has been his insistence on fiscal discipline and his willingness to advance creative, tough-minded, nonideological approaches to help government live within its means. As mayor of Cleveland, he took a municipality that had recently declared bankruptcy and turned it around to become a three-time All-American City winner. As Governor, he returned the State budget to balance despite a bad economy. And for the last 12 years, he has been one of the Senate's leading champions of fiscal conservatism. By that, I mean true fiscal conservatism, which means a willingness both to cut spending and to raise revenues as necessary in order to bring down deficits and balance the books. On that score, on matters of taxing and spending, Senator Voinovich had the courage to break ranks with his own party on many occasions.

Our colleague Senator Voinovich has many accomplishments in this body. I do not have time to mention them all, but I know he is particularly proud of his work as chair and, most recently, ranking member of the Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, wherein he played a key role in passing the National Energy Security Act of 2009, which is helping our Nation to lessen its dependance on imported petroleum.

He is also deservedly proud of his long leadership in the fight to preserve and protect Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes--a cause that has been a constant throughout his career in public service. Here in the Senate, he has been a cochair of the Great Lakes Task Force, and he introduced a bill that, when signed into law in 2008 by President Bush, ratified the Great Lakes Compact to protect these national treasures through better water management and conservation--a singular accomplishment by Senator Voinovich of Ohio.

Senator Voinovich has achieved much during his distinguished career in public service. I could use any number of superlatives to describe his character and work: sterling character, an honest individual, someone who, when he gave you his word, gave you his word. To Senator Voinovich, a handshake was a handshake. It was a commitment, and he would never go back. But in my book, the highest accolade is simply that George Voinovich is a generous, sincere, decent person, dedicated to public service, always determined to do the right thing for the people of Ohio and the entire United States, a man lacking in ideological rigor but still a person dedicated to true conservative causes he has championed all his life.

It has been a great honor to be his friend and colleague for these last years. Our friendship, of course, will continue. I wish George and Janet the very best in the years ahead.

Judd Gregg

I know others are here. If I can indulge them just for a few more minutes, I would like to make one more speech in praise of another colleague who is retiring, again on the other side of the aisle, and who is a good friend and someone for whom I have had not only great friendship but great respect, and I have served with him a lot on our committees--Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.

Senator Gregg can be a very effective and persuasive partisan for the conservative causes he holds dear. He also has a strong New Hampshire independent streak and is willing to buck his party when he thinks it is wrong--for example, when he voted against President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit bill because it was unpaid for and would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the debt. Indeed, as ranking member and former chair of the Budget Committee, Senator Gregg has been one of the Senate's leading champions of fiscal discipline.

I especially admire Senator Gregg's capacity for reaching across the aisle, building bridges, and getting important work done. On that score, he has represented New Hampshire and the United States at his very best. This quality has made him a standout member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which I chair. He forged a very productive working relationship with my predecessor as chair, Senator Ted Kennedy. For example, he played a key role with Senator Kennedy in crafting the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, and a few years later, I was proud to work with both of those New England Senators again--especially Senator Gregg--to reauthorize and improve the Americans with Disabilities Education Act.

In 2008, Senator Gregg was a key leader in crafting and forging bipartisan support for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. Many have criticized the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, but facts are facts: TARP prevented a total meltdown of our financial system. And almost the entire $700 billion taxpayer investment has been or soon will be paid back to the U.S. Treasury. In fact, just this week, the Treasury booked a $12 billion profit on its previous $45 billion investment in Citigroup.

This year, Senator Gregg has played a key role on the HELP Committee in bringing together Senators from both parties to advance food safety legislation. Frankly, there were many times when sharp policy disagreements threatened the survival of that bill. But at every turn, Senator Gregg played a constructive role in working through the options, crafting bipartisan compromises, and keeping the legislation on track to passage. I have nothing but admiration and gratitude to Senator Gregg for his leadership on the food safety bill, which, as you know, passed the Senate, and because of a little glitch, the House had to return it, and it is coming back to us on the continuing resolution bill. We will put it on our omnibus bill and send it back to the House. I do not think there is any doubt that this will be signed into law by the President this year.

That is the first modernization of our Food and Drug Administration inspection systems in 70 years--70 years. Again, I wish to publicly thank Senator Gregg for hanging in there over several years' period of time to make sure we kept it on track from one Congress to another, from one Congress to another, up and down, but we finally got it done. As I just said, I have the utmost admiration and gratitude to Senator Gregg for hanging in there and making sure we got the job done.

As many of our colleagues will remember, several years ago, Senator Gregg bought a $20 Powerball lottery ticket and won $850,000. Again, we all want to go up and touch him and see if it will rub off on us a little bit. To this day, Senator Gregg is the only person I have ever known who won a Powerball lottery ticket. Well, as we have often said, that was Judd Gregg's personal good fortune, but it has been our good fortune to have a Senator of his high caliber and character in this body for the last 18 years. During that time, I have placed great store by his friendship and his counsel. Of course, that relationship and friendship will continue, but I am sorry we are going to miss him here in the Senate.

I join with the entire Senate family in wishing Judd and Kathleen the very best in the years ahead.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Gillian Leibach and Lauren Scott of my staff be granted the privilege of the floor during the duration of today's proceedings.

How much time do we have?

Mr. President, I yield myself the remainder of the time. I see no Republicans on the floor now.

Mr. President, our first responders are genuine heroes. On a routine basis, they walk into burning buildings, confront criminals, and put their lives on the line to protect our families and communities. These dedicated workers are on the front lines every day, and they have invaluable skills and knowledge about how to best protect the public and stay safe on the job.

Unfortunately, under current law, many of our first responders have no voice in the decisions that affect their own lives and livelihoods. Their workplace input is disregarded because they are denied the same basic rights that other American workers enjoy. Currently, private sector employees are covered by the National Labor Relations Act and have the right to form a union if they choose, but we leave it up to States to determine whether police and firefighters have the right to form a union. Over half of the States allow collective bargaining, but almost 300,000 police officers and 141,000 fire fighters nationwide are legally forbidden from exercising their basic, fundamental right to collective bargaining. That is an injustice to our police and firefighters and is inconsistent with American values. That is why I support the Public Safety Employee-Employer Cooperation Act, which would extend this basic right to thousands of brave public servants. This bill has the support of a broad bipartisan coalition of Senators.

The Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act protects the

fundamental rights of our first responders by requiring States to provide them with four basic protections: The right to form and join a union; the right to sit down at the table and talk; the right to sign an enforceable contract if both parties agree; and the right to go to a neutral third party when there are disputes.

The benefits of this bill go to both our first responders and the communities they serve. We know that collective bargaining helps improve safety for workers. The firefighter fatality rate in States without collective bargaining is about 52 percent higher than in States that honor these rights. Collective bargaining relations have also helped to address worker fatigue, on-the-job errors, employee fitness, and safety hazards like asbestos. Equally important in these times of State fiscal crisis, there are countless examples across the country of union firefighters and police officers voting to forego scheduled salary increases, defer pension payments, pay increased benefit premiums, or reduce overtime hours in order to help States cut costs and avoid layoffs.

While guaranteeing the fundamental right to organize, the act preserves maximum flexibility for States and localities to shape their own laws. The 26 States that already allow collective bargaining will not have to change their laws at all. Other States will have to ensure the four basic protections, but everything else about how to craft their labor laws is left entirely to the States' discretion.

It is long past time to ensure that our dedicated public safety officers have the same basic rights that private-sector workers across the country already enjoy. This is a matter of fundamental fairness, and an urgent matter of public safety. I urge all of my colleagues to support this important bipartisan bill.

Mr. President, earlier today my colleague from Wyoming was on the Senate floor and made some statements about this bill--my ranking member, Senator Enzi. I just want to respond to a couple of those.

My friend from Wyoming said the bill didn't go through the HELP Committee during this Congress, and we weren't given a right to consider the bill in the appropriate venue. Well, Senator Gregg, on the Republican side, has introduced this bill for the last five Congresses. The HELP Committee has marked up this bill and approved it twice, and a majority of the Senate has twice voted to consider the bill. So we have been debating this bill for years. Simply because it didn't go through the committee this time doesn't mean it didn't go through the committee many times before, which it did.

Secondly, the bill does not impose an unfunded mandate on our States. That was mentioned. It does not require cities and States to spend money, only to engage in a dialogue. It does not allow strikes, and it does not impose arbitration or require particular terms. These are indeed left up to the States.

Yes.

Mr. President, the American people are united in their desire to provide generously for the new generation of veterans, including those who have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We want these veterans to have every opportunity to reintegrate successfully into civilian life, to find good jobs, and to build solid careers. To that end, the Federal Government has provided opportunities for these veterans to pursue advancement through higher education. That is why we passed the post-9/11 G.I. bill on June 30, 2008, and it is why we expanded existing education programs through the Department of Defense--DOD.

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which I chair, has been conducting an in-depth inquiry into the for-profit sector of higher education. Most recently, we have taken a look at the unprecedented surge of dollars from military educational benefits programs to for-profits. I am here today to have printed in the Record a new report that committee staff has prepared titled, ``Benefitting Whom? For-Profit Education Companies and the Growth of Military Educational Benefits.'' This report documents that between 2006 and 2010, combined Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense education benefits received just by 20 for-profit education companies increased from $66.6 million to $521.2 million, an increase of 683 percent.

Mr. President, I will have more to say about the report in the upcoming days.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a report and an appendix be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, earlier today, I was listening to the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, and he talked about coming over to the Senate floor from a meeting over in the Dirksen Building, which he said is about a block away, but he said it was like going from the real world to a surreal world here in the Senate. As I have listened to some of these Senators on the Republican side speak since then, I think Senator Durbin is right on the mark.

What is going on here? Sometimes you have to stop and say: What truly is going on here? We have lost touch with what is happening in America--to ordinary Americans, to the real middle class. What do we have here? We have Republicans who will not do anything until we have a tax break for the richest Americans--continue these tax breaks.

I listened to my friend from South Dakota recently who was just on the floor talking about creating jobs and all that kind of stuff. Well, we just had the new unemployment figures come out this morning from the Labor Department--the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which says unemployment rose to 9.8 percent. But that is just the official unemployment figure. Actually, if you do a full accounting of payroll data, if you take into account the 14.8 million workers who are part time, of necessity, because they can't get a full-time job or they are discouraged and have left the workforce because they have been looking and they are out of work and they have gone past their 99 weeks of unemployment compensation, according to Leo Hindery, who is the chairman of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, the real unemployment rate is now 18.7 percent--18.7 percent--and the job gap is not just 7.3 million, it is actually 21.9 million in real terms--21.9 million people in this country--who are either unemployed, underemployed, left the workplace because they are discouraged, their unemployment benefits have run out or they basically have shifted around and they are not any longer in the workforce. You take all that into account and you have 21.9 million people out there out of work.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the study from the Smart Globalization Initiative project.

So we have a high unemployment rate, we keep losing jobs, and Republicans keep saying we have to extend the tax breaks for the wealthy. I hear that in terms of jobs--jobs, jobs, jobs. Well, that is interesting, because in 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in America took home 23\1/2\ percent of all the income in America. So let us get that straight. The top 1 percent took home 23\1/2\ percent of all the income. In fact, they took home more money than the bottom 50 percent of income earners

total in America. Eighty percent of all the increase in income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent. In the wake of the 2008 Wall Street bailout, executives from Goldman Sachs received bonuses totaling $13 billion--$13 billion for Goldman Sachs.

So Republicans keep talking about we have to do more tax breaks for the wealthy. Well, after 10 years of tax cuts for the wealthy, where are the jobs? We have had this for 10 years--what they are trying to extend, the Bush tax cuts, which I never voted for in 2001. So we have had them for almost 10 years. If cutting taxes were so good for creating jobs, I ask my colleagues: Where are the jobs? Where are they?

It is that same old trickle-down theory. If only we would give more to the top, it will trickle down on everybody else. Well, as one worker told me the other day--talking about trickle down--who has been out of a job for 2 years: I haven't had a drop. He said: I would settle for a heavy dew. One person told me one time--and I will never forget this about trickle down--he said: If you have been raised on the farm, you understand something very simple. You don't fertilize a crop from the top down. You don't fertilize a tree from the top down. You fertilize it by putting it at the roots. You want to create jobs in America, you don't give it to the wealthiest in America, you start putting things down at the bottom.

If we want to get to the jobs issue in America, we have to start talking about what our trade laws are doing and how we are shipping more jobs overseas. Let's talk about our educational system and educating people into job retraining or rebuilding the manufacturing base in America so we can actually manufacture and make things here one more time--and I mean new things, not the old things but new things: rebuilding our infrastructure, our high-speed networks of communications, and make sure we have an infrastructure that is second to none in the world. There are a lot of things we can do to spur economic growth and jobs, but the worst possible one of all is giving tax breaks to the wealthy.

I haven't even touched on the moral implications of that or the justice or fairness issue, and I will, but just on pure economic grounds we know tax breaks for the wealthy don't do it. They never have and they never will. Yet Republicans keep wanting to do the same thing over and over and over again. Someone attributed this to Albert Einstein--I don't know if it is true--but whoever it was said: The definition of ``insanity `` is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. Republicans keep wanting to give more tax breaks to the wealthy and expecting that somehow, magically, we will have jobs created. Well, we gave all this money to Wall Street and to Goldman Sachs and I don't see any jobs out there anywhere.

