[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3629-3642]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
TAX ON BONUSES RECEIVED FROM CERTAIN TARP RECIPIENTS--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I want people to understand that the
Federal aviation reauthorization process is moving slowly but steadily.
We take several steps forward but none backward. Yesterday we approved
14 amendments. There was a tremendous amount of work done by the staff
to work those out. We have another large group we hope to be able to do
this afternoon. So large chunks of the bill are actually getting done.
Then, we have a number of controversial amendments, or potentially
controversial, and we are in the process of getting those locked down
so the Presiding Officer can pronounce a unanimous consent agreement
with 2 minutes equally divided.
I yield the floor to the Senator from Texas.
Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, my distinguished colleague and
chairman of the committee and I are working very hard to clear further
amendments as well as get a vote on the Sessions amendment, with a
Pryor amendment connected to that, and a McCain amendment, so that we
can try to finish this bill by tomorrow. So that is what we are working
on. We are of the same mind on that. I hope very much that we will be
able to get the amendments cleared that are very important. I would ask
all of our colleagues to work with us to expedite matters so that we
can finish this bill early tomorrow.
Thank you, Mr. President. I thank the chairman as well for working
with us on this issue.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I think the distinguished chairman of
the Judiciary Committee wishes to speak, but he is waiting for
something, so I will proceed.
This Federal aviation bill is enormous in scope, but we are doing it
in little pieces and with little amendments, so sometimes it is hard.
It has seven different titles in it. One of them has to do with
community air service to rural, underserved areas, which is very
important in my State and in the Presiding Officer's State--really all
of our States. Even California and New York have many very rural areas
where they need air service.
I spent 10 years chairing the Aviation Subcommittee, and I enjoyed it
enormously. I now chair the full committee, which I enjoy enormously.
But one focus throughout has been trying to protect small and rural
communities and give them air service. They travel. If the local
airport promotes itself, as a product must--it is not just a place
people go to; they have to announce themselves to the public and say:
We can take you here, we can take you there, while others of us try to
get flights in. It is tremendously important, so they are worth
fighting for, and we do that.
Large and urban States sometimes question that, but if they look in
their hearts, they have a lot of the same requirements themselves. It
is really about equality, and it is about the economy, and it is about
fairness. What is the difference between somebody from a city and
somebody from a smaller community? They both do business. One may not
have a big jet and therefore may require a smaller airplane, a commuter
airplane to get to where he or she wishes to go, but it is important
that they be able to get there. So it is vital to our economy.
Every single business considers, along with the school system, the
so-called quality of life, the crime rate, all of this, they consider
air service when they are deciding whether to locate or to expand in a
particular State. And so for that, we have this wonderful program
called the Essential Air Service--the EAS. It is a program which has
proved vital to communities across this country. It has allowed them to
keep air service they might not otherwise be able to keep, and
literally so. It doesn't bail them out to do that. I mean, it doesn't
pay the cost of that, but it helps them and they use it.
The first option of air carriers, naturally, but regrettably, as far
as a small community is concerned--if they are in distress, as our
airlines, our legacy airlines in particular, have been in recent
years--is they go to the end of the food chain to make their first
cuts, and that is always the small communities--the small airports and
the small centers. That doesn't make them less important.
Every time I think about that, I think about the time I ran for
Governor and I was defeated. I became president of a wonderful small
private college which had a grass airfield. They didn't get any Federal
help, because you can't do that with grass. But I always remember there
was a little yellow farmhouse when I drove out there, and it is still
the same little yellow farmhouse today. But if you go inside it has a
worldwide educational CD, video. It is the highest possible technology
company you can imagine. It just doesn't happen to want to build a
[[Page 3630]]
big building. It is happy in this little yellow farmhouse. You don't
have to have tall skyscrapers to do business. So the small community
air service development program has helped people.
My bill takes several important steps toward Kay Bailey Hutchison's
bill. We worked side by side--and I can't say this enough--every step
of the way. It is sort of a perfect combination of a ranking member and
chairman. We do several things here: We increase the authorized funding
for the Essential Air Service to $175 million. That is an increase of
$48 million. That is not a whole lot of money, but on a nationwide
basis that does a lot. That keeps many small airfields open and allows
them to have control towers and run air service.
We permit the Federal Aviation Administration to incorporate
financial incentives into contracts with the Essential Air Service
carriers to encourage better service. You have to keep your eye on
them. It is not just the question that Senator Dorgan has talked about;
that is, what is the name on the airplane. Sometimes there are two
names and you don't know which one you are riding on--is it United or
Colgan or what--and you need to know that. We correct that elsewhere,
in another title in our bill.
We also authorize the Federal Aviation Administration to negotiate
longer term Essential Air Service contracts. That makes sense because
that gives a sense of stability and predictability to an airfield--to a
small airfield--and to the public which is interested in it.
We authorize the development of financial incentives for carriers to
improve their service, as I indicated. It is quite amazing, the whole
structure of what people get paid to fly, from these little carriers to
commuter airlines. I am not going to give numbers to their salaries,
because you would be shocked at what they get paid--a lot less than
teachers. But they accept that because the seniority system says if you
have flown a long time, you get paid a lot. And they have accepted that
because people who know how to fly love to fly, and they want to fly.
But you have to keep your eye always on the quality of service.
Maintenance is a very high order, because that is the kind of thing
which could be neglected and people might not notice. It is like
keeping up your house. You can't defer maintenance or you pay a
terrible price. In the case of airlines, the price is very obvious.
We also authorize the Airport Improvement Program to convert
Essential Air Service; that is, small airports, into general aviation
airports. That turns out to be very convenient. There are thousands of
general aviation--big jets, little jets, and King Airs--all over this
country, and they fly everywhere, and we want them to. So we try to
encourage the EAS to do well by them.
We have increasing funding for contract towers. That is important.
You have to have a tower. I had a 9:30 appointment this morning, and
from not a large airport. Before taking off, there was fog, so they
couldn't take off. I assume they could see the fog themselves. But if
they were in doubt, the air traffic controller said: You aren't taking
off. That is called a service to them; less to me but to them, and that
is what counts.
In closing, I will mention something very important to West Virginia
and to other States. Our global economy is growing and we are much more
interconnected. It becomes very important now, for example, that
commuter services don't just take you from, let's say, Charleston, WV,
to Cincinnati. Sometimes, more importantly for business, they can take
you to Dulles Airport and you can connect to the international air
flight business, so that somebody from Bloomfield, WV, or Beckley, WV,
can be flying and go see his or her customers, or potential customers,
from a little commuter airport and a little commuter airplane, which
then turns into a much larger airport and international flow. I am
proud of this. And this is just part of our bill.
In the absence of other business, as we wait for amendments to be
worked out, we will do three of those this afternoon. Then we will
have, as I say, a tranche of agreed-to amendments--a very large
tranche. In the tranche of yesterday, which was 14 amendments, and the
tranche of today, which is almost that, that will be the bulk of the
bill.
We have been 3 years waiting on this bill. It has been sort of held
over or extended 11 times. Indeed, it will be 12 times by the time we
pass it, which will be, hopefully, tomorrow evening.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I offered, along with Senator Claire
McCaskill, my Democratic colleague, an amendment that will help contain
our tendency in this body--a bipartisan tendency, unfortunately--to
bust the budget, to spend more than we state we are going to spend. It
is a temptation that is all too real. We are faced with competing
choices to spend and spend, and some of our Members just find it hard
to say no.
We have to be careful about that because each time we do that, the
baseline of the budget or the emergency spending goes up, and we have
gotten into a habit of it that is surging us on an unsustainable path.
Mr. Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, the Obama
administration's leaders, independent economists, and Republicans
across-the-board are saying we are on a spending path that is
unsustainable, that we cannot keep on. But I have to tell you, a lot of
this is bad because we budgeted it; but a lot of it is bad because we
break the budget and spend more than the budget says.
We have a historical incident in which this Congress passed statutory
caps on spending to support the budget. In effect, Congress passed laws
that said this is our budget for the next several years. We have actual
spending dollar limits in our budget. Let's pass a law that says if we
go above that, it takes a supermajority.
Our bill says it would take a two-thirds vote to exceed the spending
the budget allows. Some say: A two-thirds vote? That is a high vote.
But it is based on the budget and the passage of a budget, and the
budget is passed by a 50-vote majority. So the budget essentially will
be the Democratic colleagues' budget. What they pass is what they
expect the levels of spending should be and where we should cap it and
where we should not go any further.
This legislation would enhance our ability and state with clarity, as
a bipartisan act of this Senate and Congress, that this is where we are
going to stay and that we are serious about it this time and we are
going to do something about spending that is out of control.
The simple truth is, we cannot continue to spend as we are. The
simple truth is, we are spending into debt, deficit, more than we ever
have in our history. Let me just show this chart. I think it is a
pretty indicative chart that should cause the average person to lose
their appetite--maybe even have their hair stand up. I used this chart
a week or so ago. I was meeting later with a Foreign Minister from a
European country.
He said: I happened to be watching C-SPAN. I saw you yesterday on the
floor with this chart. He said: Do you use charts on the floor often?
I said: Yes, sir, we do, Mr. Minister.
He said: I thought it made a lot of sense. You ought to go all over
the country and show that.
This is the Congressional Budget Office numbers based on the budget
that is out there. It shows what our debt held by the public is. The
debt held by the public is the debt where we sell Treasury bills and
people give us their money. They loan us their money, and we promise to
pay them back--over 10 years or 2 years or 30 years--at a certain rate
of interest. Some people say: You should not count the internal debt;
that is not exactly accurate. The only thing that really counts is the
public debt.