My friend from South Dakota was talking about the election; that we have to listen to the American people. Well, here is a poll that came out this morning. Senator Schumer showed this earlier. This is a CBS News poll out today which shows that only 26 percent of Americans support millionaire tax breaks. Guess what. N ot even a majority of Republicans support it. Only 46 percent of Republicans support the millionaire tax breaks. So who are my friends on the other side of the aisle listening to? Wall Street. They are listening to those who have made a lot of money and they do not want to pay their fair share of taxes. They are certainly not listening to, I guess, the majority of Republicans who say they don't even want the tax breaks for the wealthy.

My friend from South Dakota was talking about the election. We had a big election. Republicans got elected to office in larger numbers. That is absolutely true. We can't deny that. But what ever happened to the election of 2008? It is as if it never happened. Yet 40 million more Americans voted in 2008 than voted in 2010. Do you know for whom they voted? They voted for Barack Obama. They voted for Democrats. They voted for change. They did not vote for more tax breaks for the wealthy. They wanted to change the system. That is what we have been trying to do for the last couple of years, except that we have had intransigence on the part of Republicans in the Senate in the form of one filibuster after another. So 40 million more people voted in the election of 2008 than voted in 2010. Again, what we need to do is change things. We don't need to change things to do more of the same, which is what the Republicans want to do.

I hear my friend--again, I cannot help but refer to this. He said that the tax increases never created jobs. That is kind of the way I heard it said. I wrote it down here--can't create jobs by raising taxes; never happens.

Frankly, I remember 1993. I was here then, and we had the Clinton bill here from President Clinton. It was sometimes called the Clinton recovery bill. We had all worked on it here. Did it increase taxes? Yes, it did. It increased taxes. Boy, did the Republicans howl. I was here. I remember. And all the economists on the other side were saying: Oh my gosh, if we pass this, it is going to be terrible.

I went back and got some of the quotes. My friend from Utah, Senator Hatch, said:

Make no mistake, these higher taxes will cost jobs.

Senator Burns from Montana said:

So we are still going to pile up more debt. Most of all, we

are going to cost jobs in this country.

Senator Phil Gramm. This is August 5, 1993:

I want to predict tonight that if we adopt this bill, the

American economy is going to get weaker and not stronger. The

deficit 4 years from today will be higher than it is today,

and not lower. When all is said and done, people will pay

more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, the

government will spend more money, and the American people

will be worse off.

That is what he said in 1993.

Do you want me to go on? My friend from Iowa, Senator Grassley, said:

I really do not think it takes a rocket scientist to know

that this bill will cost jobs.

August 6, 1993.

Here they were all predicting this. I had a couple more I wanted to get in the Record here just to put an emphasis on it.

Representative Newt Gingrich--oh, yes--Republican of Georgia. On August 5, 1993, he said:

I believe this will lead to a recession next year. This is

the Democrat machine's recession, and each of them will be

held personally responsible.

I like this one. Representative John Kasich from Ohio said:

This plan will not work. If it was to work, then I'd have

to become a Democrat.

If I am not mistaken, former Representative John Kasich was just elected Governor of Ohio. I didn't know he ran on the Democratic ticket.

History--read the history of it. You cannot deny it. As we often say around here, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but not everyone is entitled to their own facts, and the facts are very clear. After we passed the Clinton bill--with not one Republican vote--the economy started to get better, we started to create jobs, we started to reduce the deficit. In just 7 years--actually 6 years, a little over 6 years--we actually got a surplus in our budget--a surplus and a huge number of jobs were created with the higher taxes. The last time we had a surplus was then. We were on the path of reducing our debt, our national debt. We had more jobs. People were working.

Then George Bush came to office in 2001, and the Republicans looked at all this money that was coming in which we were going to use to pay down the national debt so our kids would not have a big debt hanging over their heads--they looked at all that and said: Oh my gosh, let's have a tax cut. And they rammed through a tax cut--they sure did--in 2001. They rammed through a huge tax cut that to a large extent benefitted the wealthiest people in this country. By 2007, the top 1 percent took home 23.5 percent of all the income and were not paying their fair share. But that is what they want to extend. That is what the Republicans want to do. They want to continue the Bush tax cut they put in 2001 for the wealthy.

So they took all that money that was coming in that we were going to use to pay down the debt so our kids would have a better future, they gave it all to the wealthy--not all but a fair amount of it--about 80 percent to the wealthiest in our country and a few crumbs and stuff to others. What did it do? It raised the deficit and put us in deeper debt than ever before--all so the wealthy could have a little bit more money. This is what they want to continue.

As I said, I think the evidence is clear that what they did in 2001 did not give us jobs, it hurt the economy, and widened the gap in America between the top and the bottom even more. It widened the gap even more in our country. Now they want to continue that same policy, and they say it is going to create jobs. It did not create jobs. We have lost jobs because of this.

I spoke here last evening, and after I spoke, the Senator from Texas spoke, and she was talking about who creates jobs in this country. It is the wealthy; they get this money and they create jobs. Entrepreneurs do create jobs. Most of the jobs and businesses created in this country were not created simply by the wealthy; they were created by ingenious people who had a good idea, were willing to work hard, gather some money together, get investors, and build a business. Most of the new jobs in America are not created by the DuPonts or the Rockefellers or the people like that; they are created by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and the people like that who did not start with a lot of money, but they had a good idea and they were entrepreneurial and went to work and started these businesses.

So create more jobs, get more money to the wealthy? Here is the headline in USA Today recently. It said ``Luxury spending is back in fashion.'' Then underneath, in small print, it says, ``Jobless still aren't buying essentials.'' So I guess what we need to do is give more tax breaks to the wealthiest so they can go out--I just read about someone the other day going out and buying $2,600 cashmere scarves-- $2,600 for a scarf. I suppose so.

I was just with a group of unemployed Americans the other day who came to Washington. Some have been out of work for over 2 years, all of them hoping we can extend the unemployment benefits--which the Republicans will not let us do, by the way, and I am going to get to that in a second. But I held this up. I thought, ``Luxury spending back in fashion.'' I asked those people who are unemployed if they were going to be shopping in Tiffany's this year. Maybe you are going to go down and buy a little jewel-encrusted broach for your wife or maybe, if you are a woman, you will buy one of those diamond-encrusted watches for your husband. Oh, I know, you are going to go buy a Lamborghini made in Italy or a Mercedes made in Germany. I said to these people: Maybe you would like to go down and buy one of those 3D, high- definition flat screen TVs made in Japan. That is where the money is going. The rich are not creating jobs; they are buying $2,600 cashmere scarves, and they are going to Tiffany's and buying jewels and buying wrist watches that cost $25,000, most of which are not made in America, anyway, but are made in some other country.

If you really want to give tax breaks to businesses, I am all for it if it is truly oriented towards businesses employing people in America, as long as their products are made in America, as long as they are manufactured here and they do not take the money and ship it off to some other country. If a business wants to start here and employ people here in America, manufacture something here--rebuild the steel industry in our country, rebuild manufacturing--I am all for it. I just do not believe in giving tax breaks to someone who takes that money and say: Guess what, I am going to invest it in a business in Thailand or in Germany or in Brazil. That is what they do. You give all that money to these wealthy people up on Wall Street and stuff, they can invest that money wherever they want, and out it goes, out of the country.

Since we have such high deficits and we want to get our deficits down, we want to create jobs, don't give it to the most wealthy in our country; give it to legitimate businesses that either start or expand and employ Americans and start making things here in America or put it into infrastructure spending, rebuilding the infrastructure of America--our highways, bridges, roads, schools, communication systems. That will create jobs. That will create jobs.

They say government spending cannot create jobs. I happen to disagree with those who said the stimulus bill did not create jobs. It sure did. It put a lot of people to work all over this country, not in government jobs but in rebuilding America. When you put money out there and you are rebuilding a highway or a bridge in Iowa or in Minnesota, it is done by private contractors, private businesses that employ people and spend the money here, mostly on products made in America. That is why infrastructure spending has such a good multiplier effect. It has a multiplier effect because when you build a new school or a new classroom or whatever, first of all, the work has to be done here, it cannot be shipped off to China. Second, the money is spent here. Third, most of the products that go into our infrastructure are still made in America. When you think about it, when you build a school, rebuild a school, you think about the cement, you think about the bricks, you think about the mortar, you think about all the conduits for the lighting, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning units, windows, doors, and 9 times out of 10, it is made in America. So you get a big multiplier effect from that money, and it does indeed create a lot of jobs.

I mentioned just a second go that I was with a group of unemployed who had come to Washington to petition their government for a redress of their grievances, and their grievances are that they are out of work, they are looking for work, and their unemployment benefits have just run out.

We have tried several times here on the floor of the Senate asking unanimous consent to extend the unemployment benefits for another year. The Republicans have objected every time. And the letter that was sent out by the Republican leader the other day said that they are going to object to anything passing this floor until they get their tax breaks for the wealthy. So they are holding hostage millions of Americans who have lost their jobs. Some have been out of work, as I said--I met some who have been out of work for over 2 years; some for a year or months. For $300 a week--that is about the average in unemployment benefits, about $300 a week. They say we cannot afford that. My Republican friends say we cannot afford that. But we can afford to give a $100,000 tax break to the wealthiest Americans. Think about that.

During this holiday season--I heard my friend from South Dakota say that we should wrap up our business so Senators can go home and spend our holidays with our families, have a nice holiday season. What about those millions of Americans who are out of work and have just had their unemployment benefits cut off? What about them? Are they going to have a nice Christmas?

Are they going to have a nice holiday season? The Republicans say no. Give the tax breaks to the wealthy first. Well, as I said, Wall Street executives got billions of dollars in bonuses--billions. They are probably going to have a nice holiday season. They will probably even shop at Tiffany's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus. But how about the millions of Americans who are out of work who rely upon unemployment benefits, $300 a week, less than the poverty wage, and we are saying: No. No, we are not going to extend them during this holiday season.

The Republicans are holding them hostage. I am sorry. This is unconscionable. Have the Republicans lost all sense of fairness? Have they lost all sense of justice? Have the Republicans lost all sense of what is right and wrong? I mean, they can fight for their tax breaks for the wealthy. Fine, that is what they are fighting for. I understand that.

But to say we cannot extend unemployment benefits for people out of work because we have not yet given the tax breaks to the wealthy is a morale outrage. I ask: Where is our outrage at something like this? Where is the President's outrage at this? The President ought to be out there saying: This is morally outrageous, that we are going to deny unemployment benefits to people during this time of the year especially.

We can have our battles on the tax cuts. We can have those battles, but we should not hold hostage the people who are out of work today and need unemployment benefits. Some people say: Well, unemployment benefits, it makes people lazy.

Well, as I pointed out the other day in a speech on the floor, when eight people look for one job. There is one job for every eight people. So you have musical chairs going round and round.

One person gets it, and you have seven people still unemployed.

What a lot of people do not even know is that in order to even qualify for unemployment benefits, you have to be actively looking for work. You cannot sit at home. You have to be actively looking for work. A lot of the people I talked to 2 days ago who were here who were employed, you hear their stories. They have tried everything. Some have gone to different States. They have gone to different communities. They have tried everything to find another job.

I just read a letter from one the other day, a math teacher, has three college degrees. She has lost her job. She has tried to find work in different States. She has tried everything from McDonald's to everything else and cannot find a job.

By the way, the people who are truly hurting the most in this job market right now are people over the age of 50, mostly women. Women over the age of 50 who have worked hard, many of them had good jobs. Again, I spoke to one on Tuesday who had worked all her life, had a very good job. She admitted she was making $70,000 a year, good middle- class income.

She lost her job and has been out of work for over a year. She cannot find work. She has tried and beat the pavement and looked all over. But, you know what, she is in that area between 50 and 60. Very tough. Very tough. Yet we will not even extend unemployment benefits for people like her.

Well, as I said, I think it is a moral outrage, and I would hope our President would get out there and start saying that. Let the American people know how the jobless are being held hostage by the Republicans in trying to get their tax breaks for the wealthy.

So it is been said the Republicans are playing hardball. Well, if they are playing hardball for the rich, we ought to play hardball for the jobless, too, in this country. They want to play hardball, we ought to play hardball. My friend from South Dakota says he would like to get out of here and spend Christmas with his family. Would not we all?

But, I think, rather than identifying with those on Wall Street and those who wear suits and ties every day and have a comfortable life such as we do, we ought to be identifying with those middle-class Americans who are out of work.

If the Republicans want to play hardball, I think what we ought to say is: Look, we are going to stay here every day, we are going to be here every day, and every day we are going to ask consent to bring up this bill to extend unemployment benefits. If we have to be here on Christmas Eve, so be it. If we have to be here on Christmas Day, we ought to be here on Christmas Day, if necessary, so the American people will get an idea of what is going on in this Senate Chamber, the outrageousness of it.

So, yes, we would all like to spend time with family over the holidays. But unless and until we extend the unemployment benefits, at least at a minimum, we should not leave this Chamber and see how long the Republicans want to hold on to that and how much they want to deny people their benefits.

If 2 million Americans and 10,000 of my fellow Iowans are going to be suffering because they will not even be able to put food on the table or have a nice holiday season with their families because they are unemployed, the least we can do is identify with them. They are not going to have a very good holiday season unless we do something and take action. So I think we should stay as long as is necessary.

Lastly, for too long and for too many times, the Republicans have used an archaic 19th century procedure called the filibuster to thwart the will of the majority of the people in this country, to stop legislation, to stop a whole bunch of things, nominations, things they even, when we finally get them through, get 99 votes out of 100.

But they stop them because of a filibuster. Well, that may have been OK in the 19th century. It may have been OK in the early part of the 20th century. But we can no longer live with that. We cannot run a 21st century government in a 21st world with an archaic millstone around our neck called a filibuster.

When this body reconvenes in January, we finally have to break the shackles of that. We have to break the shackles of that 19th century rule, proceeding, where one or two Senators can stop everything. Stop it. I quote Vice President Biden who said: No democracy has ever survived that needed a supermajority. No democracy.

Ours cannot survive either if we continue with a supermajority needed in the Senate.

I hope we stay here. I hope we increase the unemployment benefits. We will continue the debate on the taxes. I will be supporting, tomorrow morning, the vote on continuing the tax benefits for those families making $250,000 and less, to extend the tax breaks for that group. I will not go higher than $250,0000. I will not vote to extend tax breaks for anybody over $250,000.

Quite frankly, if you make $250,000, you are in the top 7 percent or so of income earners in America. So is that the middle class? I think that is stretching it. Those making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 to $80,000 a year are clearly in the middle class. That is the broad middle class of America. What are we doing for them? What are we doing for them?

So I will vote to go up to $250,000 but not a cent more than that. Quite frankly, I have a hard time even going to $250,000. It ought to be less than that. If you want to give more tax breaks to people, extend the earned-income tax credit and increase the childcare tax credit for working families.

If you want to do that, now you are talking about helping middle- class families. Some people say: Well, we have to do something for small businesses. I am all for that. But I wish to make sure it really goes to small businesses that employ Americans, keep the jobs here, manufacture things in America, and do not ship them overseas.

You do that, I am all for a small business tax break. You bet. So that is the debate we should have. But the unemployed and those who need unemployment benefits during this holiday season should not be held hostage.

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

Mr. President, I listened with great attention to the speech just given by my friend from New York. Senator Schumer is right on target when he is talking about: Whom are we fighting for? What are we in the Senate for? What are we here to do? Whom are we fighting for?

I have often said the one thing about the very wealthy in our country, they are pretty good at taking care of themselves. Obviously, they would not be rich if they were not. But what about the people who do not have much? Who is fighting for them? This is what I wish to spend some time talking about; that is, the unemployed in this country.

Last week we went home for Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a good time with their families. Now we are looking at the upcoming holidays with anticipation, as we do every year, to be with our families, go out and buy some presents and exchange presents--kids, grandkids, a festive time.

But what about all those people who are out of work and have no money, who right now are being cut off from the only lifeline they have, unemployment insurance benefits--losing them day after day because they ended 2 days ago. By the time Christmas rolls around, somewhere close to 2 million Americans not only will be out of a job but will have no source of income whatsoever, facing another winter season celebrating the holidays with nothing.

I had a newspaper headline I showed the other day that said: ``Luxury spending is back in fashion''--about how much money was being spent on jewels and fancy wristwatches and high-end types of things. Then, right under, in small print, it said: However, for millions of Americans they are not shopping anywhere because they are out of work.

The two faces of America--is that what we want this country to be, a few who can spend on lavish, jewel-encrusted watches, buying $2,500 cashmere scarves, as I just read about the other day, and everybody else sort of getting in the soup line? We are a better country than that.

That is what I wanted to talk about: reauthorizing the emergency unemployment insurance program. But I, first of all, listened to my friend and colleague from Iowa, Senator Grassley, talk about taxes. I did not hear the whole speech, but I heard him say raising taxes never reduces the deficit or reduces the debt. I do not know which he said-- either the debt or the deficit.

Well, I hate to disagree with my friend, but in 1993, when we enacted the Clinton economic proposal, it included increasing taxes in 1993. Oh, I remember the Senator from Texas, Mr. Phil Gramm, an economist, got up and said: Oh, this is going to cause a depression. This will be the worst thing that ever happened to this country. We are going to rue the day we ever did this. Well, we passed it. Of course, it did not get one Republican vote, and we did raise some taxes in 1993.

What happened, then, for the next 7, 8 years? We had unprecedented growth in this country. Quite frankly, we did balance the budget by 2000. Not only did we balance it, we had a surplus, and we had a surplus going into 2001. That is when George Bush came to the Presidency and said: Oh, we have this big surplus. Alan Greenspan was warning us we had too much of a surplus and it might not be wise to pay down the debt. We were on course to pay down the national debt. Then the Bush administration pushed through some tax cuts, for which they said: Oh, we are just going to do it temporarily, you see, just until 2010. We will keep them until 2010, and then we will have to revisit it or we will go back to what we had before in 2001.

They made that deal. I did not vote for it. I did not think we should cut taxes that time. I thought we should pay off the national debt. That would have strengthened our economy more than anything. But, no, the Bush administration, the Republicans who controlled the House and the Senate, said they wanted to cut the taxes. Most of the taxes that were cut, as my friend from New York said, were for the very wealthy.

What happened? Did we have a lot of job growth? Not a bit. Not a bit. Not only did we not get job growth, the deficit skyrocketed. So I do not want to hear any exhortations from that side of the aisle about how raising taxes has never reduced the deficit or the debt. We did under Bill Clinton. The proof is there. We had a surplus. But they wanted the tax breaks to give to the wealthy.

Lastly, my friend from New York talked about being held hostage. There has been a lot of talk about middle-income Americans getting a tax break. But I ask--and I keep asking--who are middle-income Americans? Who are they? Well, I keep hearing it is those earning $250,000 a year or below. Mr. President, $250,000 a year? My friends, if you are making $250,000 a year, you are in the top 5 percent of the income earners in America. That is right. If you make $250,000 a year, 95 percent of the American people make less than you do. So is that middle class? I do not think so.

To me, in the middle class are people who are making $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 a year. That is the broad middle class of America. A lot of people in America are living on $40,000 a year. It might be hard for some people to think about that, but that is true. They do not take fancy trips. They do not have fancy cars. They do not go to fancy restaurants. They do not wear suits and ties every day. But they are working, and a lot of them are working at jobs that are important to our society.

They may be nurses aides. They may be taking care of our elderly in a nursing home or in assisted living. They may be our childcare workers taking care of our children. They could be working in fast food places. They are making $35,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, and that is it. That is the middle class of America. What are we doing for them? What are we doing for that middle class?

So every time I hear about that $250,000 is the middle class, I am thinking: Wait a second. You are talking about the top 5 percent in America. If you want to talk about the broad middle class, you have to start talking about people making less than $100,000 a year. What are we doing for them?

Well, it seems to me, if we are going to have some tax breaks and stuff, we have to think about this group. In that group--in that group--of the broad middle class is the army of the unemployed. That is where the unemployed are. The unemployed are not on Wall Street. They got their bailouts. They are getting million-dollar bonuses this year, and my friends on the Republican side want to extend the tax breaks so not only do they get their million-dollar bonuses, they will not have to pay their fair share of taxes on them either, not to mention, for some of them, the way they are getting their money, they are being charged at the least possible tax rate--not as regular income but as capital gains. But I am not going to get into that right now.

So what are the Republicans doing? They are saying we cannot extend the unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who are unemployed until and unless we have tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. For those making over $250,000, $500,000, over $1 million-- they do not care; no matter what, no matter who you are, how much money you make--we have to give them tax breaks or we cannot extend unemployment benefits to the unemployed. You want to talk about hostages? The Republicans in this Congress are holding hostage the unemployed workers in America because they want to get the tax breaks for the wealthiest. That is what is happening here. I don't know that many of the American people know about that. Oh, they see us debate this stuff and back and forth about who is going to get these tax breaks, but right now unemployment benefits have run out. We have asked I think three or four times, if I am not mistaken, on the Senate floor for unanimous consent to extend

the unemployment benefits, and the Republicans have objected every single time. Why?

They wrote a letter. Yesterday, the Republican leader had a letter signed by every single Republican in the Senate that said they will not allow any bill to pass the Senate unless and until we pass a bill giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. It almost begs credulity. You wonder, is this real? Do they really mean that? Well, they signed their names to it. That means we can't extend unemployment benefits until we give in, until we give in to the Republicans and give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. What a deal. What a deal-- holding people who are at the end of their ropes--the most vulnerable in our society--holding them hostage for their Wall Street friends.

I have heard this said by some on the other side: Well, unemployment benefits make people lazy. If you give them unemployment benefits, they won't look for work.

Well, let me talk for a minute about what the labor market looks like right now, and we will see if these people are really lazy. Right now, there are 15 million people who want a job and can't find one but 9 million people forced to work part time because they can't get a full- time job. There are a number of other people who have looked for a job, and they have given up. They have been out of work for 2 years. As the Presiding Officer knows, after 99 weeks, you don't get any unemployment benefits whatsoever, and a lot of people have been out of work for over 99 weeks. They have nothing. That means our unemployment rate is not around 9 percent; it is actually about 17 to 18 percent. And these unemployed workers are looking for work.

What people have to understand is that before you can get unemployment benefits, you have to be actively looking for work. It is a requirement in order to get it. But what is happening out there? Workers can't find jobs because there aren't any. There is one job for every five workers. Well, it says here: 14.8 million workers unemployed. That is not really true. It is actually about 26 million. That is 14.8 million unemployed, but when you include those who have given up because they have gone beyond 99 weeks, when you take into account those who work part time because they were working full time but now they can only get a part-time job, it adds up to almost 26 million.

Let's just take the Bureau of Labor Statistics as they are: 14.8 million workers, 2.9 million jobs, 1 for about every 5. Actually, it is fewer than that. If you really look at the overall picture, it is really more like 1 in 8 to 1 in 10. So, in other words, for about every 8 to 10 workers, there is 1 job out there someplace. So most workers will lose on this kind of game of musical chairs. When you run around and the music stops, one person gets a job and six or seven people don't have one. So I challenge my Republican friends: How can six or seven or eight people find a job when there is only one available? That is why we have so many people facing long-term unemployment.

Over 6 million people have been out of work for more than half a year. I saw a lot of them who were here in Washington yesterday. Four in 10 workers, what we call the long-term unemployed, have been unemployed and looking for a job for at least 6 months. This is higher than during any previous recession.

There are extensions going back to 1950. In terms of the share of the total unemployed--you can see the graph here--in terms of who has been unemployed for more than 6 months--and as we can see, as we go from the 1950s to here, look at where this line now goes in 2010: more than we have ever had going clear back to the 1950s. Long-term unemployed, higher than any previous recession. It is the highest in 60 years. They are being held hostage by the Republicans.

Long-term unemployment is especially common among older workers over aged 50. These are people who have worked all their lives, they have saved for retirement, they have lost their jobs, and they are having a very difficult time finding new work. A year, year and a half, 2 years--I have met people out of work for well over 2 years. Again, they can't find work because it is not there, through no fault of their own.

So, as I said, our economy needs at least 11 million jobs--at least. To say that people who are unemployed are lazy and shouldn't get benefits--if you say that, you are obviously out of touch. You are out of touch with the real world and what is happening out there and the difficult circumstances that face our hard-working American families.

I get a lot of letters--and I am sure the occupant of the chair does too from his home State--from people who are just at their wit's end, and they just tear your heart out.

A 50-year-old woman from Altoona has been unemployed since November 2009, a year and a month. She wrote me: ``I can't even get a job at McDonald's right now, and believe me, I have tried everywhere.'' Unemployment insurance is helping her get by, but she is worried about running out of benefits, which just happened 2 days ago. I got this letter before 2 days ago. Her unemployment benefits are out.

An unemployed schoolteacher from Estherville wrote me. She said:

I have not felt so humiliated in 20 years. I have been a

productive and hard-working woman since I was 13, but now I

feel insignificant.

She wrote me that this summer. This month, she wrote me again. She said:

I have tried to find employment in other States, all over

Iowa, in every form of employment you can imagine:

convenience stores, fast food, factories. I am a high school

math teacher with three college degrees and I can't find a

job. If it weren't for unemployment, I would be on food

stamps.

But without unemployment insurance, she doesn't know what she is going to do. She just lost hers a couple of days ago too.

These are just two examples, but there are millions. In this holiday season, from now until the new year, 2 million people will be cut off if we don't continue these programs. In Iowa, my home State, more than 10,000 people will be cut off from their benefits during this holiday season. And if we don't do anything, we will face 6 million by April left without any source of income, hanging by a thread. Their savings are exhausted. Their unemployment benefits are the thin lifeline keeping them afloat.

Congress has never cut back emergency unemployment benefits when the unemployment rate was as high as it is now, and this is no time to start. Here it is again. Going back to 1959, when we had high rates of unemployment, every single time, Congress passed emergency funding to keep unemployment benefits going--that is, until now.

Republicans have said, oh, they will extend it, but they want to pay for it. It is about $56 billion to extend it for 1 year. They have to pay for it, and how they want to pay for it is to take money out of the Recovery Act. There is still some unexpended money there that is going out for things such as roads and bridges and infrastructure projects that put people to work. So they want to take money from that, which is giving people some jobs and helping build our infrastructure, to put into unemployment benefits, when, going back to 1959, through Republican and Democratic administrations, we have always said this is an emergency, and that is the way we fund it.

Well, the Republicans say, we have a huge deficit. We can't do that anymore. Then why are they so intent on passing a tax cut bill, extending a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans and they don't pay for it? They put it on the deficit--not for $56 billion but for $700 billion. Oh, they are willing to do that. They are willing to do that for the wealthiest but not for people at the end of their rope, the unemployed.

So I guess we have entered a new era in this country. We don't help the unemployed: we just help the wealthy. That is all we do. That is why we are here, I guess. Look at that. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. I ask, have my Republican friends lost all sense of fairness? Have my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle lost all sense of justice? Have they lost all sense of what is right and what is wrong? Where is the moral outrage? Where is the moral outrage that we are going to let people stand in the soup lines for Christmas but we are going to give tax breaks to the wealthiest? We are going to give million-dollar bonuses to the people on Wall Street who, by the way, caused a lot of these problems, and we won't even make them

pay their fair share of taxes. Where is the outrage? Well, I will tell you. It is out there. The American people are seeing this. They are saying: Wait a minute, Congress wants to pass this big tax break and they won't help the unemployed? They get it. They get it.