[[Page 3631]]
The internal debt, the gross debt is much larger than this, but let's
just use these numbers. In 2008 the total public debt of the United
States was $5.8 trillion. Since the founding of our Republic--in 1789,
I guess, since the Constitution was written. In 2013, according to CBO
staff, it will double to $11.8 trillion. That is just 3 years from
now--double. Then, in 2019, it is projected to go to $17.3 trillion,
more than triple. This is not a little-bitty matter. That is why people
are saying we cannot continue this way. That is why Moody's, the debt
rating agency, is continuing to discuss whether to downgrade the
American debt.
There are entities out there that insure debt. Some people are so
nervous about debt they want to insure the Federal Government debt and
they pay an actual insurance premium to make sure if the government
doesn't pay them what they owe, the insurance companies will pay them
what they owe. I am not sure that is a smart deal. Maybe it is in a
smaller country. At any rate, people pay this.
The amount of insurance that has been paid on the American debt has
tripled. It is not a lot, but it says something about what independent
people are valuing.
The debt of Greece amounts to 12.9 percent. The 1-year deficit for
Greece amounts to 12.9 percent of their total economy--GDP. We are at
9.9 percent, our debt. This year--the year ending September 30, last
year--that deficit was $1.4 trillion, three times the largest debt in
the history of the American Republic--three times.
Is this year going to be better? No. This year they are projecting
when September 30 arrives, our deficit for that one fiscal year will be
$1.6 trillion. According to some of the estimates, the debt would drop
down to about $600 billion over the next 10 years, through 2019. But
now we are seeing numbers that indicate that was too rosy a scenario
and we probably will not drop below $700 billion, and then it starts up
in 2018, 2019, 2017--almost $1 trillion a year annual deficits.
These numbers are low by any estimate. Already this year's deficit
was supposed to be a little over $1 trillion, but it is going to be
$1.5 trillion; maybe $1.6 trillion. That is a lot of money. We just
passed another bill that added another $104 billion to the debt for a
jobs bill.
What we are saying is, we are on a pathway that is unsustainable. We
cannot continue to run trillion-dollar deficits. We are going to
average almost $1 trillion a year deficit for the next 10 years--
probably it will average maybe more than that. That is why I think all
of us are concerned about it.
Senator McCaskill and I, as a first step, offered legislation that
said we are going to stick with our budget. If we will just stick with
our budget things will be better than they would be if we do not stick
with our budget. It is not a cure-all. It does not deal with
entitlements and all the things with which we are confronted, but at
least our discretionary spending will stick with our budget.
The first vote was 56 voted for it. We made some changes to
accommodate concerns of some of our colleagues, and 59 voted for it--18
Democrats joined in voting for that amendment. So we need one more vote
to make it law, and I am pleased to work with Senator McCaskill because
we are serious about this good step.
When it was done, similar legislation was passed in the early 1990s
and continued throughout the 1990s. That was a factor, no doubt, in
going from substantial deficits in the early part of the 1990s and in
the 1980s to surpluses in the latter part of the 1990s. That was a big
part of it because we stuck to our budget numbers and we made progress.
Again, what number are you saying--is it a freeze on spending? Not
really. The President talked about a freeze on spending. I will support
that aggressively, but we are talking about a 1-percent or 2-percent
increase, according to the budget. So it will give us a hard limit on
how much increase in spending we will have. It will not require a cut
in spending.
How does this play out in terms of our economy? Well, what is a $1
trillion? We used to talk about millions, and then billions, now we are
talking about trillions. Is that really a lot of money? Yes, it is. One
trillion dollars is one thousand billion.
In Alabama State, we are almost 1/50 of the American population, and
Alabama's general fund budget is about $2 billion. Alabama, counting
education, is less than 10. One trillion dollars is an amount of money
difficult for us to comprehend. We have never, ever dealt with numbers
as dramatic as these numbers.
What is wrong with borrowing? Why don't we just borrow? We have to
pay interest on it. This is public debt. We do not have any internal
surpluses anymore, or very little, from Social Security and Medicare.
We have to go out and borrow this money on the marketplace and we pay
interest on it. We pay interest every year on what we borrow. Congress
passed, over my objection, an $800 billion stimulus package. Every
dollar of that was borrowed because we were already in debt, and when
we spend $800 billion more we have to borrow it and we pay somebody
interest on it. It comes out of our money that we collect in taxes. We
have to pay interest first just like you do on your mortgage. The first
thing, you pay your house note, otherwise they are coming to foreclose
and out in the street you will go.
How much interest do we pay? That is a question I think drives home
how serious our unsustainable course is. A simple truth is that the
interest on the national debt is growing in an incredible rate and will
soon surpass defense budgets and everything else in our budgetary
items. Look at these numbers.
In 2009, last year, we paid $187 billion in interest. What about the
highway program? The Federal highway program that we talk so much about
and argue and debate about exactly how much that should be is $40
billion a year, just $40 billion. We paid last year $187 billion in
interest. This is a lot of money. But as I told you, since we have an
unsustainable annual deficit every year, huge deficits on top of the
debt we have already accumulated, our interest payment on the public
debt will go up. Look at these numbers.
In 2020--from 2009 to 2020 the number hits $840 billion in 1 year we
will have to pay in interest because we borrowed so much money. That is
why we hear people say time and again this is immoral. We are borrowing
from our future, from our children and grandchildren, so we can spend
today and live well today without worrying about the impact it is going
to have in the future. Do not think this will not impact the economy
adversely also. This money is all a product of borrowing from the
economy, so the government is now crowding out private borrowing by
sucking up the money itself.
If you are a private person and you needed to borrow money and you
say: I promise to pay you back, and the guy said: I think you will pay
me back, but the U.S. Government will pay me 5 percent on a T-bill. Why
should I loan you money at 5 percent? If I loan to you, you are less
secure. I want 7 or 8 percent from you, big boy. That is how things
happen. It drives up our wealth and capital for the expansion of
businesses and home buyers and that sort of thing.
So look at that chart. It is a stunning chart, and it is a chart that
has the numbers on President Obama's budget that he submitted to
Congress, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
Well, that is why we have to do something. There are a lot of things
we need to do. But I am hopeful that in our debate and discussion in
recent days that we have had this vote up, this will be the third time
we vote on it. I am hopeful my colleagues will see this as at least one
firm step we will take that will help us contain our tendency to not
stay with our budget.
If we were to stay with spending increases that did not exceed 1 or 2
percent that is in the budget of the next 4 years now, according to the
budget passed last year, we would see a positive impact on spending.
Unfortunately, in the last year, we had bills such as Agriculture
increased to 10 percent; we had bills such as Interior get about 15 or
20 percent; we had
[[Page 3632]]
bills such as EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, a 30-percent
increase; State Department, a 30-percent increase.
A 30-percent increase in a budget, the budget is going to double in
about 3 or 4 years. At 7 percent, money will double in 10 years. So I
just would say, this is a dangerous thing. This will help us contain
that spending. That is why Senator McConnell and I are so interested in
seeing if we can be successful with this legislation.
I understand Senator Pryor has an alternative; they call it a side by
side. ``Vote for mine, do not vote for theirs'' kind of amendment. I am
not exactly sure what it says. Hopefully, I can support his too. I
understand his may be just a 1-year binding cap. It provides no point
of order to waive the cap. It increases spending in a number of
accounts. So we will look at that. I would like to be able to support
his too.
But what I would say to my colleagues is, the advantages of the
amendment Senator McCaskill and I are offering are, it is a proven
procedure, it requires a two-thirds vote to break the budget, it allows
us to tell ourselves, tell our constituents, and the world financial
markets that we get it, we are willing to begin to contain this
spending and that we can do better and we will do better in the future
and there will be other steps we will want to take.
But I do believe this amendment will be one of the first things we
can do, in a bipartisan way, to help control the growth of spending and
put us back on track. In the 1990s, it led to actual surplus. So I urge
my colleagues to support the Sessions-McCaskill amendment. I believe it
is the right thing for our country. It is a significant step that will
work. It is not going to solve all our problems, but it will be a big
help.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I would ask if Senator Sessions notes
the absence of a quorum.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum
call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized to speak as in
morning business for such time as I may consume.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, let me say that I do like
all the guys I am opposing on this legislation. I have been
particularly close to Jim DeMint for quite some time. It happens that
Senator DeMint and I, almost every rating that comes along, are
considered always in the top five most conservative Members of the
Senate.
In fact, I tell the occupier of the chair who already knows this,
that just last week I was declared by the National Journal to be the
most conservative Member of the Senate. I say that because I am
disagreeing with a lot of my friends who have come forth to try to do
something about what they call earmarks.
Let me try to make a couple points that I think are significant.
First of all, an earmark that is in a current underlying bill, if it is
defeated, does not save one cent, not one.
People out there believe--and I have heard the talks on the floor
where they say: Well, we have to do something about the next generation
and all that. Look, I have 20 kids and grandkids. I am the guy who is
concerned about the next generation.
So when you try to make people believe you are doing something that
is saving money and doing something about the horrible spending that is
going on, it is not sincere, because an earmark does not add money.
What you do when you kill an earmark is redirect it or you might say
you have an earmark, but you do not like what they put in, so you are
going to reearmark it to something else.
I will give you a couple examples. These examples, I know the Chair
is familiar with this because he serves on the Armed Services
Committee. They are two earmarks that Senator McCain had; one was the
earmark for the F-22, where the President had had an amount of money
for the F-22, our fifth-generation fighter. I thought it was not
enough. Several of us added more, about $1.75 billion to that program.
Senator McCain--and I respect the fact that he disagreed--disagreed
on this issue. But he had an amendment to strike that earmark, which
was a successful effort. So he struck it. However, that did not change
the fact that the NDAA, that is the National Defense Authorization Act,
was still at $679.8 billion, the same as it would have been had that
earmark not been struck.
What happens to that money? That was the $1.75. Well, that goes back
into the defense system, into the Pentagon, where President Obama and
his people can make a determination as to how to spend that.