I can't believe Congress is doing this. I can't believe my friends on the other side of the aisle are so hard-hearted that they would hold hostage--that they would not let us move a bill to extend the unemployment benefits until we pass their bill to extend the tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. Where is our sense of moral outrage at this?

Just one other thing. Unemployment benefits that we give out to people is not money that is thrown down a rathole. Quite frankly, one of the best economic stimuli we have is unemployment benefits, believe it or not. Why is that? Well, because people who get unemployment benefits--and right now, in my State it averages about $300 a week. That is about a national average. It is right about there. It is about $300 a week. That is about $15,000 a year. That is lower than the poverty wage, by the way. If you think unemployment benefits are some big deal, it is lower than the poverty wage. So when they get that money, what do they do? They go out and they buy groceries. They buy some clothes for the kids. They buy the necessities of life. And that money acts as a multiplier to our economy.

This is Mark Zandi, Moody's economy.com, about how the GDP increase is generated by $1 of stimulus going to these various things. Food stamps is the best. For every dollar we put into food stamps, we get an increase in GDP of $1.74, again because people spend that money to buy food, most of which is grown, produced, processed, packaged, shipped, and bought in America. Unemployment benefits are right next to food stamps--$1.61 increase in GDP for every dollar we put out, again for the same reason. People using unemployment benefits are not using them to buy a Mercedes. They are not using the benefits to buy a new, high- definition, 3D flat screen TV made in Japan. They are not using the benefits to buy a gold-encrusted, diamond-studded Rolex watch made in Switzerland. They are using these benefits to buy the necessities of life, most of which are made here in America. Extending the Bush tax cuts--for every dollar we put in, we get back 32 cents in GDP growth.

That is what the Republicans want. Why, when trying to stimulate the economy, would we put $1 into something that returns us only 32 cents, when we can put $1 in and get back $1.61? How about infrastructure investments. We get back $1.57 for every $1. It is very close to unemployment benefits. Yet Republicans want to take money out of this and put it here. Why don't we take money out of here--the tax cuts--and put it here? That is a better deal for our economy. It creates jobs, and we get an increase in economic activity in our country.

As I said earlier, here it is. The average UI benefit is about $15,600 and the poverty level is $21,756 for a family of four. It is a powerful benefit that provides food, clothes, housing, utilities--all of the things needed just to keep life going. That is what these unemployment benefits are spent on.

With the holidays coming, our economy needs the money and people need the benefits. Cutting off that revenue would be counterproductive for jobs. It is counterproductive for the people who need these benefits. It makes no sense economically to cut off unemployment benefits. But more importantly, it makes no sense morally. There is such a thing as right and wrong. There is such a thing as fair and unfair and just and unjust. It is not just, it is not fair, and it is not right that, through no fault of their own, we are saying to these people, the unemployed in America, the millions--whether it is 14.9 million or closer to 26 million or anywhere in between--it is just not right to say: Well, maybe we will extend your unemployment benefits after we extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest in our society. That is totally irresponsible. But that is where we find ourselves.

I say to the President of the United States: Mr. President, you made a lot of promises when you were campaigning in my State of Iowa, and one of the most important you made was that you were going to hold the line--and you said this time and time again--at $250,000. You would extend the tax breaks to middle-income people below $250,000. You ought to hold to that, Mr. President. You ought to hold to that.

We will see if the Republicans want to shut down the government. Do they want to shut the government down? That is what they are saying. We are going to have to have a resolution on the Senate floor--because it will run out--to keep the government going. They are saying they will not pass that unless and until we extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

I dare the Republicans to shut the government down just because they want to give tax breaks to the wealthy. I say if that is what they want to do, let the American people see the extent to which the Republicans will go in order to help their wealthy friends.

Mr. President, hold to your guns, hold to your guns on $250,000 and below. Don't give in. Don't give up. The American people are behind you on this one, Mr. President. Tell them you want unemployment benefits extended, you want middle-class tax breaks extended, and we want to fund the government. We don't want to go into default. We want that first. Don't give up, Mr. President. The American people will be behind you, and this Congress will be behind you too.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Erin Bibo, Dillon Kiel, and Susan Dixon of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's proceedings.

Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching the final vote on the Food Safety Modernization Act. For the first time in seven decades, the Congress has addressed this issue. It has taken several years to get to this point. We have had involvement from Republicans and Democrats, from the business community, and from the consumers groups. It is widely supported by both the business sector and the consumer groups. We have had good bipartisan support on this bill with Senator Enzi and others on our committee. This is the product of a long effort to reach the compromise we needed to get good legislation through.

The vote we are about to have now is on a substitute offered by my friend, the Senator from Oklahoma. This substitute would basically kill all of this work we have done. It eliminates a lot of the provisions we have in this bill, such as the preventive control provisions that I think is one of the most important parts of this bill, to get preventive measures in and to prevent the contamination of food in the first place.

It also eliminates the important trace-back provisions that we have in this bill that we have worked on on a bipartisan basis. It would eliminate the important foreign supplier verification provisions which say they have to verify that the food coming into this country is the same as this.

I ask Senators to reject the substitute.

I am pleased to yield to the distinguished majority whip and lead sponsor of this legislation.

That is correct.

My colleague is correct. The exemptions for small farms and facilities in S. 510 do not in any way circumscribe FDA's existing authority under current laws. As my distinguished colleague has just stated, this existing authority is expressly preserved in the savings clauses in the bill. Over the past 15 years, FDA has relied on a number of provisions in existing law in establishing preventive control, or ``HACCP,'' and other preventive requirements for seafood, eggs, and juice. These authorities include section 402(a)(4) of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, which gives FDA the authority to take action against ``adulterated food'' when that food has been subjected to ``insanitary conditions.'' In adopting these regulations, FDA has also relied on section 701(a) of the food and drug law, which gives it broad authority to issue regulations ``for the efficient enforcement'' of that law, as well as its authority to ``prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases'' under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act.

Mr. President, one of the most difficult issues I have had to face as manager of S. 510 is the balance between small growers and processors and larger producers and food companies. This is always a tough issue in agriculture. Those of us who work with our food system know that one size does not fit all. It is always hard to get it right.

In this case, I know that some of my colleagues think the Tester- sponsored language goes too far to help small growers and processors. I don't think we have, and here is why I say that. There are some very important limitations on the Tester provisions in S. 510. First, small businesses as we define them here are really small--a company that does $500,000 of sales a year is very small. We can't say exactly how much food these small companies sell, but here is a good example that shows how small these eligible companies are: The smallest member of the California League of Food Processors reports between $2.5 and $3 million a year in sales or five times as much as any company eligible under the Tester provisions.

Second, many food companies that buy product from eligible producers will tell them: Hey I want you to follow FDA regulations. I want all my suppliers to follow FDA rules. Some may even require their suppliers to do

more than FDA requires. That decision is part of a private contractual relationship. This bill does not affect these arrangements. They will continue to exist and will limit the application of any exemptions provided in this bill.

Third, processors that want to be exempted will have to document that they meet the exemption. There are two ways to do that. First, they must show they are in compliance with State law or second, they must show that they have completed a food safety plan of their own. Many processors will simply decide that for competitive reasons or lack of capacity they will simply stick with whatever FDA requires. This is another pragmatic limitation on the Tester provisions.

Fourth and finally, FDA is specifically authorized to take action and revoke an exemption if it determines that the food presents a public health risk, and FDA can act to prevent an outbreak if needed. This provision creates a ``one-strike-you are out'' exemption: once a farm or food processing facility has lost its exemption, it may never be reinstated.

Mr. President, it is not the intent of this legislation to include in the definition of ``facility,'' for purposes of either FFDCA Sec. 415 or for the pending bill, seed production or storage establishments as long as they do not manufacture, process, pack, or hold seed reasonably expected to be used as food or feed. Further, we note that seeds not used as food or feed have historically not been subject to oversight by

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after adoption of the substitute amendment to S. 510 and now, after the third reading, the Senate then proceed to Calendar No. 74, H.R. 2751; that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 510, as amended, be inserted in lieu thereof; that no further amendments or motions be in order; that the bill, as amended, be read a third time, and after the reading of the Budget Committee pay-go letter, the Senate then proceed to vote on the passage of H.R. 2751, as amended; further, that the title amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and move to lay that motion upon the table.

The motion to lay upon the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, today with the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act by this overwhelming vote of 73 to 25, we have taken momentous steps to help strengthen food safety in America. The Food Safety Modernization Act will bring America's food safety system into the 21st century.

This bill gives the FDA the authority the agency needs to help protect America from foodborne illnesses. While this bill is a historic step forward in ensuring that our food supply is safe and protecting Americans from foodborne illnesses, we have to now ensure that the FDA has adequate resources to fulfill their profound responsibilities.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee and the entire Senate to ensure that they have the necessary resources to fulfill the provisions of this legislation.

As the primary cosponsors of the bill, Senators Durbin and Gregg deserve a great deal of thanks for their outstanding leadership. I asked Senator Durbin when he started working on this bill. He said back in the House 18 years ago. So sometimes it takes a long time to get these things done. But this is the first time in 70 years we have ever had a major revision of our food safety laws. Senator Gregg has also worked at least a dozen years,

that I know of, on this bill in his time in the Senate. I would also like to thank my colleagues, Senator Enzi, the ranking member of the committee, former chairman and ranking member of the committee, for his help and also Senator Burr for working hard on the legislation and getting it where it is today.

Finally, I thank my friend, Senator Dodd, for his tireless efforts. The Senate will certainly miss his leadership on this and so many other important issues. Additionally, I thank members of our staffs who helped to make this possible, and let me just--I am going to read their names, but let me say at the outset, while many of us were perhaps not around during Thanksgiving week or perhaps even the week after the elections, I can tell you the staffs were hard at work day after day, sometimes late in the evenings, sometimes on weekends, to help get this bill together. These staff people deserve so many thanks from not only me but from everyone involved with this legislation.

From Senator Durbin's staff: Albert Sanders, Anne Wall, and Dena Morris; from Senator Enzi's staff: Chuck Clapton, Keith Flanagan, Travis Jordan, Frank Macchiarola, and Amy Muhlberg; Senator Dodd's staff: Anna Staton and Tamar Haro; Senator Gregg's staff has worked on this bill from the beginning: Elizabeth Wroe; Senator Burr's staff: Anna Abram and Margaret Brooks; Senator Reed's staff: Carolyn Gluck and Kasey Gillette; and from my staff: Kathleen Laird, Tom Kraus, Bill McConagha, Mark Halverson, Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, Pam Smith, and Dan Smith. All of them are heroes and heroines in my book. They really put forth supreme effort to get this bill to us today so we could have this overwhelming vote of approval.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, in about 35 minutes we are going to be voting on cloture on the food safety modernization bill, a bill that brings us forward almost 70 years. Seven decades it has been since we have modernized or changed our food inspection and safety system in America. So we are taking that step tonight. Hopefully, we will have a final vote on it by tomorrow.

I just want to take a few minutes now before that vote to again lay out why this bill is so important and why we need to invoke cloture tonight so we can have a final vote on this bill tomorrow.

First of all, the statistics are that Americans are getting sick and they are dying because of foodborne illnesses. You would think in this day with modernization and such we would not have this.

Madam President, 325,000 Americans every year are hospitalized and over 5,000 die. Many of these are kids. I have met them with a group called Safe Tables Our Priority. I have met some of these kids. They will be damaged for life, I say to my friend from Illinois, Senator Durbin, who has been such a leader on this bill. In fact, I daresay we would not be here were it not for Senator Durbin's leadership in getting this bill started, how many years ago I do not know.

I would be glad to yield.

Well, I thank my friend from Illinois, but he is being way too generous. Again, I recognize the instigators of this, the ones who started this ball rolling, and Senator Durbin is the one who got us started many years ago. And it has taken us many years to put this together. But that is why we have such a good bipartisan bill. We have worked on this. We reported this out of our committee a year ago without one dissenting vote, Republican or Democrat. Since that time, we have been working to get other people, not on the committee, obviously, onboard to get the way paved so we could have a bill that would be broadly supported.

This bill is very broadly supported, both by the industry and by the consumers. It is one of the few bills where, as a matter of fact, we have a wide range of consumer and industry support, everything from the Snack Food Association, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Consumers Union, Center for Science in the Public Interest, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Anytime you get the Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group on the same bill, you know you have a bill that has broad support. This bill does.

Again, I thank my colleague, Senator Enzi from Wyoming, our ranking member on our committee, for all of his help in getting this bill through and working on it diligently over the past year.

I would be remiss if I did not also thank Senator Gregg and Senator Burr for being heavily involved in this bill and working through all of the compromises a bill like this entails.

The Food Safety Modernization Act enhances our food safety system in three critical ways. It improves the prevention of food safety problems. I always think this is key. We have to get in front of this, not to just sort of catch the food once it is contaminated and try to get it done, but to try to prevent it in the beginning. We had success in the meat and poultry industry some years ago with a preventive plan to look at where pathogens could enter the food supply and stop it there. We have applied the lessons we have learned from those last 20, almost 25 years now of that to this, so now we are going to be able to look to have a better system of preventing food safety problems and foodborne pathogens.

It improves the detection or response to foodborne illness outbreaks--detect it earlier, stop it earlier, and have a better response to what is happening. In other words, for example, in the bill we provide that retailers have to in some way notify customers if a food has been recalled. That could be a grocery store putting a sign on the shelf, for example, saying: This food has been recalled, maybe putting out a notice in their supplements that they put out in order to advise consumers they may have purchased a food that has been recalled.

Third, it enhances our Nation's food defense capabilities. Right now, how many people know that less than 2 percent--about 1.5 percent--of all of the food imported into America is ever inspected? That is 1.5 percent. Well, this is going to increase those inspections. It is also going to increase the defense capabilities in case we have a problem. For example, we have stronger trace-back authority so we can get to the source of where this happened in a better way than we ever have been able to do in the past.

As I mentioned earlier, it provides the FDA with mandatory recall authority. A lot of people are surprised to know--consumers are surprised to find out that if there is a foodborne illness or outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration has no authority to even recall the food. One may say: Well, the companies have the authority to recall it--and they do because, frankly, they don't want to get sued, obviously. So why have a mandatory recall? Well, you might have bad actors. You might have a company that is located offshore. Maybe they have imported some bad food into this country, and maybe they think they can just take a few bucks and run. The FDA would not have mandatory recall authority. Now they would have that to protect our consumers. As I said, it also requires the retailer to notify consumers if they sold food that has been contaminated.

Now, again, the opponents of this bill have put a lot of rumors out there. Since I have lived with this bill for so long, I am surprised people would be saying things like this. One myth I read is that this bill would outlaw home gardens--you couldn't even have a home garden. I think that comes from Glenn Beck, if I am not mistaken, but it is factually incorrect. It said it would do away with family farms. In

fact, the bill states explicitly that the produce standards ``shall not apply to produce that is produced by an individual for personal consumption.'' There is also an exemption for small farmers, small facilities, as they sell their products at roadside stands, farmers markets, places such as those.

Then there is another rumor that anyone who grows any food will now come under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. I heard this myth that Homeland Security agents now will be tromping through your farms and your pastures and your tomato plants--again, absolutely, totally, factually wrong.

I am proud to say this legislation comprehensively modernizes our food safety system and does so without injury to farms and small processors; otherwise, we wouldn't have all of the industry groups on board if we were adding undue hardship on our processors and farmers. Our food safety system will continue to fail Americans unless we modernize our food safety laws and regulations. We should give the FDA the authority it needs to cope with the growing, varied risks that threaten today's more abundant food supply. We need to act, and we need to act now. We need to invoke cloture on this bill in just a little over half an hour.

How much time do I have remaining?

Madam President, I know my friend, Senator Coburn, was on the floor earlier talking about this bill. He has a substitute he is going to offer. I have worked with Senator Coburn over the months. I know we have a basic philosophical difference about the role of government in this area. Be that as it may, we have worked hard, as I said, on bill compromises between people who do have differences of opinion. Again, as with any bill, there may be some things in here that I don't particularly like that I think we ought to do differently, but in the spirit of compromise, we don't get our way all the time around here; we have to give and take to get something done. That is what this bill is.

So I say to my friend, Senator Coburn, I know he has some problems with it, but, quite frankly, his substitute--and I wish to say this very forthrightly--his substitute kills our bill in its entirety. It kills it in its entirety. In its place, what my friend from Oklahoma would offer would be a few studies to help improve collaboration between FDA and USDA. There is weaker language on preventive contamination, which I think is so important--to prevent in the first place. The substitute will eliminate all of our prevention control provisions. It would eliminate the provisions that enhance coordination between State and Federal laboratories.

My friend from Oklahoma--and maybe later on we will get into this and debate it a little bit--my friend has always been saying we need better coordination. He is right. I said that earlier. He is absolutely right. We need better coordination between the FDA and USDA and other agencies, and that is being done. It is being done in this bill. But at the same time, his substitute would eliminate the provisions in our bill that enhance the coordination between State and Federal laboratories, which is exactly what we need to do--have State and Federal coordination. His substitute would eliminate the trace-back provisions that are so important to find out where the foodborne pathogen might be originating from. It would eliminate the important foreign supplier verification provisions we put in this bill--that if you are importing food from a foreign country, you have to verify that the food has met the same kinds of inspection standards we have in our own country. The substitute of my friend from Oklahoma would eliminate that provision. It would eliminate the requirement that we increase our inspection frequencies in this country, and it would eliminate the FDA's ability to recall food--the mandatory recall provision we have-- even when life-threatening contamination is detected.

So for all of those reasons, I hope the substitute will not be adopted. As I said, I know my friend has some feelings about this bill. I understand that. But many of the things Senator Coburn brought up earlier and in good faith I worked with him and his staff on--some of his ideas, we appropriated in this bill. Senator Coburn--I say this as a friend--has a keen eye a lot of times for things that are duplicative or things that maybe sound good but don't do what you think they are going to do. He has a keen eye. I give him credit for that. So a lot of those things we have looked at that in the past he suggested, and we have adopted those things and put them in the bill.

Lastly, one of Senator Coburn's objections is that the bill is not paid for. Again, I think that is misguided. He knows my feelings on this issue. This is an authorization bill. Any funding that would come for this would have to be appropriated in the future. There would be absolutely no deficit increase at all.

This is from the Congressional Budget Office. From our bill, we asked them what would it do to increase the deficit. As my colleagues can see, from 2010 to 2020, there is a zero increase in the deficit because of our bill.

So, again, while I understand Senator Coburn has problems with the bill, I think his substitute really wipes out everything we have done on a bipartisan basis. Senator Enzi has worked hard, as well as Senator Gregg, Senator Burr, and others. We have worked with industry and consumer groups for over a year now to make sure we had a good bill, a comprehensive bill--one that was a true compromise between competing interests but one that gets the job done. And what is the job? To help reduce the number of foodborne illnesses in this country.

I say in closing, is this bill going to stop everybody from getting sick while eating food? No, no. It will not be 100 percent. Will it be better than what we have? You bet. It is going to prevent a lot of foodborne illnesses that otherwise would happen in this country under the present system.

Just think about this: We are operating under a food inspection safety system in this country that was adopted 70 years ago. Think of how our food supply--the growing, the processing, and the shipping-- have all changed in that 70 years. We go to the grocery store in the wintertime and we buy fresh raspberries from Chile or blueberries from Argentina. We go to the store in the summertime and we buy produce made in this country from all over, commingled and shipped together. A lot of times, you don't know where it is coming from. There are so many different things that have happened over the last 70 years. Yet our inspection system has not kept up with how our food is produced, how it is processed, how it is shipped and stored, and we have not updated what we should do with imported foods. We are getting more and more imported foods into this country.

So for all of those reasons, I hope we will have a good, strong vote, a good bipartisan vote on the cloture issue and that the other measures that are coming up--we have an amendment on taxes--if either the Johanns amendment or the Baucus amendment is adopted, it will kill this bill. It will kill the bill.

I happen to be one of those who think we have to change the 1099 provisions for small businesses but not on this bill. We will do that before the end of the year, but if it is adopted on this bill, it will kill our food safety bill because the House will blue-slip it because the Constitution says bills of revenue have to originate in the House, not in the Senate; likewise, the earmark provision Senator Coburn will be offering--we will have a good debate on that too--again, if that is adopted, it will kill the bill. There is just no doubt about it.

So we worked hard for many years to get to this point. We have a good bipartisan bill. We have a bill we believe the House will pass and send on to the President to keep our people more safe. So I hope this body will reject any extraneous amendments.

Madam President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask if I could have 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Hawaii for yielding me 15 minutes of our time.

I challenge anyone--even my friend from Colorado who just spoke, a new Member of this body--I challenge anyone to identify any other part of the Federal budget that is more transparent, more open, more subject to scrutiny, more accessible to the media and the public than congressionally directed funding or earmarks. Every Member who requests an earmark in an appropriations bill must post his or her request online at least 30 days before the Appropriations Committee considers the bill. Every Member who requests an earmark must certify that he or she does not have a pecuniary interest in those requests. Each and every

earmark that comes before the Senate is listed in the committee report for all to see, and if you log on to the committee Web site, you can find a link to every single request any Member has made. It is all out there in the open.

I remind people of this because one of the misleading arguments against congressionally directed earmarks is that they are supposedly done in secret, hidden from the public eye. At one time, that may have been true to some extent but today, thanks to reforms that were implemented by Democrats, by a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate in 2007, there is more sunshine on congressionally directed spending than on any other spending decisions in the entire Federal Government.

There is more sunshine on congressionally directed funding than on any other Federal spending in the entire Federal Government. Why do I emphasize that? Let's consider how the executive branch--the President--directs spending to States and local communities. Make no mistake about it, the executive branch earmarks funding, but there is very little sunshine when it comes to those decisions. They are very hidden.

When a Federal agency announces that a facility should be built in Nebraska rather than Texas or Alabama or whether a defense contract should go to a company in Colorado or Arizona rather than Rhode Island or Ohio, there may be no accountability to voters for those decisions. The employees of Federal agencies are civil servants. They are good people, but they are not elected. They do not meet with constituents. They cannot possibly understand the needs of local communities as well as those who stand for election.

Most important, no one knows when those civil servants get a phone call from their bosses, higher up, telling them, for example, to jiggle, to rig a grant competition for political reasons. Does anyone doubt that is done? Every single year it is done.

Frankly, Senators and Congressmen do it. What Senator worth his or her salt or any Member of the House fighting for their constituency doesn't call up the Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Defense? We all do it. We all do it to protect our own constituents. And if you happen to be on the right committee--for public works, maybe, or for education or for the myriad of things the Federal Government does--those Secretaries tend to pay attention, and they especially pay attention if they are in the same party you are or they may pay attention if they want your vote for something else.

An example: A few years ago during the Bush administration, I asked the inspector general to examine a program in the Employment and Training Administration called High-Growth Jobs Initiative. It sounds great, doesn't it--High-Growth Jobs Initiative. This was an executive branch program. The IG reported that, of the 157 grants awarded under the program, 134 had been awarded without any competition.

Noncompetitive awards accounted for 87 percent of the total funding, and the inspector general found many serious lapses in the award process. For example, a failure to explain why there was no competition; the lack of any documentation regarding potential conflicts of interest.

So was it any surprise when we found out that some of these noncompetitive grants went to organizations that supported President Bush's reelection campaign or was this just a coincidence? Let's not be naive. This happens. I may have pointed out President Bush because it happened to be an investigation I asked for. It happens under Democratic Presidents too.

If this amendment passes, if the Coburn amendment passes, there will still be earmarks. There will be earmarks, but only the executive branch will be able to do it. They will have the power to designate where those earmarks go, and that flies in the face of the clear intent of the Constitution. Article 1 of the Constitution expressly gives the power of the purse to the Congress. We are all familiar with the principle of checks and balances.

One way the Constitution puts a check on the executive branch is by giving this branch, the legislative branch, the final say on spending. I have said so many times that the President of the United States cannot spend one dime that we do not authorize him to, and we can take it all back if we want. Oh, they have set up an executive branch but only because Congress gives that power to the President.

The Constitution gives Congress the final say on spending. I realize the Constitution may seem like ancient history to some people. I am sorry to say it may seem like ancient history to some Members of this body. So let me paint a picture of a world where only the executive branch can decide to direct Federal spending. Let me paint this picture. Let's imagine the Coburn amendment passes and a future President wants Congress to pass a bill. It can be a Democratic President or it can be a Republican President. It does not matter.

The vote on the bill is going to be close. The President calls Senator Jones and says: Senator, I would like your support on this bill. Senator Jones says: I am sorry, Mr. President, I have thought hard about it. I am not going to be able to support that bill.

Oh, there is probably a little pause on the phone, and the President says: You know, Senator, I know that replacing that bridge in your capital city is real important to you. It would be a real shame if your State missed out when the executive branch is setting its priorities for next year. Now, Senator Jones, would you like to reconsider how you are going to vote on that bill?

That is executive branch earmarking. Again, as I said, it makes no difference whether the President is a Republican or Democrat. It is a matter of respecting the Constitution and preserving the constitutional prerogatives of the legislative branch. Some people say: Well, Harkin, why do you fight so hard for these earmarks? As Senator Udall says, it is \1/2\ percent of total Federal spending. I fight so hard because the Constitution gives that power to the legislative branch. We should protect the constitutional prerogatives of the legislative branch, not just willy-nilly give them to any President of the United States, which is what the Coburn amendment does.

Read the amendment carefully. See how it defines ``earmarks.'' It applies only to ``a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Senator or Member of the House of Representatives.''

There is nothing in the Coburn amendment to prohibit any earmarks by the President. They can earmark anything, and they will because they always do. They will earmark, and guess what. Senators--Senators--will start going to the President and saying: Mr. President, can you, please, I need that bridge. I need that flood control project. We just had a disaster, Mr. President.

Well, Senator, I will think about it when we set our priorities next year. Well, now, Senator, how are you going to vote on my priorities?

Do you want to be in that position? I do not want to be in that position. I want to be in the position where Congress fulfills its Constitutional prerogative. So under the Coburn amendment, if Congress requests, it is an earmark; if the President requests, it is not an earmark. How does that make sense? How does that make sense?

Well, here is an example again of the double standard. The fiscal year 2011 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill that the Senate will probably vote on in December includes funding for national education groups such as Teach for America, Reading is Fundamental, Reach Out and Read, the National Writing Project, and many others. These are successful, proven programs with significant bipartisan support.