Using another example very similar to that, when we had the
appropriations bill--that was authorization--when we had the
appropriations bill, it was at $625.8 billion. We had an earmark that--
you can call it an earmark because we increased the amount of money
within the bill, and we offset it to increase the number of C-17s. We
felt, in our judgment, that is what should happen. That would have been
$2.5 billion.
So Senator McCain tried to get that out of it, and he was
unsuccessful. So I have given you two examples, one where you
successfully defeat an earmark, one where you are not successful. But
neither one changes the underlying bill.
So for that reason, it does not happen. Another one the Senator had
was having to do with transportation. I respect him. I do not agree
with him. But he had an amendment that would strike some things from
the Transportation bill amounting to about $1.7 billion. He redirected
that to NextGen. NextGen is a program I am very familiar with because
it has to do with the next generation of avionics and all of it. I know
the Chair is aware of this; that when Senator Glenn retired, that left
me as the only active pilot in the Chamber or the only commercial
pilot. So I stay on those issues.
I found out I disagreed with Senator McCain on that because CBO said
we could do the NextGen without this additional money. So the point I
am trying to make is, eliminating earmarks does not save any money.
Here is another thing that I think is significant. Sean Hannity had a
three-night report that I enjoyed. What he did, he had a list of 102
earmarks. He went down these earmarks, and everyone enjoyed it. Last
night he had the last 20. So he went: Earmark No. 20, 19, 18, 17, 16--
went all the way down to earmark No. 1. There is not time to cover all
102 of these. I did this on Monday on the floor, by the way.
But it was such things as the $3.4 million to the Florida Department
of Transportation to build an ecopassage to allow turtles to cross
under the highway so they would not get hit by a car. That was $3.4
million; $450,000 for 22 concrete toilets in the Mark Twain National
Forest; another earmark, $325,000, to study the mating decisions of
female cactus bugs. That was another one. This country needs that, of
course; $300,000 to buy a helicopter equipped to detect radioactive
rabbit droppings; $400,000 to study whether adults with attention
deficit disorder smoke more than other adults. This is one that really
wound me up: $500,000 in a grant to a researcher named in the
climategate scandal. Here is a guy who has been cooking the science,
and we are going to give him half a million dollars. Then there is
$500,000 to study the impact of global warming on wildflowers in
Colorado.
I could go through all 102. But there is one thing they all have in
common. I will bet you not many people know what that is. Not one of
these 102 was a congressional earmark. These were all Presidential or
bureaucratic earmarks. There is where the problem is. But they won't
talk about it because
[[Page 3633]]
the public has been duped into thinking congressional earmarks are a
problem.
Let me tell you what happened over in the other House. I am
criticizing my own Republicans now. The Republican caucus got together
and they had a resolve. They said:
Resolved, that it is the policy of the Republican
Conference that no Member shall request a congressional
earmark, limited tax benefit, or limited tariff benefit, as
such terms are used in clause 9, rule XXI of the Rules of the
House . . .
That finally defines what an earmark is. I was thankful for that.
Even though their policy was bad, at least they talked about what an
earmark is. Here is what it is. Clause 9, rule XXI applies to all
legislation in the House of Representatives, whether it be
authorization or appropriation. That is what we do for a living around
here.
There is an old document nobody pays any attention to anymore. It is
called the Constitution. If you look up article I, section 9 of the
Constitution, it says that no money shall be drawn from the Treasury
but in consequence of the appropriations made by law. That is us.
Besides, if you remember studying about this--I know the Chair and I
have talked about his knowledge of the Constitution--it was James
Madison who was the father of the Constitution. He was the one who came
up with the three coequal branches of government--the judiciary,
executive, and legislative. He is the one who coined the phrase ``power
of the purse.'' That was James Madison. If you read the Federalist
Papers, he made it clear what we were supposed to do. What we in the
House and we in the Senate are supposed to do is pass laws that are
necessary to have appropriations and authorization.
The Chair and I are both on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That
is the authorization committee. We go through and study what we need to
defend America--missile defense, for example. We need to have
redundancy in all phases--the boost face, the midcourse face, the
terminal phase. All these things are complicated, and we really can't
expect the general public to be aware of it because they are too busy
making money to pay for all this fun we are having up here. We have
this authorization. That is what the Constitution says we are supposed
to be doing.
Then appropriations. After we authorize something, study as to
whether it should be a priority, then we have an appropriation to put
it into law. That is, again, what we are supposed to be doing. The
Constitution tells us we have to appropriate and authorize.
The oath of office--everyone here has taken the oath of office. In
that oath, we say we solemnly swear we will support and bear true
allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.
Wait a minute. They are going to uphold the Constitution, but they
have just said by their own resolution that they are going to break the
Constitution.
I look at this, and I think about how people, if they only knew this
was going on, if they only knew that all these earmarks Sean Hannity
talked about, all 102 were earmarks that came from unelected
bureaucrats--people not responsible.
There was an interesting article in the Hill paper the other day. It
was from February 4. They say lobbyists are now going to Federal
agencies because of all these efforts because of earmarks and all that.
So we have turned over and given to unelected bureaucrats what we are
supposed to be doing under our sworn oath.
I know Senator McCain is going to have an amendment coming up
tomorrow. I would like to suggest that people who talk about not doing
earmarks have done earmarks. In the case of Senator McCain, there was
an article titled ``McCain Breaks Own Pork Rule.'' This was from
November 7, 2003.
Then we have Senator DeMint, who--again, I really value him. He is
one of my closest friends. I remember when he was first running for
office. I went to South Carolina, and they talked about how roads were
so important down there, and he swore he would support them. So he did.
He kept his word. These are earmarks. Senator DeMint: $10 million for
the construction of I-73 at Myrtle Beach; $15 million to widen U.S. 278
to six lanes; $10 million, engineering, design, and construction of a
port access road; $10 million in improvements to U.S. 17; $5 million,
widening SC 9; $3 million to complete construction. These are earmarks
that were done by Senator DeMint. I don't blame him. That is what we
are supposed to be doing. I have done the same thing. You add up all
these earmarks on just that bill, and it comes to $110 million. Those
are Senator DeMint's earmarks on that one bill.
What I am saying is, these guys all earmark, but somehow the public
thinks there is something wrong with earmarks. I say: Fine. Define
earmarks. Be as honest as the House of Representatives. The House of
Representatives says earmarks are authorizations and appropriations.
What we need to do is remember what our jobs are here. Again, the
thing that frustrates me is that there are so many people writing
editorials thinking earmarks are going to somehow cut spending. They
don't cut any spending. Eliminating an earmark merely transfers it from
our constitutional responsibility to the executive branch. I am hoping
people will understand this.
I can remember 8 years ago. Everyone said at that time that global
warming was caused by manmade gases, anthropogenic gases. I thought, it
must be true; everybody says it is true, until the Wharton School of
Economics came along and did a study during the Kyoto Treaty days. They
said: What would it cost America if we were to sign and ratify that
treaty and live by its emissions restrictions? The range they gave us
was between $300 and $400 billion a year. We are talking about $300 to
$400 billion a year.
I see my friend from Arkansas. I suggest to him, that $300 to $400
billion a year would cost every taxpayer he has who files a return in
the State of Arkansas just under $3,000 a year. That is what it would
cost. We didn't ratify that.
Along came, in 2003, the McCain-Lieberman bill--another cap-and-trade
bill to do essentially the same thing Kyoto did--and then the McCain-
Lieberman bill in 2005 and the Warner-Lieberman bill in 2008 and the
Sanders-Boxer bill in 2009. All of these have one thing in common; that
is, cap and trade. Right now, we have Senator Lindsey Graham and
Senator John Kerry trying to change the word, not use ``cap and
trade,'' but essentially it would be cap and trade.
All of that would have cost between $300 and $400 billion a year. I
bring that up because it is pertinent to this. I brought it up because
8 years ago nobody believed me when I said it is going to cost that
much money and it will not accomplish anything.
Then, as the years went by, finally the Environmental Protection
Agency director, appointed by President Obama, in response to a
question I had--I asked: Let me ask you this. If we were to pass this
bill--that was the Markey bill; they are all the same; cap and trade is
cap and trade--how much would it reduce the emissions of
CO2? Her answer was: It wouldn't reduce it.
Common sense tells us it wouldn't. If we do something unilaterally in
America, it will not reduce the worldwide amount. As we lose our jobs
here, they to go China and Mexico, places where they are generating
more electricity. It will have the effect of increasing not reducing
it.
It took America 7 years. I was a bad guy for 7 years because in
advance I said that this is what it was going to cost. It was a phony
issue. Finally, they agreed.
This has endured 3 years. I have been trying to explain to people for
the last 3 years that you don't save any money if you kill earmarks. We
need to define what they are. The House has been honest. They have
defined it as authorization and appropriation, which is what the
Constitution says we are supposed to do. Everybody who says they are
against earmarks has been introducing earmarks.
The bottom line is, we need to really address something meaningful.
What I have done is I have introduced a bill that will do what
President
[[Page 3634]]
Obama said he was going to do; that is, freeze the nondefense
discretionary spending at the 2010 levels. The only problem with that
is he increased it in his budget by 20 percent. You are talking about
increasing the nondiscretionary or the discretionary nondefense
spending after you have increased it by 20 percent. So I introduced a
bill that says let's take it back.
This President is always talking about what he inherited from the
Bush administration. In 2008, the amount of money that was called
discretionary spending was 20 percent less than 2010. If it is good for
2010, let's bring it down to 2008. We have an opportunity that would
save just under $1 trillion in the next 10-year budget cycle. That is
the answer. That is what I think we ought to be doing instead of
sitting around and deceiving the public into thinking that just because
the media doesn't understand it, somehow earmarks are going to
accomplish something worthwhile.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Amendment No. 3548 to Amendment No. 3452
Mr. PRYOR. I move to set aside the pending amendment and call up
amendment No. 3548.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Pryor], for Mr. Reid, for
himself and Mr. Pryor, proposes an amendment numbered 3548.
(The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text
of Amendments.'')
Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I know this Nation is in a fiscal crisis.
Anybody who is paying attention to the details understands that. We
have to get serious about deficit reduction. I believe that in order to
do so, we have to look at the full picture. We can't just look at
discretionary spending.
I thank the President for saying he wants to freeze discretionary
spending. It is going to be an unpopular decision, but we need to start
taking steps like that. I also thank Senators Sessions and McCaskill
because they have offered an amendment that is going to be voted on in
a few minutes that freezes discretionary spending and puts a cap on it.
It is for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013. I voted for that on a
couple occasions and still support the concept.
But in order for us to get serious about getting our fiscal house in
order, we have to put everything on the table. That is the bottom line.
When we do the fiscally responsible thing, it is going to be hard. It
is going to be difficult politically. It will take determination and
political will. But we have to put everything on the table.
The multiyear discretionary spending caps were a key part of the
1990, 1993, and 1997 deficit-reduction packages. However, one of the
differences in those packages and what Senators Sessions and McCaskill
are offering today is those deficit-reduction packages looked at all
spending, mandatory and discretionary, as well as revenues. That is
what my amendment, the Reid-Pryor amendment we will also vote on this
afternoon, does. It puts everything--almost everything on the table.
We have to get serious about fiscal discipline and restoring fiscal
order in the United States. There is a story in yesterday's New York
Times--I am sure it was widely reported--that Moody's is considering
downgrading our bond rating from AAA down to something lower because of
the enormous national debt we have.
By establishing limits only on discretionary funding sources, we
greatly reduce the likelihood of any bipartisan agreement we can make
in this Chamber to fix our long-term deficits and long-term debt
problem. I think for us to fix this and to get our fiscal house where
it needs to be, we have to approach this in a bipartisan way. My
concern is, if we just do discretionary spending, we will never get to
a bipartisan agreement.
The other thing about this: If the Reid-Pryor amendment were adopted
today, I think the markets would like it. I think Wall Street and the
global markets and all these folks such as Moody's and all these other
people who are watching would see this as a very positive signal and it
would help the U.S. economy in many ways beyond just the pure numbers
in the budget.
I trust the members of the President's National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform. I trust they will provide very viable
options and solutions. I look forward to their hearings and all of
their suggestions as they go through this year and try to address some
of the fiscal challenges we have.
The Senate has six Members on this commission: Senators Baucus,
Coburn, Conrad, Crapo, Durbin, and Gregg. All of these people bring
great experience. They all bring to the commission great depth of
knowledge on these issues. I am afraid if we do the cap on
discretionary spending, as we talked about before, it might actually
serve to undermine the commission's very challenging work.
I have a chart here that lays out a few things. This actually comes
from CQ Today, from Tuesday, February 2, so it is a little more than a
month old. But it paints a couple of pictures that I think we need to
emphasize today as we compare these two amendments.
The first picture shows these pie charts. I do not know if the
cameras can pick these up for the folks back home, but, as shown on
these two pie charts these are the 2011 revenue estimates and the 2011
proposed outlays.
One thing that I think is critically important is that when we look
at the Sessions-McCaskill amendment--you can see this purple slice of
the pie right here. You can see it is much less than half of the
Federal budget. You can see that very easily. But in the fine print
here--this is discretionary spending--that is nondefense and national
defense right there. Of course, they are carving out for national
defense. So my guess is, they are only talking about, I will guess, 20
percent of the Federal budget. I am not quite sure how much. So they
are trying to fix all of our problem with just about 20 percent of the
budget.
What our proposal does is it actually includes almost everything in
this pie, instead of saying 20 percent, probably 80 percent, 85
percent, 90 percent of the Federal budget will be included in trying to
address the fiscal challenges we have.
There is another thing I want to point out on this chart. It has been
around a long time. I have seen it in many publications. On this chart,
you can see our deficit spending, starting with the Jimmy Carter
administration, going through the Reagan years, the George Bush years,
the Clinton years, the George W. Bush years, and the Obama years. You
will see that, of course, the Obama years are mostly projections.
But what you see in these purple lines, all down here--under zero--
those are our deficits. Then they actually go up during the Clinton
years above zero. We go into surplus spending for the first time in a
long time, paying off national debt, trying to be fiscally responsible,
making tough choices. Not everybody was happy about that. We were
trying to do that. Then you see what happened after 2000, where our
numbers plummeted.
This yellow line--that maybe is hard to pick up on television--is the
percentage of GDP. But, nonetheless, you see on this chart a sharp
dropoff, and then you see this other sharp dropoff. So we have to
understand, when this President came into office, President Obama, he
did inherit a lot of problems, a lot of fiscal problems. But it is also
because of the recession, because of the near global economic collapse,
because of two wars and just because of some of these fiscal policies
of the previous administration and because of the stimulus and because
of some of his priorities. But you see the numbers going way down.
To President Obama's credit, he is moving the purple lines back up,
and that is great. But it is not enough. It is not enough. We need to
move these lines on up here, and we need to get above zero. We have to
get back to surpluses in this government so we can pay off the national
debt, and do this before our children and our grandchildren are stuck
with us living beyond our means.
[[Page 3635]]
I think that is the bottom line. I think the Reid-Pryor amendment is
the amendment that does that. We can talk about how we have an annual
deficit this year of--I think it is $1.2 trillion. I have forgotten the
number. We can talk about the national debt of--I think it is $13
trillion, and growing every single year. We have to get that turned
around. We are on an unsustainable course. We have heard the chairman
of the Budget Committee. We have heard the ranking member of the Budget
Committee. We have heard people who care about this issue say time and
again: We are on an unsustainable course.
I would ask my colleagues to look at the Reid-Pryor amendment. In
some ways, it is structured like what Senator Sessions and Senator
McCaskill have offered. Again, I voted for previous versions of that.
They changed it a little bit this time. But I think the greatest
liability for the Sessions-McCaskill amendment is it does not take in
the whole picture. Like the pie chart, it takes in a little bit of this
pie chart but not the whole thing.
If we are going to get serious--get serious--about fixing our fiscal
equation, we have to put everything on the table. That is discretionary
spending, mandatory spending, as well as revenues. We have to put it
all on the table, and we have to work through this together, hopefully
in a very bipartisan way.
I do not think we can fix this overnight. Even if our amendment were
to pass this evening, it does not mean we are out of the woods yet.
What it does is set the table for the deficit commission and others in
future Congresses to come in and do the things we need to do and get us
back where we need to be.
The last point I want to make about this chart right here is, if you
look at this purple line, this chart is basically a graph of political
courage. That is what this is. Because the easiest thing in the world
for a politician to do--the easiest thing for a politician to do--is to
cut taxes and raise spending. That is exactly what you see on this
chart. You see tax cuts coming in at various times, and you see
spending going up at various times. These purple numbers get way out of
balance when Congress and the White House take the easy way out, and
that is exactly what you see on this chart.
That is why we are in this situation today. It is not one President's
fault. I do not want to blame it all on this President or on the
previous President. This has been going on for a long time. It is not
one Congress's fault. It has been going on for a long time. But we have
to have the political will to change the way we do things around here.
I hope tonight will be a very important step in that process. I hope
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will look at the Reid-Pryor
amendment that contains all three fixes--and that is discretionary
spending, mandatory spending, as well as revenues--and try to get this
passed tonight and get us moving in the right direction.
I say to the chairman, I think we are waiting on Senator Inouye. So
until he gets here, all I wish to say is, what the Pryor amendment does
is to freeze all discretionary spending caps at the levels proposed by
President Obama for fiscal year 2011. It freezes all discretionary
spending caps for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 at 40 percent of the
difference between President Obama's budget proposal and last year's
budget resolution. The reason we do that is because Senator Sessions
and Senator McCaskill used last year's budget numbers, and it may be
fair under the circumstances this year. We are splitting the difference
there.
The third thing is that these two freezes will reduce discretionary
spending by at least $77 billion over 3 years-- reduce discretionary
spending by $77 billion over 3 years--a pretty substantial cut.
When we talk about discretionary spending, we are talking about
mostly the popular programs the government has. It may be things such
as auto safety. It may be things such as child product safety. It may
be things such as the Federal Trade Commission and some of the
oversight they have to keep consumers safe. It could be the EPA. There
are a lot of things--clean drinking water, clean air. That is what we
are talking about when we talk about discretionary spending. So we are
doing cuts there. Those are going to hurt. Again, people are not going
to be happy about that.
It also requires the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and
Reform to find at least an additional $77 billion of deficit reductions
over the 3 years to close the gap between the projected revenues and
entitlement spending. It basically says they have to find some spending
cuts as they do their work.
It also requires Congress to enact the debt commission's
recommendations by January 2, 2011, for fiscal years 2012 and 2013
discretionary spending caps to go into effect. It has a sense of the
Senate that the total amount of deficit reduction by the debt
commission shall be at least equal to the reductions in discretionary
spending.
One of the differences between the Reid-Pryor amendment and the
Sessions-McCaskill amendment is theirs is just about spending. And
listen, spending is important, and that is half of the equation. We are
spending too much money, and I recognize that, a lot of other people
recognize that. I know a lot of people in Arkansas recognize that. But
that is only half the equation. The other half is how much we are
taking in, and can we do better and smarter all around the board and
put everything on the table to try to fix this.
The real problem we face, in my view, is not spending alone but it is
the spending that is leading to these enormous deficits every year and
this enormous national debt. So I think our approach is more
comprehensive. I think it is fairer. I hope many of my colleagues, once
they see the language of the legislation, will consider voting for it.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence
of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, while we are continuing to wait, as we
have basically waited all day for amendments to be offered and debated
and voted on to the FAA reauthorization bill, Senator Rockefeller has
remained on this floor most of this day. This is a very important piece
of legislation. It is disappointing that it has slowed down, as have
most of the issues we have dealt with in recent months, in the past
year.