But under the definition of the Coburn amendment, all are earmarks and none would be funded. They would all be eliminated. But under the terms of the Coburn amendment, if the President wanted to fund those programs, no problem. They would not be considered earmarks at all and they could receive funding, as long as the President wanted to do it. Again, I ask, what sense does that make?

My State of Iowa had terrible floods in 2008--a lot of damage. Louisiana and Texas have had destructive hurricanes on a regular basis. In the wake of these disasters, typically the Corps of Engineers comes up with a plan to mitigate the damage from future possible disasters. For example, the Corps is now

working to improve a flood prevention program in Cedar Rapids, IA, which was devastated by the worst flood in the history of Iowa in 2008.

If the Coburn amendment passes, whatever the Corps plan comes up with will be final, even if local officials strongly disagree with that. Under the terms of the Coburn amendment, a strong case may be made that any legislative action by Members of Congress to modify the Corps plan would be an earmark--an earmark. Representing my constituents, it would take an extraordinary two-thirds vote in the Senate to change the Corps of Engineers plan--not a majority, not 60 percent but two-thirds of the Senate. Again, I again ask you, what sense does that make? How are we fighting for our constituents when the President decides it; we cannot.

We have local constituents who say: We have better ideas and plans on what to do. The Corps says no. Well, that is the end of it, unless the President tells the Corps what to do. I do not want to lose my ability to intervene effectively for local or State officials when this kind of issue arises, and I do not think Senators from Texas, Louisiana or any other State want to lose their ability to stand for the best interests of their State. I cannot imagine any Senator who would forfeit this important constitutional prerogative, give up, give up your constitutional prerogative to the President, so you would not be able to fight for your State and your constituents. Is that what you are going to tell them?

Proponents of this amendment say: Forget about article 1 of the Constitution. We have to do whatever it takes to cut the deficit. The only way to do that is to ban earmarks.

This is grossly misleading. Yes, we do need to cut the deficit. Banning earmarks will not do anything to help.

Congressionally funded mandates, as I said, are less than one-half of 1 percent of total Federal spending. As one observer noted: The best way to lose weight is to shave. My friend, Senator Udall, said reforms circumvent the budget process. No, it does not. Nothing we do on appropriations at all circumvents the budget process.

He said: When you are in a hole, stop digging. Well, sure, we can stop digging. We can stop the earmarks here. We are just going to shift them to the President. That is all. That is all that is going to happen.

Lastly, I had to laugh when I read this quote from Representative Michele Bachmann in the House. This was in Congressional Quarterly Today. She is founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, one of several lawmakers who have pledged not to seek earmarks. But she told the Minneapolis Star Tribune she thinks the word ``earmark'' should not apply to infrastructure projects. ``I don't believe that building roads and bridges and interchanges should be considered an earmark.''

Oh, so she gets to decide what is an earmark. She wants no earmarks except for what she wants as an earmark. That is it. Congressman Mica of Florida said: ``There are some bills that require some legislative language to direct the funds, otherwise you're just writing a blank check to the administration.'' That is a Republican Congressman from Florida.

Congressionally directed spending is congressionally directed spending whether it is a highway or a hospital, whether it is in Wyoming or Tennessee. I, for one, am proud of the directed funding that I have been able to secure on behalf of my State and for other States that I have worked hard for or other entities such as Teach for America. It does not necessarily help Iowa but it helps a lot of States.

These fundings have created jobs, trained nurses, built roads, and, as the distinguished chairman said, one time I remember when Pete Domenici put that money in there for the Human Genome Project, it led to the establishment of the Human Genome Institute and a complete mapping and sequencing of the human gene. Had that money not been directed, it never would have happened, I say to my chairman.

So a lot of times Congressmen, Senators have good ideas on what to do to direct some of this funding. I think we ought to be proud of that. As long as the sunshine is on it, it is out in the open, everybody knows where it goes, everybody knows who has requested it, to me, this is the constitutional prerogative of the Senate and the House, and we should not--should not--give it up to any President.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, in a very short while here--literally, in about 40 minutes--the time will be expired and we will be voting on the motion to proceed to the Food Safety Modernization Act. The Food Safety Modernization Act. One can wonder why did we have to go through a cloture motion and a vote on that the other day. We got 74 votes on it. But it looks as though now we are going to have to have another vote on the motion to proceed after we have had 74 votes.

A lot of effort has gone into this bill by a lot of people-- Republicans and Democrats--and, Lord knows, our staff. This bill has been germinating and being put together over the course of at least the last 3 or 4 years anyway, and probably a little before that when we started. I know Senator Durbin has been working on this for several years, as have Senator Gregg, Senator Dodd, and others. So this has all been put together over a period of several years. But I would say over the last 4 years, diligent work has gone into this bill, and certainly again in the last year.

It was 1 year ago, November 18--1 year ago today--that this bill was reported out of our HELP Committee, which I chair. It was reported out without one dissenting vote. It is a bill that is supported by so many different groups and so many different people. Here is a list of the people supporting this bill. We worked hard to get a broad base of support from both industry and consumers. As I have said, this may be one of the only bills I have seen around here that has the support not only of the Food Marketing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Institute and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. So we have both consumer groups and the business groups

supporting this--the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. When have those two ever been together on a bill? And the Snack Food Association and the Pew Charitable Trusts. I mean, we have wide support for this.

The industry wants this. They want it because they know our food safety laws have not been upgraded in seven decades--since 1938, before I was born. Think about how our food has changed in our society and how we produce it and how we process it and how we ship it, not to mention the amount of foreign foods coming into this country. Consumers want it because we know a lot of people are getting sick.

I will hasten to add that we do have one of the safest food supplies in the world. But that is not good enough, because we know how many people get ill every year. Thousands of people are contaminated by food poisoning every year--E. coli, salmonella. I have met with families here from Safe Tables Our Priority. I have met with families of kids who are damaged for life because they happened to eat the wrong thing-- they ate some spinach or a tomato or fish, shellfish, or something such as that. These kids are maimed for life.

We have worked very hard to put this bill together. As I said, 1 year ago it came out of our committee without one dissenting vote. But there were still some problems out there, and so we worked very hard since last November to try to reach an agreement on this bill. And we have a broad agreement. As I said, we had 74 votes on the floor of the Senate the other day.

One of my colleagues has raised a lot of issues on this bill. My good friend from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn, is on our committee, and he has raised a lot of concerns about this bill. I have met with him several times and we have had good discussions. I know he said some nice things about me on the floor earlier, and I appreciate that, and I would repay those in kind; that Senator Coburn is a very thoughtful person and he focuses on these things. He reads these bills and he gets involved. This is not something off the seat of his pants. He has focused on this. Some of the suggestions he made I thought were valid. We looked through them and we incorporated a lot of the suggestions made by my friend from Oklahoma into this bill.

We were also willing to go to the consumers and say, look, this is okay. None of us--not any one Senator around here--has infinite wisdom. Only one person has infinite wisdom. No Senators have infinite wisdom. I can't say I have ever written a bill in its entirety that got through here without having anything changed, because we don't know everything. So we rely upon one another in good faith to suggest changes, to point out things maybe we didn't see due to our blinders. We help each other put together bills that have broad support and broad consensus so that we move ahead as a society. To me, that is the way I think we ought to operate.

So when other people were making suggestions--and I didn't mean to single out Senator Coburn, because others too had made suggestions--we tried to work with them to incorporate certain provisions in the bill. Senator Tester, for example, on our side had suggestions about exempting certain small producers. That raised the consternation of many on the consumer side. It also raised the consternation of many on the business side. A lot of the bigger businesses said: Well, if we have to do this, you can get just as sick from eating things from small producers too. So we had to work through that. But we did work through it. It took us several months but we worked through and we got an agreement.

Quite frankly, we had good input from the Republican side--from Senator Gregg, Senator Enzi, and Senator Burr. I mention those individuals because they have been very integral to this process on our committee. We have worked through that and we got an amendment that satisfies the small producers and the consumers and the business community and the large producers. Not easy. Not easy. But compromises a lot of times aren't very easy. It is a compromise that we worked through. We worked through Senator Tester's amendment too. That took a long time.

We were not able to reach an agreement on Senator Feinstein's amendment. We agreed not to incorporate it because we could not reach an agreement on it--on the BPA amendment, even though it is very important to her and very important to a lot of people.

We have tried to get something together that would have this broad consensus and yet move us forward in making our food safer, and I believe this bill does that. This bill does this in four ways:

It improves the prevention of food safety problems. That is key. For many years, I served as chair or ranking member on the Agriculture Committee--35 years, both here and in the House. Many years ago, we came up with a program of prevention. Rather than solving the problem later, the question was: How do we prevent pathogens from entering the meat supply? We came up with this proposal of finding the access points. Where are the points in the process where contaminants and pathogens can come in? Let us have the industry come up with plans on how to prevent that on their own. That has worked. Does it work 100 percent every single time? No. But nothing is ever perfect.

I would hasten to add that even if we pass this bill, will it prevent every single foodborne illness forever and ever? Probably not. Probably not. But it is going to be a lot better than what we have right now, a lot better, because we are going to look at prevention--preventing the pathogens from entrance in the first place. So that is one way we do it.

Secondly, it improves the response to detection of foodborne illness outbreaks when they do occur. In other words, we will be able to detect it earlier and respond earlier than we have been able to do in the past.

It enhances our Nation's food defense capabilities. Every year, 76 million Americans get sick from foodborne illnesses--76 million. So the stakes are too high not to act.

These are the critical ways in which we have moved the ball forward. Again, I know my friend from Oklahoma has said to me many times that it will not solve all your problems. I understand that. It is not perfect. But there is an old saying: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is a good bill. It is going to help keep our people from getting sick. Everyone? No. I would never stand here and say this is going to solve every single foodborne illness problem in America. But it is sure going to do a lot more than we have been doing.

Again, I want to make it clear that if anyone says we are trampling on the rights of the minority, I ask you to consider all we have done. We have a bipartisan team in place, we have modified the bill dozens of times to get the right balance, we have all made tremendous compromises--Democrats and Republicans, consumers and business. As I said, we agreed to compromises just lately. The mandatory inspection schedule, which is so important to the public health community, has been reduced tenfold--tenfold--since that bill was reported out of our committee unanimously 1 year ago. We accepted language, as I said, which exempted the small facilities from these new requirements--the Tester amendment. We agreed to changes in the section on traceback, which limits the application of the new rule to farms and restaurants. There is no registration fee to help pay for the bill. The routine access to records the FDA wanted, we don't do that either.

That is a short list. I can go on and on. I think one of my friends on the other side said we have bent over backward, and we have. We wanted to reach a point where we could move ahead with the bill, even offering to let some amendments be offered and we would vote on those amendments. But what has happened now, I understand, is that the Senator from Oklahoma, my friend, has now said he wanted to offer an amendment dealing with earmarks.

Look, earmarks is an issue. It is an issue that the next Congress, I would say--probably the next Congress--is going to have to address. But it should be done in the spirit of debate. It should be done in the spirit so committees that have relevant jurisdiction can look at this, make recommendations. We should not do it in the heat of passion, right now. We just came off of a very heated election. There have been a lot of changes made. I understand that.

We live with that. That is fine. But now is not the time to start throwing up red-hot issues that were in the campaign. Let's let things cool down a little bit and approach an issue such as earmarks thoughtfully, with due diligence and with due debate.

This bill that is going to protect our people from getting sick and our kids from being injured for lifetimes because they eat contaminated peanut butter--this is not the bill to deal with something dealing with earmarks. I hope my friend from Oklahoma will relent. There will be plenty of time and plenty of opportunities when we come back in January with a new Congress, I say to my colleague from Oklahoma, to bring up the matter of earmarks and have it debated fully and have some kind of resolution by both the Senate and the House on that issue--but not right now. This is not the time to do it, not in the heat of coming off the campaign.

Let's keep our eye on the ball. This is a food safety bill. We have come so close. We have an agreement from the House that what we pass here, the bill we have put together, that we reached all these compromises on--we have an agreement from the House, if we pass it and we do get significant--we get bipartisan support, that the House would take it and pass it and send it right to the President. What more could you ask for than that? We get to decide what the President actually signs into law.

Without going into every little thing we have done here, let me just mention a few.

Senator Coburn was concerned about the authorization level, so we offered in good faith to reduce it by 50 percent. That is kind of a compromise--we just reduced the authorization by 50 percent on the grants. We offered to modify the sections on performance standards and surveillance. It is completely done. We completely struck section 510. We called for increasing the hiring of FDA staff. In our bill, we called for increasing staff to conduct certain inspections. My friend objected to that. In the spirit of compromise, we struck it. We said no, we are not going to call for increasing hiring of field staff. Mr. Coburn had some concerns--rightfully so, by the way--about improving coordination between FDA and USDA, so we offered to add his language that would force them to get together and not duplicate efforts, and on the customs side, too, so we would eliminate any kind of duplication of inspections. We put that in the bill.

We offered to do all this and to put it in the bill, and we did, and that will be in our amendment that we offer. We will in good faith put those things in our bill. But then I am told that now we are probably going to have to file cloture, fill the tree, and do all that stuff which I was hoping we would not have to do. That is not the way to do business here. I don't like doing it that way. That is why we worked so hard to try to reach these agreements. But I guess we are going to be forced to do that. I hope that is not so.

I also heard that maybe someone might want to read the bill. That is 4 hours of reading the bill. That bill has been out here for a year. If anybody wanted to read it, they could have read it by now. But that is just another delaying tactic we really do not need.

Again, on this issue of saying we cannot vote on this bill unless we will vote on earmarks, I say earmarks is an important issue. I am happy to have the debate and to have a vote on that but not now. This is a food safety bill. We have it ready to go. We have all our compromises in place. This is not the time and this is not the bill on which to debate the whole issue of earmarks.