Apparently, we will vote either later tonight or likely tomorrow on
an amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill that has nothing to do
with the bill. It is so characteristic of the Senate that we bring a
bill on air safety and modernizing the air traffic control system, on
essential air service, on passengers bills of rights, and an amendment
is offered that has nothing to do with those subjects. The rules of the
Senate allow that.
Let me at least talk for a moment about an amendment that will be
voted on probably next and probably tomorrow, I guess, by Senator
Sessions and Senator McCaskill. I know Senator Sessions spoke about
this recently. He used a very large chart to show the growth in Federal
budget deficits and also debt. There is no question that the level of
budget deficits and debt are unsustainable and dangerous to this
country. There is no question about that.
What we ought to do is understand, No. 1, how did we get here and,
No. 2, how do we get to a different direction that addresses these
issues. Let me describe briefly the first part and then the second
part.
Ten years ago, there was a budget surplus in this country--the first
time in 30 years, a budget surplus 10 years ago. Then President Bush
was elected, and President George W. Bush said at the time: There is a
budget surplus,
[[Page 3636]]
and it is expected now there will be a surplus for the next 10 years.
He had Alan Greenspan, then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board,
whispering in his ear and saying: And, by the way, if we have surpluses
for 10 years, I worry a lot about paying down the Federal debt too
quickly. I worry that may be a real problem for our economy. I hope he
did not spend a lot of sleepless nights worrying about that. He needn't
have, I guess.
The President then, with that kind of counsel, said: I am going to
cut taxes, and I am going to cut taxes for 10 years at least. What I am
going to do is cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans because I believe
this economic engine works best by putting something in at the top and
letting it trickle down to everybody else.
We had a tax cut proposal that was very generous to the people at the
top. I stood on this floor and said: I don't think that makes any sense
at all. I think we ought to be a little conservative. First of all,
these are budget estimates of surplus. They don't exist. They are just
estimates by economists who cannot remember their home telephone
numbers, let alone what is going to happen 3 years from now. So let's
be a little conservative.
The President and those in the Chamber who voted for it in 2001 said:
Nonsense. Katy, bar the door; we are going to have budget surpluses
forever. We are giving big tax cuts and, yes, we are giving big tax
cuts to the wealthiest because they are the ones who make this economic
engine hum. And they did. I did not vote for it.
Very shortly then we found out we were in a recession.
That was a problem. Six months after that, we found out terrorists
were bent on injuring this country, and we had the 9/11 attack that
killed several thousand innocent Americans. Then we were at war with
terrorists--at war in Afghanistan and then at war in Iraq--none of it
paid for, not a penny. We sent men and women off to fight and did not
ask anybody to pay for a penny of it and put all of those costs on the
Federal budget debt. Just put it right on top of the debt.
In the meantime, as that decade--which I think will be known perhaps
as ``the lost decade'' of lost opportunity in some ways--moved on, we
also had people come into this town who were to be regulators and were
paid to be regulators who boasted: We are going to be willfully blind
for a few years. You do what you want. We won't watch. We won't tell.
The result was a field day for the biggest financial interests in
America, creating the most exotic financial instruments, such as credit
default swaps, CDOs, derivatives--by the way, synthetic derivatives.
What does that mean? That means you have an instrument that has nothing
on either side. It is just flatout gambling.
We have some of the biggest financial institutions that were spending
a decade trading trillions of dollars of derivatives, synthetic
derivatives, much of it by hedge funds and other financial entities
that were unregulated.
Again, Mr. Greenspan said, when those of us in the Senate pushed for
regulations: No, they don't need to be regulated. It will all work out
fine. Self-regulation--they are not going to do anything stupid. Self-
regulation will work just fine.
In the meantime, we had the home loan scandal, massive amounts of
money in subprime loans put out there to people who could not afford
them by companies that were making billions of dollars. Mr. Mozilo ran
Countrywide, the single largest home lender in America. He left with a
couple hundred million dollars. He is now under investigation. They
were putting teaser loans out.
They said: By the way, you have bad credit, no credit, don't pay your
bills, no pay, slow pay. They said: Come to us. We want to give you a
loan.
All of us understand that does not work. Yet that is what was going
on. They were awash in money by moving all these assets and securities
around. Unbelievable. That is the subprime loan scandal.
All of this transpired, and then it collapsed. When you create a
house of cards, the slightest little wind blows the house of cards
down. That is exactly what happened. We discovered that some of the
biggest financial institutions in this country had much more leverage
than they were able to sustain, and the entire thing came crashing
down.
The Federal Reserve Board now has spent untold amounts of money--
untold because they would not tell us. We asked them. They said: You
don't deserve to know nor do the American people deserve to know how
many trillions of dollars have gone out the back door to sustain
investment banks and others who made bad judgments. Those too-big-to-
fail institutions, no-fault capitalism, they were too big to fail, and
the American taxpayers got stuck. The American taxpayers and American
citizens lost about $15 trillion in value, and at the same time had to
bail out big financial institutions that made massive amounts of money.
By the way, right now they are paying, once again, bonuses of $120
billion, $140 billion in some of those same industries, and they are
showing record profits while some 15 million, 17 million people went
out to look for work and could not find it. Small- and medium-size
businesses are still having difficulties. Those at the top, too big to
fail, who received massive amounts of government help, are now making
record profits and paying record bonuses. All of that exists.
When we hit this ditch, this financial wreck, we lost a substantial
amount of income coming into the Federal Government--about $400
billion. The economic stabilizers we have, such as unemployment
insurance, food stamps, and others, the cost of them went way up. Had
Barack Obama, winning the Presidency, done nothing--walking across the
threshold into the White House for the first day, had he done nothing
for the next 10 to 12 months he would have had a $1.3 trillion Federal
budget deficit not of his making. That was his inheritance when he won
the Presidency.
We have these giant budget deficits. I find it interesting, people
come out and talk about these big budget deficits who have spent the
last 10 years saying: You know what. Let's go ahead and send men and
women to war, and we will just charge it. We will not ask anybody to
pay for it, ratcheting up this deficit, helping create these problems.
Now, all of a sudden they are having an apoplectic seizure over
budget deficits and the increased level of debt. We should have a
seizure over it because it is unsustainable, and we should fix it.
We need to understand what happened to create it and making sure we
fix it so that it does not happen again. That means financial reform.
That means paying for wars we are fighting, and so on, which is not
happening yet. Even more than that, the question is, What is the
medicine or the solution? So our colleagues bring an amendment that we
will vote on tomorrow that says what we should do is to freeze domestic
discretionary spending for 3 years--domestic discretionary spending.
Well, people who don't work around here don't know what that means so
much. What it means is they are proposing to freeze that portion of
Federal spending that has not blown through the lid here. What is out
of control are the entitlements--massive increases in Medicare and
Medicaid. What is out of control is the substantial increase in defense
spending that is not paid for. What is out of control is the
dramatically less revenue that comes from giving tax cuts to people who
didn't need it.
If you have a million dollar income a year--which would be a good
thing to have--and somebody says: You know what, you just won the
lottery. Our government says: We are going to give you a $79,000 tax
cut. So a proposal that says: You know what we are going to do, we are
going to take that smaller portion of the budget and we are going to
freeze that for 3 years--you know, the kinds of things that educate
kids, the sort of things that invest in people's lives, human capital,
human potential, the kinds of things that make life better. We are
going to freeze all that, but we are not going to touch anything on the
revenue side. No, we want to protect those tax cuts for the biggest
interests. We are not going to
[[Page 3637]]
do anything in the entitlement areas, despite the fact that we have
dramatic growth in Medicare. There is nothing in this that says: Let's
take a look at all spending. They say: Let's take a look at a bit of
spending. And there is nothing in here that says: Let's take a look at
revenues.
You have to look at all of these things. If you are serious, if you
are a deficit hawk and you are about getting your hands around this
deficit problem and getting rid of this problem, then you have to be
serious out here and say we are going to do it all; that we are going
to take a look at every single area of spending and we are going to
take a look at revenues as well.
Let me mention one example. In 2008, the highest income earner, pure
income, in America is a man who made $3.6 billion--$3.6 billion--
running a hedge fund. So he goes home at night and his spouse says: How
are you doing, honey? Pretty good. I made $10 million today. It is a
lot of money for a day, isn't it? Well, $3.6 billion is $300 million a
month, and so $10 million a day. But that is not his only success. It
wasn't just that he made $3.6 billion. It was that he gets to pay a
lower income tax than almost anybody in the State of Minnesota--the
State of the Presiding Officer--because most of the constituents of the
Presiding Officer pay income tax rates that are much higher than 15
percent. But that $3.6 billion earner gets to pay an income tax rate of
15 percent because it is defined as carried interest. That is a
loophole that you can drive a Humvee through, and it is one that we
ought to close right now.
You say you want to do something about deficits. How about making
somebody like that pay a fair share of taxes? If somebody is going to
work all day as a drill press operator and come home and shower after
work and try to figure out how he is going to pay the bills and so on,
if that person is paying a 20-percent, 28-percent, 30-percent, 35-
percent income tax rate, how about the person who is making $3.6
billion?
Somebody will listen to this and say: That is that old populism
again. That is not populism, to talk about things that are necessary
and right. It is not populism. It is deciding that everybody ought to
be treated fairly, and it is not fair if those who are at the low end
of the income ladder are paying the highest tax rates and those who are
at the high end are paying the lowest tax rates.
Warren Buffett, the second or third richest man in the world--a guy I
like and whom I have known a long time. He is a wonderful man. He did
an experiment at his office in Omaha, NE. I think he said they had
something like 20 or 40 or 50 people working at Berkshire Hathaway at
the office. So he asked them, I believe voluntarily, to disclose what
their income was--although his company pays them--and what their tax
rate was. What he discovered was this: Of all the people in his office,
the person who paid the lowest combined tax rate of income taxes and
payroll taxes was the third or second wealthiest man in the world:
Warren Buffet. He paid a lower tax rate than his receptionist. Warren
Buffett said to me: That is so unbelievably wrong. It has to change.
You all have to change that. I am paying what I should pay, but he
said: It is not right that you have a Tax Code that has me paying a
lower tax rate than the receptionist in my office.
My point simply is this: We could change that, and should, and
increase some revenue as a result by making the tax system fairer and
having those who should, pay their fair share. That is one way to
reduce the deficit, isn't it? Except it will never be done with this
resolution because it looks at that portion of the budget that would be
used to fund a school or to build a water project or to build a flood
protection project--just that domestic discretionary in which you
invest in America. Well, that doesn't make any sense at all.
Senator Pryor came to the floor and said he is going to offer an
alternative, which I am going to support, which includes all of these
things. It says: Yes, tackle this budget deficit, do it now, don't
delay, but tackle it with seriousness, seriousness of purpose, not just
taking one piece that hasn't exploded and ignoring the other pieces.
Take the piece of domestic discretionary spending that has not exploded
and say: Let's take all the savings out there. I don't understand that.
I understand the motive. The motive is to say: Well, we have a bunch
of people who don't want to touch taxes in any way, even asking the
$3.6 billion person who pays a 15-percent rate to start paying his fair
share. I understand they want to protect that. I don't. I want that
person to pay a fair rate of taxes to our government. They would call
that a tax increase. I don't. I think it is just evening up the score,
saying: You want all the benefits America has to offer but don't want
to pay the full obligation of being a citizen? The same is true with
some corporate interests that decide they want everything America has
to offer them but they want to run their employees through the Grand
Caymans so they can avoid paying payroll taxes.
By the way, the same people who are paying a 15-percent income tax
rate on carried interest running hedge funds are setting up deferred
compensation accounts in the Bahamas to avoid paying even that 15
percent. So is that something we can shut down? Of course. Would that
help reduce the budget deficit? Yes. Is that tackling domestic
discretionary? No. It is more effective than doing that, because we
know where this money is and we know how we could reduce the budget
this way.
I am in favor of tackling every part of the Federal budget and seeing
what works and what doesn't. There are a whole number of things this
government does that it doesn't need to do anymore.
I know Senator Kaufman wants to speak, but I want to mention one
thing first. I have been here at this desk a long time now, and let me
describe how unbelievable it is that even waste has its constituency in
this Chamber--even waste. We are doing this: We broadcast television
signals into the country of Cuba every single day that the Cuban people
can't see. We do it every single day. We have spent $\1/4\ billion
doing it. We broadcast from 3 in the morning until about 7 in the
morning and the Cubans routinely block them. The purpose of it was to
broadcast--under what is called Television Marti--and to inform the
Cubans about how wonderful freedom is. They are pretty well aware of
that by listening to Miami radio stations. And we know they understand
freedom because they get on rafts trying to find their way to this
country. But we have Television Marti, which is a big group of people
that is pretty well funded, about $20 million a year, or $25 million a
year now, and so we send television signals to the Cuban people that
they can't see. We first did it with a big blimp called Fat Albert, way
up in the air shooting signals down that the Cubans could block. Then
Fat Albert got off its tethers and landed in the Everglades, and what a
mess that was. Then they bought an airplane and they send the signal by
flying these planes, which the Cubans routinely block.
I have offered amendment after amendment after amendment to try to
stop spending to send television signals to no one, but you can't get
it done. Isn't that unbelievable? I will continue to do that because
that is an area of spending, it seems to me, where it takes a
nanosecond of thought to say: That is just stupid. That is just dumb.
So stop it. Except government doesn't quite work that way, or that
well.
But if the Pryor amendment is offered tomorrow, I fully intend to
support that aggressively because we are on an unsustainable path. Most
of us know how we got here, but not everybody yet knows how we are
going to get out of it, and I think that is a decent step in the right
direction. I would say that the Sessions-McCaskill amendment is
seriously deficient and is not, in my judgment, the serious way to
address what is a very serious problem.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business for up to 5 minutes.
[[Page 3638]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
In Praise of Jeffrey Amos, Marvin Caraway, Jr., and Colin Richards
Mr. KAUFMAN. Mr. President, I rise once more to highlight some of our
Nation's outstanding Federal employees. I have spoken before about
those who, in serving our Nation, place their lives in danger in order
to protect others. On March 4, a lone gunman opened fired near the main
entrance to the Pentagon, wounding two security officers before being
quickly subdued. These two officers and a third who assisted them
provide an example of the bravery and excellence of Federal employees,
and especially Federal employees in law enforcement who take risks
every day.
These three men all worked for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency,
which oversees security for the Defense Department's headquarters as
well as several other Defense facilities in the Washington area. It was
created after the attacks of September 11, 2001, to provide
comprehensive threat prevention for one of the buildings targeted on
that fateful day. Like those serving in other law enforcement and
security agencies, the men and women of the Pentagon Force Protection
Agency undergo rigorous training. Many are veterans of the Armed Forces
or have worked previously as police officers for States and
municipalities. They train to be ready at a moment's notice for
scenarios they pray will never come. Often these security officers will
stand at a checkpoint for hours at a time at the ready during days and
weeks and months of quiet.
As a youth, I worked two summers as a lifeguard in Philadelphia, and
we always used to say it was hours of boredom interspersed with seconds
of sheer terror. Well, sheer terror happened for these great Federal
employees. For these three officers from the Pentagon Force Protection
Agency such a moment came just before 7 o'clock in the evening of March
4, 2010.
Officers Marvin Caraway, Jr. and Colin Richards were standing guard
at the main entrance to the building--the Pentagon--when a suspicious
figure approached. Marvin sensed something was amiss, so he walked
toward him to check out his identification. When the man pulled a gun
from his jacket and began firing, one of the bullets grazed Marvin's
thigh. Undeterred, he held his ground and fired back. Later, his fellow
officer would tell reporters that Marvin was like ``Superman''--``a man
of steel.''
Colin ducked behind a barricade and began to return fire. Hearing the
shots, a third officer, Jeffrey Amos, ran over from his post nearby and
joined the effort to subdue the gunman. In the process, he was wounded
in the shoulder. The whole incident took only a minute and the three
officers fatally shot the assailant.
The quick reaction and undeterred professionalism of these three are
inspiring. All brought to the job a strong background in law
enforcement and public service. Marvin, who lives in Clinton, MD, is a
former marine, who served in the first Persian gulf war, and has
experience protecting our embassies overseas. Jeffrey, from Woodbridge,
VA, is a retired member of the Air Force Reserve. He spent 11 years in
the New Orleans Police SWAT team.
Colin, who resides in Arlington, VA, recalled how his experience and
training prepared him to act quickly. He said: ``My vision was big; my
hearing--I could hear everything. When the shooter started running, he
looked like a big target. At that point I felt like I couldn't miss.''
Federal security officers, such as Marvin, Jeffrey, and Colin, are
our modern-day ``Minutemen''--trained and ready to keep us safe from
threats to our liberty and security. We owe all of them our constant
appreciation.
I must add that we see the same dedication and professionalism right
here each day in our very own Capitol Police force as well. I know how
proud Majority Leader Reid is of his own service as a Capitol Police
officer when, as a young man, he stood guard at one of the entrances to
this building.
I hope my colleagues will join me in thanking Marvin Caraway, Jr.,
Jeffrey Amos, and Colin Richards for their bravery and a job well
done--as well as all those who serve as Federal security officers
standing at the ready. They are reminders of our great Federal
employees.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burris). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BURRIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaufman). Without objection, so ordered.
The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. BURRIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
new philadelphia
Mr. BURRIS. Mr. President, in 1777, when our Republic was just a year
old and the Revolutionary War was raging, a man named Frank McWorter
was born in South Carolina.
In 1795, when the war was over and George Washington was President,
he moved to Kentucky. He married a woman named Lucy.
And in 1830, he and his family moved to Illinois--the very same year
that a man named Thomas Lincoln, along with his son Abraham, moved to
there from Indiana.
Frank McWorter decided he would settle down, and so he bought a farm
in Pike County's Hadley Township, and he began to plan out the town of
New Philadelphia. Other settlers moved in. Soon, there were family
homes, businesses, and even a school.
And when Frank McWorter died of natural causes in 1854, having lived
more than three-quarters of a century, he died in the town he founded
and guided to prosperity.
The community of New Philadelphia continued to thrive until it was
bypassed by the expanding railroad in 1869. Left behind by the steam
engine, and the wave of expansion it pushed across the western
frontier, the residents of New Philadelphia began to disperse by the
late 1880's, and the town gradually disappeared again into the Illinois
prairie.
The story of Frank McWorter and New Philadelphia is an extraordinary
one.
But as I told this story a moment ago, here on the Senate floor, I
left out one defining detail.
If Frank McWorter had been a farmer, or a banker, or a soldier, his
tale would be remarkable because of the era in which he lived--but in
many ways, he would have been no different from thousands of others who
grew up in the early days of our country.
But Frank McWorter's story is extraordinary because he was not a
farmer, or a banker, or a soldier--no, he was a slave.
When he moved to Kentucky in 1795, he did not go voluntarily. He went
with his owners. On the day he met Lucy, his future wife, the two of
them were slaves on neighboring farms.
Eventually, Frank was allowed to work odd jobs, and hire out his own
time and labor. He learned to mine a major component of gunpowder,
which proved profitable.
By 1817, he had earned enough money to purchase freedom for his wife.
And in 1819, he bought his own freedom--and set out to build a life for
himself, as a free American. That is the story of Frank McWorter.
So, when he started the town of New Philadelphia in 1836, he
accomplished something truly remarkable and unique. He became the first
known free African American in history to legally found and plan a
town.
And he used the proceeds from land sales to purchase freedom for 15
of his family members.