You might say, why are we so willing to compromise, why am I so passionate on this bill? Because people are dying. We have Thanksgiving coming up. People will be gathered around with their families--except for all those people in homeless shelters. Mr. President, 950,000 children in America who go to elementary, middle, and high school will not have a home to go to this Thanksgiving because they are living in homeless shelters. Think about that. They are living in cars and homeless shelters. They are being shunted around--950,000. Am I going to stand here and say that if we pass this bill and get it to the President, that is going to keep any one of them from getting sick on what they might eat on Thanksgiving Day? I am not here to say that. But what this bill will do is send a strong signal that we are going to take the steps necessary in the coming months and years to upgrade our food safety system so that the chance, the likelihood of them ever getting sick from eating contaminated food is going to be greatly decreased. Surely we can at least send that hopeful message out to our families before Thanksgiving. Surely we could do that and not get bollixed up around here in politics and political debate.

I know of no politics on this bill. I know of no politics. I mean Democrat, Republican, left, right, liberal, conservative--I don't know of anything like that. There is not. I do know that this issue of earmarks, regardless of the substantive issue, is a political issue too. They may have substantive reasons, but there is also a lot of politics hanging around that.

Let's take the bill that has no politics, knows neither left nor right, conservative, liberal, Democrat, or Republican. It has nothing to do with earmarks or what we ever do with earmarks or anything else. It has to do with the safety and welfare of our American families, of our kids. I am just asking people to be reasonable.

There is a time and place for political debate, even here on the Senate floor. We may say it does not happen, but we know it does. There is a time and place for that. That will happen--not now, not on this bill. We have come too far. We are too close. We have too many compromises that we made that are so widely supported. I am afraid that if we lose this, all the good work that has gone in in the last year, the last 2 years, the last 4 years putting this together, it is going to be very hard to put it back together again. So people will continue to roll the dice when they buy food. Maybe it is safe and maybe it is not.

We will continue to see more things happen like what happened to Kayla Boner, Monroe, IA, age 14. On October 22, 2007, she turned 14 and passed her learner's permit. The next day, she stayed home. She had a foodborne illness due to E. coli contamination. She was admitted to the Paella, IA, Community Hospital. Her symptoms worsened. She didn't respond to antibiotics, and within a week her kidneys began to fail. Kayla was transferred to Blank Children's Hospital for dialysis, but her condition continued to deteriorate. She suffered a seizure and began to have heart problems. A few days later, Kayla's brain activity stopped, and her parents made the painful decision to take their beautiful daughter off life support.

For Kyle Allgood--spinach. His family is going to have an empty seat at their Thanksgiving table this year. Kyle, a playful 2-year-old, fell ill after eating bagged spinach contaminated by a deadly strain of E. coli. They thought it was flu. He began to cry from excruciating abdominal pain. He was flown all the way to a Salt Lake City hospital. His kidneys failed, he had a heart attack, and he died--from eating bagged spinach.

Stephanie Bartilucci's family is also going to have an empty seat at their Thanksgiving table this year--killed by listeria, eating lettuce. She was 30 weeks pregnant, Stephanie was. She felt that something was wrong. When she went for an ultrasound, it showed that the baby was not moving. She had contractions, and eventually her heart began to beat dangerously fast and she had to undergo an emergency C-section. When she awoke, she found that her baby boy had bleeding in his brain and couldn't breathe on his own. He was intubated and brain dead. Stephanie soon discovered she had been suffering from a bacterial infection from eating contaminated lettuce. The bacteria was so deadly that she became septic and almost lost her own life. Her newborn baby, Michael, died in her arms that night.

There are also families who have had loved ones survive foodborne illnesses, but their lives will never be the same, such as Rylee Gustafson and her family. On Rylee's ninth birthday, she began to complain of stomach pain after eating E. coli-contaminated spinach. Within 72 hours, she had been admitted to UCSF Children's Hospital. Her kidneys began to fail, and dialysis treatments were started. In addition to kidney failure, she experienced hallucinations and temporary loss of vision,

developed high blood pressure and diabetes, and had fluid buildup in her lungs and around her heart. On the 10th day of hospitalization, Rylee's condition had deteriorated to the point where the doctors believed it necessary to prepare her family that she might not pull through. Rylee spent 35 days in the hospital and will have to endure the memories of that traumatic time for the rest of her life. The long- term effects of her illness are currently unknown.

How many Americans will have to die, how many of these kids will become sick before we fulfill our responsibility to modernize our woefully outdated food safety system?

How many families will have to endure a tragic loss before we pass this legislation? One more tragedy is one too many. I urge my colleagues, as they think about their holiday plans and their preparations, to take a moment to think about families who have had their holidays disrupted by contaminated food. Five thousand people die every year in this country because of contaminated food. Among them are many children. As they spend the day with their loved ones preparing Thanksgiving banquets, the last thing people want is to be jeopardized by the threat of food contamination. Yet many families are haunted by this. It is unacceptable. It is past time we do something. We have come too far. We have reached compromises. We have the support of many sectors of society.

Again, if we pass this bill, will it ensure that no kid like Rylee will ever get sick again? I can't make that promise. Or that no one will ever die? I can't make that promise. But I can promise this: With the passage of this bill, putting it into law, the chances there will be another Rylee Gustafson will be diminished greatly.

Let's not get this caught up in politics. Let's get the politics out of this. Let's vote on the bill. Let's get it through. Let's go home. Let Senators go home for Thanksgiving grateful that we have done a good thing, that we have done something good for our country, and that we didn't let it get all boxed up in politics. Isn't that the least we can do for the country on this Thanksgiving week?

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my friend and colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin. He has been the leader on this issue for several years. We have been working on this bill for a number of years. It is Senator Durbin who has led the charge on this going back literally several years. We have come so close. We have made all the compromises. We have consumer groups, the Chamber of Commerce, U.S. PIRG. We never get those people to agree on anything, and they all agree on this bill.

I thank Senator Durbin for all his great leadership. Hope springs eternal, and I still hope we will get the votes to pass this and keep the politics out of it.

I wish to correct something I said earlier. Earlier today I had met with Senator Coburn, and we had a number of things he wanted that I said I would try to put in the amendment on which we will be voting. In good faith, I said I would do that. But then, of course, we had to send it out to various offices to get Senators to sign off on it. We couldn't get Republican Senators to sign off on it. So I wish to correct the record.

The changes I had mentioned earlier that I was willing to put in the bill for Senator Coburn were not objected to by anybody on our side. It was objected to by Republicans and not Democrats. It is not in the bill. These were changes I was willing to make to accommodate the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas for yielding.

I wish to thank Senator Durbin for all the work he has done on food safety for so many years. He has been a leader. He has prompted us and prodded us to get to this point, and we have a good bipartisan bill. I wish to take a few moments to talk about it before the vote that will be coming up in the next hour.

The aim of the Food Safety Modernization Act, as it is called, is very simply to bring our Nation's antiquated and increasingly inadequate inspection service into the 21st century. This bill takes a comprehensive approach to reforming the current system. I am pleased to report that this bill is a product of strong bipartisan collaboration on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Again, I wish to particularly thank Senator Durbin and Senator Gregg who have worked together over many years to produce this excellent bill. I also wish to thank our ranking member, Senator Enzi, for his leadership in helping to bring this bill to the floor, as well as to my good friend Senator Dodd who has been working on this bill also from the beginning and adding his expertise, especially on food allergies. I also thank Senator Burr, who has been personally involved in this entire process.

Senators often speak about the importance of addressing kitchen table issues here in the Senate--the practical, everyday concerns of working Americans and their families. Well, food safety is a kitchen table issue and it couldn't be more urgent or overdue. It is shocking to think that the last comprehensive overhaul of our food safety system was in 1938, more than seven decades ago. Think about how our food system has changed in those 70 years. On the whole, Americans enjoy safe and wholesome food. We know that. But the problem is that ``on the whole'' is not good enough any longer.

As my colleagues can see from our first chart, they will see that recent foodborne illnesses have been wide in scope and have had a devastating impact on public health. When people get

sick from eating bagged spinach, we have a problem. When kids take their peanut butter sandwiches to school and they get sick from it and go to the hospital, we have a problem. We had 90 deaths and 690 reported cases in 46 States. We have found salmonella in tomatoes, in peppers, and even in cookie dough. When families eat cookie dough and they are getting E. coli, we have a problem. Recently, of course, we had the salmonella outbreak in eggs. So it is widespread. It is not just in bagged spinach or eggs, it is in peanut butter, cantaloupes, tomatoes. It is widespread. So we know we have a real problem.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that foodborne illnesses cause an estimated 76 million illnesses a year; 325 Americans every year are hospitalized because of foodborne illnesses; and 5,000 Americans die every year due to a foodborne illness. These are not my figures. These figures are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to a Georgetown University study, the cost to our society is about $152 billion a year in medical expenses, lost productivity, and disability. So the numbers are staggering, not only the number of people who get sick, but the number of people who die and the cost to our society.

I checked in my own State of Iowa, and the cost alone in Iowa--we have over 800,000 cases every year. Each Iowan has to spend about $1,800 in annual health-related expenses, and about $1.5 billion in total related costs. My colleagues can look at their States and see the impact. So these are intolerable, but somehow we tolerate them. No longer can we do that. Our current regulatory system is broken. It does not adequately protect Americans from serious widespread foodborne illnesses.

Our meals have grown more complex with more varied ingredients and more diverse methods of preparation and shipping. By the time raw agricultural products find a way to our dinner plates, multiple intermediate steps and processes have taken place. Food ingredients travel thousands of miles or, as Senator Durbin said, from other countries to factories here and then to our tables. They are intermingled and mixed along the way. Yet, despite all of these changes, our food safety laws have not changed in 70 years.

What we need to do for starters is improve processes to prevent the contamination of foods and methods to provide safe foods to consumers. To achieve this, more testing and better methods of tracking food can be utilized and verified that the processes are working.

Here are some interesting figures. Thirty years ago, we had 70,000 food processors in this country. The FDA made 35,000 visits a year. So we had 70,000 food processors and we made 35,000 visits a year. Today, a full decade into the 21st century, we have 150,000 food processors-- over twice as many--but today FDA inspectors make 6,700 visits each year, one-fifth as many as they did 30 years ago, with twice as many plants. So is it any surprise we are getting more and more foodborne illnesses throughout this country? Referencing what Senator Durbin said earlier, more and more of our food is coming from other countries. All we are saying in our bill is you have to adopt the same kind of food safety processes and prevention methods that we have in this country to be able to ship your food in. I don't think that is unreasonable, to say that their processes and their safety procedures have to be at least the same as ours or as adequate as ours.

As this chart shows, our bill overhauls our food safety system in four critical ways. First is prevention. We have had some success in our Agriculture Committee in the past on what is called a program of finding out where are the points where contamination can come in and then address those points in a preventive manner. Well, we are now kind of extending that beyond meat and poultry to all food to get the prevention in place. We improve the detection and response to foodborne illness outbreaks with better detection services and better response times. We have a mandatory recall in here that the Department has never had, ever. We enhance the U.S. food defense capabilities, and we increase the FDA resources in order to take care of this.

This bill today will dramatically increase FDA inspections at all food facilities. It will give FDA the following new authorities: It will require all food facilities to have, as I said, preventive plans in place, and the FDA can have access to those plans. So they have to have preventive plans that the FDA gets access to. We have better access to records in case of a food emergency to try to find out what happened. It requires, as Senator Durbin said, importers to verify the safety of imported food. It strengthens our surveillance systems. It requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a pilot project to test and evaluate new methods for rapidly tracking foods in the event of a foodborne illness outbreak. As I said, it gives the FDA the authority to order a mandatory recall of food. A lot of people don't know this: If there is an outbreak of illness because of foodborne diseases, pathogens, FDA does not have the authority to recall that food.

You might say that the companies do that. Well, they do. Most of them see it in their best economic interest to do that. But you might have fly-by-night operators out there that will take the money and run. You might have some foreign-based companies--and I don't mean to pick on them--that are offshore and they may have some food in this country that has caused foodborne illnesses, and they may not want to recall it. We cannot go after them. The FDA doesn't have the authority to recall that food. This bill would give them that authority.

This is a bipartisan bill, strongly supported by consumer groups and industry. I have letters from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, Pew Charitable Trusts, Consumers Union, Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Trust for America's Health, to name a few. I think it is a rarity when I can say both the Chamber of Commerce and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are on the same page. That is true here.

I have several letters, and I ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I have said many times that to say that food safety in this country is a patchwork is giving it too much credit. Food safety has too often become a hit-or-miss gamble, with parents obliged to kind of roll the dice when it comes to the safety of their kids' food. It is frightening and unacceptable. It is past time to modernize our food safety laws and regulations--70 years past time. We need to give FDA the resources and authority it needs to cope with a growing problem that threatens today a more abundant and diverse food supply. We need to act now.

I urge my colleagues to join the bipartisan sponsors to pass this important legislation and vote for cloture this afternoon on the motion to proceed. Hopefully, we can get on the bill and pass it as soon as possible, so that the families of America will have more assurance that the food they eat, no matter what the source, or from where it comes, has more safety procedures attached to it, and so that we have a new process for prevention in place for all facilities in this country and in foreign countries, and so we can raise the bar and say to our families that you can have more assurance in the future that the food you buy, whether it is the fresh fruits you buy in the middle of winter, shipped from Chile, Argentina, or Mexico, or Guatemala, or the fresh fruits you get in the summertime from California, Washington State, and Canada, or the produce, the lettuce, the bagged spinach, or whatever it might be, will be more safe for you and your family. That is what this is all about--protecting our families and making sure our food safety laws are adequate for the 21st century and not the 18th century.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the day after tomorrow, on Wednesday, we are going to have three cloture votes. These cloture motions were filed before we broke in October. Those will be the first three votes of our returning this fall. Those three cloture votes are, of course, motions to proceed--a motion to proceed on an energy bill, a motion to proceed on the paycheck fairness bill, and a motion to proceed on the food safety bill.