I invite my colleagues to imagine what life must have been like in
New Philadelphia in the mid-1800s. In pre-Civil War America--in a time
when this country still legally permitted slavery--New Philadelphia,
IL, was a place where people of all races lived and worked side by
side.
Federal census records indicate that the town was populated by
teachers, blacksmiths, merchants, cabinetmakers, and shoemakers. There
was a
[[Page 3639]]
seamstress, a doctor, a wheelwright, and a carpenter. New Philadelphia
even had its own post office, which also served as a stagecoach stop.
Imagine what we could learn from studying this unique place, which
existed during such an important time.
An in-depth study of New Philadelphia could yield important
information about what life was like in an integrated community during
that period. It could add new dimensions to our understanding of the
history we share.
I urge my colleagues to join with me in preserving this historic
site, which was designated a National Historic Landmark last year.
But I believe it's time to take the next step to ensure that the
extraordinary story of Frank McWorter and New Philadelphia is preserved
for generations to come.
I ask my colleagues to support S. 1629, a bill I have introduced to
direct the Secretary of the Interior to begin a Special Resource Study,
which would determine whether the New Philadelphia site can be managed
as a unit of the National Park Service.
Today, not much remains of the structures where the town's residents
lived and worked. For passersby, the site is an open field just
southeast of Springfield, IL.
But in 2004, a three-year National Science Foundation grant allowed
archaeologists to explore this site for the first time. They found
building foundations, wells, pit cellars, and a total of more than
65,000 artifacts. They recognized that these exciting discoveries have
the potential to yield even more information.
And if we pass this bill, and allow the Secretary of the Interior to
evaluate the national significance and suitability of this site, we
could pave the way for its preservation as part of the National Park
Service.
We can re-discover the incredible history that has been hidden among
the prairie grass for more than a century.
We can reclaim the spirit that drove Frank McWorter--a man born into
slavery--to reach for equality and opportunity, to establish himself
and his family as free African Americans, in a time when freedom was
extremely hard to come by, and to establish a thriving community--a
place of inter-racial peace and cooperation--in a dark period for race
relations in America.
I believe we must act to preserve this legacy. I believe we owe it to
ourselves--and to future generations of Americans--to examine the
history of New Philadelphia, and the life of pioneers like Frank
McWorter.
Let us pass S. 1629, so we can better understand those who came
before us. In the process, I have no doubt we will discover some
remarkable things about ourselves.
I yield the floor.
Social Justice
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as a result of the greed, recklessness,
and illegal behavior by a small number of executives on Wall Street,
the American people today are suffering through the most serious
economic conditions we have seen since the Great Depression of the
1930s. Since the recession started in December of 2007, 8.4 million
Americans have lost their jobs and, while the official unemployment
rate is 9.7 percent, according to the latest Gallup Poll, nearly 20
percent of the American workforce is either unemployed or
underemployed. In other words, we have people who are working, but they
are working 20 hours when they need to be working 40 hours.
Further, long-term unemployment is soaring. Today, over 6 million
Americans have been unemployed for over 6 months, the highest on
record. This is not a situation where people are losing their jobs and
a few weeks later they go out and get another job. People are losing
their jobs and they cannot find another job, which is why it is so
important that we extend unemployment benefits and so reprehensible
that there are those in this Chamber who have resisted that effort.
Today, there are fewer jobs in the United States than there were in
the year 2000, even though the workforce has grown by 12 million since
that time.
Today, we have the fewest manufacturing jobs than at any time since
April 1941, 8 months before the start of World War II.
Today, home foreclosures are the highest on record, turning the
American dream of home ownership into an American nightmare for
millions of our people.
Further--and we do not discuss this enough--in the United States
today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of
any major country on Earth. That means that while the middle class is
in rapid decline, while poverty is increasing, the gap between the
people on top and everybody else is wider than in any other major
country on Earth and growing wider.
The reality is, today the top 1 percent now earns more income than
the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the
bottom 90 percent. Meanwhile, while the folks on Wall Street give
themselves tens and tens of millions of dollars in bonuses for having
destroyed our economy, the United States has, by far, the highest rate
of childhood poverty among major countries. Almost one-quarter of our
children today are dependent on food stamps. Approximately 19 percent
of our kids are living in poverty, and one out of four kids in the
United States, in order not to be hungry, is dependent on food stamps.
While the Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, recently talked about how ``the
recession is likely over,'' I urge him to meet with America's blue-
collar workers or those few people left who do manufacturing in this
country. As the Boston Globe reported several months ago:
The recession has been more like a depression for blue-
collar workers, who are losing jobs much more quickly than
the nation as a whole. . . . [T]he nation's blue-collar
industries have slashed one in six jobs since 2007, compared
with about one in 20 for all industries, leaving scores of
the unemployed competing for the rare job opening in
construction or manufacturing, with many unlikely to work in
those fields again. . . .
Up to 70 percent of unemployed blue-collar workers have
lost jobs permanently, meaning their old jobs won't be there
when the economy recovers . . .
That is a staggering fact.
So when talking about the recession hurting people, it is hurting
some of the people who already are in the most serious trouble; people
who do not have a whole lot of money to begin with. That is what is
going on in the real world today. But, sadly and significantly, what is
going on today simply is an acceleration of what was going on the
previous 8 years. It is not like, oh, times were good, the middle class
was doing well, and, oops, the reckless behavior of Wall Street plunges
us into a major recession.
What is not talked about enough is that this continues and
accelerates a trend that has been going on for a number of years.
During the 8 years of the Bush administration, here is what happened:
Over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into
poverty. Over 7 million Americans lost their health insurance.
Our Republican friends are vehemently objecting to us going forward
in terms of health care. When they had the power, when they had the
Presidency, when they had control over the House and the Senate, during
that period millions of Americans lost their health insurance. Do you
recall them coming forward and saying: We have to do something about
this crisis; more and more people are losing their insurance; more and
more people are unable to afford their insurance? I did not hear a
word. But they are very vocal now. They are very loud: Stop it. We
cannot do anything. No. No. No. They had their chance, and it is sad to
say that right now, all they can do is play the obstructionist role and
be the party of no.
I make this point not to just relive history but to understand where
the anger comes from today. It is not just in the last year and a half
millions more people lost their jobs, lost their health insurance.
During the 8 years of President Bush, median household income declined
by over $2,100--$2,100. So people came out of that period, from 2000 to
2008, staggering. They were earning less than they did before that
decade began, and than they walked into the greed and recklessness of
Wall Street, which created a massive recession.
[[Page 3640]]
The Washington Post reported last January: The past decade was the
worst for the U.S. economy in modern times. That was before the Wall
Street crash.
Let me say it again. The Washington Post last January: The past
decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times. It was,
according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers--
a lost decade for American workers.
There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. Imagine
that. Since December 1999, the country has grown zero jobs. Middle-
income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than
they did in 1999. The number is sure to have declined further during a
difficult 2009.
So there you have it. You want to know why people are angry, why
people are frustrated, why people are pointing their finger at
Washington and us and saying: Hey, we are in trouble: massive
unemployment; real wages have gone down; people are working incredibly
hard, if they are lucky enough to have a job; and, at the end of the
day, they are worse off than they were 10 years ago.
According to a September 2009 article in USA Today--this is quite
incredible--and these are statistics that we do not talk about enough:
from 2000 to 2008, middle-class men experienced an 11.2-percent drop in
their incomes. Can you imagine that. From 2000 to 2008, middle-class
men experienced an 11.2-percent drop in their incomes, which amounts to
a reduction of $7,700 after adjusting for inflation.
So imagine that you work hard for 8 years. At the end of those 8
years, you have lost $7,700. Even worse, the USA Today article goes on
to report that many age group Americans are poorer today than they were
in the 1970s. We talk about the American dream and that parents work
hard so that their kids will do better than they did.
Well, we are moving in the wrong direction. Today the average
American worker, or at least millions of American workers, in terms of
inflation-accounted-for dollars are worse off than they were in the
1970s.
Without going through all of the reasons the middle class is
collapsing and poverty is increasing, without going into great length
about the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else, I think
it is important to say a few words about our good friends on Wall
Street, people who have made it clear to everybody in this country that
the only thing they care about is making as much money as they possibly
can in any way they possibly can.
Recently, in the last several years, 40 percent of all profits in
this country went to the relatively few people in the financial
industry--40 percent of the profits. We have seen hedge fund managers
and owners earning billions of dollars. We have seen CEOs of major Wall
Street banks being worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars,
all the while the middle class collapsed.
We have the highest rate of childhood poverty. Millions of people are
losing their health insurance.
We talk about people living in a gated community, people living in
very expensive homes protected by armed guards and surrounded by gates,
driving around in their chauffeured limousines, getting into their
private jets, having no clue about what is going on in the real world.
That is what Wall Street is about. They are engaged in producing
esoteric financial instruments which very few people understand which
are producing nothing real in the real world. They are not creating
real jobs. They are not creating real products, real services. They are
a gambling casino whose function in life is to make more money for the
people who own that casino.
Now, after we deal with health care, and I hope we can finish that as
soon as possible, the issue of financial reform is going to come into
this Chamber. I hope very much that we can respond to the frustration
and the anger of the American people about what Wall Street has done
and promise them, through legislation, that those people will never
again get away with the crimes they have committed against the working
families of this country.
Let me suggest a few of the areas I think a serious and real
financial reform bill should address. Every week I hear from
constituents in Vermont, and I suspect you hear from constituents in
Illinois who say: How in God's name can these large financial
institutions we bailed out with our tax dollars now charge us 25 or 30
percent interest rates on their credit cards?
I hear this all of the time. And let's be clear. When a large bank--
and about two-thirds of the credit cards in this country are issued by
the four largest financial institutions in America--when a large
financial institution is charging a working American 25 or 30 percent
interest on their credit cards, we have to be very clear and call that
what it is. That is loan sharking; that is usury; that is immoral.