Mr. President, the food safety bill came out of my committee, the HELP Committee, on November 18 of last year. We have been working for a year to get this up. It has strong bipartisan support. We tried to get it up before we broke in October, but there were objections on the Republican side, and we were not able to move forward even though we had been working--Senator Enzi and I--on this along with Senators Gregg and Burr on the Republican side, and Senator Durbin, I, and others on the Democratic side to work it out. I believe we are there.

This bill has strong support from the consumer groups, from the business and industry groups, and it has strong bipartisan support. I hope we will be able to get a successful vote on the motion to proceed to that bill. I will have more to say about that later in the week, on Wednesday specifically.

Today I wish to confine my remarks to the other two cloture votes, the Energy bill and the one on the Paycheck

Fairness Act. On November 9, a bipartisan group of us from the Senate-- four of us--sent a letter to the majority leader, Senator Reid, about this bill, the Energy bill. We are going to be voting on the motion to proceed to this bill on Wednesday.

Basically, what this letter--which is bipartisan--said to Leader Reid was that we need to move forward on energy legislation. We all recognize that. But there is a major omission in this bill. What is missing from the bill is any mention of biofuels and what biofuels can contribute to our energy independence in this country.

At the outset, first of all, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed at this point in the Record.

Again, what is missing is biofuels. While I will certainly vote for the motion to proceed because I think we should proceed to it, major changes need to be made in this bill before it can earn my support on final passage. Let me talk about what those changes are.

First of all, I think it is very clear that we have to wean ourselves off of spending more and more of our taxpayers' dollars, consumer dollars, on imported oil. I think President Bush said that, and President Obama has said that, and it is not a partisan issue. It is a national security issue dealing very much with our economic security in this country. What is missing from the bill is a focus--any focus at all--on the one thing that over the last, say, 20 years has decreased our dependence on foreign oil; that is, the use of biofuels for transportation.

Again, there have been a lot of alternatives proposed: natural gas, hydrogen, electric vehicles--all of which will be pursued in the future. But, quite frankly, the only thing right now and in the foreseeable future, the next 10, 15 years that will do anything to decrease our dependence on foreign oil is biofuels.

There has been a remarkable success story with biofuels in this country. This chart shows what we have done--it shows production increasing from 1998 up until about 2010. We had a huge increase in the use of biofuels, so we are up to about 11 billion or 12 billion gallons a year. Under the renewable fuels standard 2--the mandate we passed in 2007--that is projected to go up to 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022. That is in the law--36 billion gallons by 2022. So, again, this is what is going to replace imported oil. We are well on our way to doing that. However, right now biofuels are facing significant market limitations. Well, first of all, about the only thing that can be used is 10 percent ethanol blends with gasoline--E10--although the EPA just recently came out with a new standard where we will be able to use E15--or 15 percent ethanol--in model cars 2007 and higher. It is thought that maybe sometime next year EPA will come out with another standard that will allow as much as 20 percent ethanol.

These are all well and good, but, again, there are a couple of things that need to be done. First of all, let's keep in mind that converting to use of biofuels is much quicker and much easier, much more cost effective than using natural gas. For example, to use E85 or any other blend of biofuels at a pump just takes a different kind of pump. But you, as the driver of the car, would simply drive up, pick up the handle, put the fuel in your gas tank, just as you put in gasoline today. But for natural gas, there would have to be a big pressurized storage tank. That natural gas would have to then be transferred to your vehicle tank, a very strong tank in your car, and there would have to be some kind of nozzle to transfer that pressurized fuel. It wouldn't just be putting gasoline in a vehicle. So a whole new infrastructure would have to be built to accomplish this. But no new infrastructure needs to be built to put biofuels in your car. So it is much easier and much more rapid.

Now, a couple of things I have already said about the infrastructure, but let me talk a little about two things. The first is the ethanol tax credit. Right now it is at 45 cents a gallon. There is a lot of talk that when it expires this year it shouldn't be renewed because it costs $5.9 billion a year for this tax credit for ethanol. You might say: Maybe we shouldn't be spending that. Well, studies by McKinsey and others show that ethanol reduces gasoline prices--estimates vary, but conservative estimate is 17 cents a gallon. So that savings of 17 cents a gallon saves consumers in America $24 billion a year--$24 billion a year. So it is not a net cost to taxpayers but a real savings of four to five times as much as the cost in the tax credit.

Secondly, on jobs. Everyone is talking about jobs. We have to have more jobs in this country. Well, each 1 billion gallons of biofuels generates anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 jobs--a broad range. So if we go from 13 billion gallons today to 36 billion gallons in 2022, that would generate over 400,000 permanent jobs--400,000 permanent jobs. That is not to mention the number of construction jobs that would be needed during the building of the facilities.

Now, two other things about market problems. Right now, we have a problem in terms of the number of cars that can be flex-fuel. Every car that General Motors makes in Brazil is flexible fuel. Every car Ford makes in Brazil is flexible fuel. Every car Honda makes in Brazil is flexible fuel. They can burn anything from gasoline to 85 percent ethanol--E85. So why aren't they doing it here? The cost is minimal.

The second thing is to get blender pumps--pumps at gas stations--that

can take ethanol and blend with gasoline at any mixture you want and then can be put in that flex-fuel car. So we need two things: We need more flex-fuel cars, and we need more blender pumps. Very low cost, very easy to install.

Senator Lugar and I have repeatedly introduced legislation to accomplish this, and that ought to be a real part of this Energy bill we are bringing up a motion to proceed to on Wednesday.

Lastly, let me get to the issue of net energy. This is a red herring that comes up all the time. People say it takes more energy to produce ethanol than we get out of it. We have been hearing this for about 30 years, and it is simply not true. It is like the old Will Rogers saying: It is not what we don't know that hurts us, it is what we know that ain't so. And what we seem to know that isn't so is that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than we get out of it. That is factually incorrect.

Take gasoline for example. Think about gasoline in terms of net energy payback. For every unit of energy going in, how much do we get out? For gasoline, it is .813. In other words, we get less energy out of the gasoline than we have used to drill for the oil, pump the oil, transport the oil, refine the oil, get the gasoline, and pipe the gasoline. All that takes energy. That plus the energy in the resource means the net energy payback for gasoline is at about .813. For ethanol it is 1.42.

Now why is that? Why would we get almost half, again, as much as energy from a unit of ethanol than we put into it? Very simple. The energy that is in the biofuels comes from the Sun when it is growing, and that is free. That doesn't cost anything.

This figure also takes into account the energy used to make the fertilizer, the energy in the diesel fuel for the equipment, the energy used in harvesting, and the energy in conversion and transportation. That is all figured into this, and we still get 1.42 units of energy for every unit of energy going into ethanol.

Now, that is just the ethanol. We know when we take the ethanol out of certain biofuels--say corn--there is something called distillers dried grain left over which we can feed to the livestock. If we take that into account, and allocate some of the input energy to those byproducts, then we get over two times the energy output for every unit of energy we put into ethanol. But I will not go there. I am just talking about using the ethanol that we would put into a car where we would get a net payback. So, again, we have heard for the last 30 years about how ethanol takes more energy than we get out of it, and that just isn't so.

So, as I say, Mr. President, on Wednesday, the motion to proceed to the Energy bill, that is fine. I am going to support that. But I want to make it clear there have to be major changes in the bill before I can support it, and one of the major changes is that we need to make sure we have a strong biofuels section in that bill.

The second issue that is coming up on Wednesday that I want to discuss is the Paycheck Fairness Act. Again, this is something I and a lot of others have been working on for a long time. I say the real leaders on this have been Senator Mikulski and Senator Dodd. They have led the charge on this for a long time.

In 1963 we passed the Equal Pay Act, which said a woman had to be paid the same as a man for the same job. In other words, if you had the same job, same job description, you couldn't have any pay differential. That went into effect in 1963. However, all of these years later, right now, a woman earns 77 cents on the dollar compared to what the man makes. There is a differential even if we talk about different jobs. And why is that? Well, it is because, quite frankly, this wage gap between men and women basically has been ignored lately, and we have built in a kind of infrastructure that lends itself to women being sort of shortchanged. Studies done by the Academy of Management Perspectives in 2007 tried to explain the difference as to why women are making only 77 cents on the dollar compared to what a man makes.

Race accounts for 2.4 percent--that is interesting--whether they were a member of a union--organized labor--experience, and then the industry category or what industry you were in might explain the difference. For example, the construction industry would be more heavily dominated by men than women. Then the occupational category--the occupational category itself. I have always said truckdrivers tend to be men not women. So the occupational category, that explains a lot of the differential.

The point is that 41.1 percent was unexplained. It could not explain why there was a difference between what a woman makes and what a man makes. What is the difference? Well, quite frankly, the difference is the gender. The gender gap is what it is. No other thing, nothing else explains it other than that.

The other thing we have to understand is that today two-thirds of mothers are major contributors to the family income. Almost 40 percent are the primary breadwinners. Think about that: 4 out of 10 mothers are the primary breadwinners for their families, and 24 percent are cobreadwinners. In other words, the husband and wife are both working together. About 36 or 37 percent are other factors. In other words, they may be a third or something like that because of maybe part-time work or other things.

The fact is, that is not what Congress intended when we passed the Fair Pay Act back in 1963. We wanted to close that gap. Yet 47 years later we still have this gap. So the Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen the penalties for discrimination. It would give women the tools they need to identify and confront unfair treatment. It would fund education programs designed for women and girls to support and empower them. It would increase training, research, and education to help the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission respond to wage discrimination claims more effectively.

Again, these are steps that are meant to make the Equal Pay Act of 1963 more meaningful. We had a lot of bills in the past on civil rights, but it wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that we actually put teeth in it and made those previous laws something that meant something. So, Mr. President, we can't afford to kick the can down the road any longer on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

On the heels of the Paycheck Fairness Act is what I call the Fair Pay Act. I have been introducing this bill every year since 1996. In every session of Congress since 1996 I have introduced the bill. It is basically to understand the gap that occurs--this gap here--in this occupational category. You see, there are a lot of women who work at jobs that require as much education and training as a man's job, but it is in a different category.

For example, millions of female-dominated jobs--such as social workers, Head Start teachers, childcare workers, nurses, nurse assistants, long-term care assistants in our long-term care facilities--are equivalent in skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions to similar jobs dominated by men, but they pay a lot less. Again, this is inexcusable, and that is why I have introduced this Fair Pay Act in every session of Congress since 1996.

The Fair Pay Act would require companies to publish their job categories and their pay scales. It wouldn't require a company to say what each person is getting paid, it would just say they have to publish their pay scales and their job categories. That way people would know what their contemporaries are making, or at least a range of what they are making.

I asked Lilly Ledbetter when she appeared before our committee a couple of years ago if the Fair Pay Act had been in existence when she was discriminated against would she have been in a better position. She said yes; she would have known then that she was being unfairly paid less than what her contemporaries were. So, again, that is why we have to move ahead on the Fair Pay Act. We can't forget that there are millions of women who work very hard--they care for our elderly, they care for our kids, they teach our kids, in many cases they are daycare workers, nurse assistants, and they do extremely important work. What would we do without them? But because they are categorized as women's jobs, they are paid a lot less. For example, take the difference between a truckdriver and a nurse. They both require about the same amount of skills, education and training and physical

ability--about the same amount. Yet a truck driver is making much more than a nurse makes. Why is that?

We tend to think of truckdrivers as big burly men but, you know, with power steering and power brakes and some other machinery, it does not require a lot of muscular effort anymore. But a nurse, who has to turn patients over--that requires physical effort also. That is one example of the disparity we have in our society.

We have to end this categorization that certain jobs are women's jobs and therefore we can pay them less. I daresay a truckdriver is an important part of our society. You make no bones about it. But so is a long-term care assistant taking care of our grandparents, or someone on an Alzheimer's unit, or a person who is taking care of our kids in the dawn of their life when they are in daycare centers. They do important work, vitally important work. They should not be discriminated against any longer.

I hope we will move forward on these two bills. As I said, the third bill is the food safety bill. I am hoping we will move forward on that also and that we can finish that bill by the end of the week. We reported this bill unanimously out of our HELP Committee November 18 of last year. There was not one ``no'' vote against it. Frankly, I daresay if we can bring the bill out on the floor--I am just wagering--I bet we get 90 votes. But there is a small group on the Republican side that is basically filibustering the bill. I am hopeful in good faith, working with Senator Enzi, Senator Burr, Senator Gregg, and others on our side, we can break this logjam and we can get the food safety bill through this week. It is so vitally important. As I said, it has broad bipartisan support. We worked hard to keep it that way. We have industry support and consumer groups support. Certainly it is vitally important to the health and safety of our country.

Our food safety laws have not been upgraded in 30 years. Think about the changes that have taken place in the way we grow food and ship food and prepare it compared to what it was 30 years ago.

Again, I am hopeful we will be able to bring that up and pass it, not only the motion to proceed but the bill itself, sometime this week. I will have more to say about that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Joel Murray, Kia Hamadanchy, Caitlin DuBois, and Krista Maier of my staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.