The Bible, in all of the major religions--Christianity, Judaism,
Islam, all of them--talk about the fact that usury is immoral; that you
cannot lend money at excessive rates to struggling people who need that
money to survive. That is what is happening today.
The loan sharks today are not gangsters out on the street who break
kneecaps. These are guys in three-piece suits who, in some cases, make
hundreds of millions of dollars a year by stealing money from working
people through excessively high interest rates.
The middle class is collapsing, poverty is increasing, and often, in
order to deal with the day-to-day needs of a family, whether it is
food, whether it is gas to get to work, whether it is money to heat
their homes, people are using credit cards. To be charged 25 or 30
percent is simply immoral, in my view, and it is something that has to
be eliminated.
As you know, a number of States all over the country have passed
usury laws. But as a result of the Marquette Supreme Court decision a
number of years ago, these credit card companies go to certain States--
South Dakota--where there are no usury laws and charge anything they
want, all over the country. They have nullified State usury laws.
Well, you know what. We need a national usury law. We have to say
straight out it is immoral; it is wrong to be charging working people
20, 25, 30, 35 or more percent interest rates on their credit cards. As
part of any serious finance reform legislation, the American people
have to know we are going to end usury.
My view is--and I have introduced legislation to this effect--that we
should do for the private banks what we do with credit unions right
now: 15 percent max, except under certain circumstances, which now take
them up to 18 percent. No more 25 percent. No more 30, 40, 50 percent.
No more payday lending. We are going to end that.
I think that has to be incorporated into any serious financial reform
legislation. Any part of a serious financial reform bill has to deal
with the need to increase transparency at the Federal Reserve.
I will never forget, about a year ago, the Chairman of the Fed, Ben
Bernanke, came before the Budget Committee on which I serve. I asked
him if he could tell us which banks received trillions of dollars in
zero interest or almost-zero interest loans, trillions of dollars,
placing the taxpayers of this country at risk.
Mr. Bernanke said: No, I am not going to tell you that. Well, we have
introduced legislation to demand that he tell us. The American people
have a right to know which financial institutions have received
trillions of dollars in loans. One of the great scams of our time--you
want to talk about welfare. There is abuse. These are ``welfare
queens.'' We have heard that expression before. Those guys are getting
zero-interest loans from the Fed, or maybe they were paying one-half of
1 percent, and then they go out and lend that money to the Federal
Government, they buy government securities at 3\1/2\ or 4 percent,
having taken money from the government at zero percent or half a
percent. How is that? You get a nice spread there. You have a 3-percent
spread on that. The money that you are lending is guaranteed by the
faith and credit of the United States, never once failed. That is a
pretty good deal.
[[Page 3641]]
We give you money at zero interest, and you go out and get guaranteed
money at 3 percent. Not a bad deal. That is welfare for billionaires,
and that is unacceptable.
We have a right to know which financial institutions are engaged in
that. Most importantly, we have to end that right now. So we need
transparency at the Fed. They cannot continue to operate in that kind
of secrecy.
We also have to end the too-big-to-fail phenomena. Here is a fact
that I think many Americans do not know; that is, while we bailed out
Wall Street because institutions were too big to fail--if they went
down, they would take the whole economy with them--well, guess what. A
year later, three out of the four financial institutions are bigger
today than before we bailed them out.
Now, what am I missing? It does not make a whole lot of sense to me.
Not only that, not only are they a greater danger to the economy today
than they were before, but there is something else which is going on
which we also do not talk about too much. Maybe as the only Independent
in the Senate--I am not a Democrat or Republican. Maybe it is my job to
be raising these issues, but somebody has to raise them; that is, the
top four financial institutions in this country have enormous amounts
of economic power over this country.
As I mentioned earlier, they issue two-thirds of all of the credit
cards in this country. Does that sound like a very competitive
situation to you? The four largest financial institutions issue two-
thirds of the credit cards in America. I do not think that is a healthy
thing for our economy.
So not only do we have to end this, these huge financial
institutions, because they are too big to fail, but we also have to
allow for increased competition within the banking industry, in doing
away with this huge concentration of ownership. Not only do the top
four--which is JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and
Citigroup--issue two-thirds of the credit cards, they also issue half
of the mortgages. I don't think that is a healthy state for this
country. We have to start breaking up these guys.
The last point I would make is maybe the most important. In Vermont
and all over the country, small and medium-size businesses are in
desperate need of capital, of affordable loans so they can better
produce the products and services they need and, in fact, create the
jobs our economy desperately needs. I am sure the case is similar in
Illinois, but in Vermont, I have small businesses coming into my office
saying they can't get the credit they need to expand and create jobs.
You have Wall Street operating as a gambling casino, selling and
playing with esoteric financial instruments. It is time they started
investing in a productive economy and creating jobs.
The American people are hurting. They are suffering through a
terrible moment economically. People are wondering whether, for the
first time in the modern history of America, our kids will have a lower
standard of living than their parents. This is the reverse of what the
American dream is about. People are wondering how they will be able to
afford to send their kids to college, how they will pay for childcare,
how they will pay for the mortgage on their home, when they are either
losing their jobs or real wages are going down.
They are looking to Washington. They are becoming increasingly
frustrated by the Republican party of no which seems to gain
satisfaction every time they can stop legislation which attempts to
address real problems, whether it is health care, jobs, extending
unemployment benefits. It is no, no, no from the Republicans.
The American people are beginning to catch on that there have been a
record number of filibusters in this session, a recordbreaking number
of obstructionist tactics. What the American people are saying is: Hey,
Congress, Mr. President, we are hurting. We need action or else the
middle class is not going to survive.
As difficult as it is, as much as we understand that when we
deregulated Wall Street, they spent $5 billion in 10 years in lobbying
and campaign contributions, making sure the Congress did what Wall
Street wanted--in 2009, Wall Street spent $300 million on lobbying. I
don't know how you spend $300 million on lobbying. There are 100
Members in the Senate and 435 in the House. These guys will spend and
spend and spend to make sure Congress does nothing to prevent them from
going on their merry way of doing whatever they want without any
serious kind of regulation.
In these difficult moments, I hope the Senate and the House will
summon the courage to do the job we were elected to do and what we are
paid to do, and that is to represent working families and the middle
class and not only big money and Wall Street.
Amendment No. 3548
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that amendment
No. 3548 be designated as a Pryor amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, earlier today the senior Senator from
Oklahoma incorrectly claimed that an article entitled, ``McCain Breaks
Own Pork Rule'' that ran in Roll Call on November 6, 2003, proved that
I had broken my pledge against requesting earmarks. However, the
Senator failed to mention that Roll Call subsequently ran a correction
to this article on November 17, 2003, stating that, ``the article
inaccurately stated that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) violated his own
rules against so-called ``pork barrel'' spending.'' I ask unanimous
consent that the entirety of the original story and, more importantly,
the correction published in Roll Call be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Roll Call, Nov. 6, 2003]
Correction Appended
(By Emily Pierce)
After years of crusading against ``pork-barrel'' spending
projects in Congressional appropriations bills, Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.) may be breaking his own rules.
McCain pushed for, and got, $14.3 million for Arizona's
Luke Air Force Base inserted into the just-completed fiscal
2004 military construction appropriations conference report.
The only problem is the project to acquire more land near
the base was not requested by President Bush or fully
authorized by the Senate Armed Services Committee--two of
McCain's criteria for identifying so-called ``pork.''
``Even though this project is in clear violation of the
McCain rule because it was not authorized nor requested, we
are happy to provide the funds at his request and the request
of other members of the Arizona delegation,'' said House
Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield.
Scofield also noted that the provision may violate other
tenets of McCain's ``pork'' rules because the purpose of the
funds--to acquire land to prevent the encroachment of
residential development near the base's live-fire range--is
not included in Defense's long-term strategic plans and may
not be achievable within a five-year time frame.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who
has bitterly fought McCain's repeated attempts to strike even
the smallest of pork projects during Senate floor debate on
appropriations, was blithe about the news that McCain had
secured an earmark for his own state.
``One man's pork is another man's alternate white meat,''
said Stevens. ``We don't discriminate. . . . If he asked for
it, we put it in.''
McCain defended his actions, saying he first sought
authorization for the measure in the fiscal 2004 Defense
Department authorization bill.
``The fact that the appropriations bill may [be sent to the
president] before the authorization bill is not relevant to
my point of view, because we did the authorization before we
did the appropriations bill,'' McCain said of the order the
bills came to the Senate floor.
McCain, who sits on the Armed Services Committee in charge
of devising the Defense Department authorization, said he has
little control over the process once it passes the Senate
floor.
``It was my job to get it authorized,'' he said. ``So I had
no involvement after that.''
Part of the problem is that the Defense authorization bill,
which gives the Appropriations committees the official
authority to dole out money to the Pentagon, has been stalled
in conference negotiations for months over various issues,
most notably McCain's insistence that an Air Force-Boeing
lease deal be scrapped.
McCain has charged that the Boeing deal to lease 100 tanker
planes over several years
[[Page 3642]]
would cost much more than simply buying the planes outright.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department has argued that the plan
will expend less money in the short-term and that they don't
currently have enough money to buy the planes.
While Armed Services negotiators in both chambers say they
have made some progress toward resolving their differences on
the Boeing lease deal and other issues, it is unclear whether
the bill will actually become law this year.
Correction: Nov. 17, 2003
The article inaccurately stated that Sen. John McCain (R-
Ariz.) violated his own rules against so-called ``pork
barrel'' spending. The Senate Parliamentarian's office
maintains that the provision was properly authorized in the
Senate-passed version of the fiscal 2004 Defense
authorization bill and did not need to be signed by the
president to be considered ``authorized,'' as the article
suggested. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), chairwoman of
the Appropriations subcommittee on military construction,
told Roll Call that McCain never specifically asked her to
put the $14.3 million project for Arizona's Luke Air Force
Base into the fiscal 2004 military construction bill.
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