vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber who wish to vote or to change a vote? if not, on this vote the yeas are 55. the nays are 45. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn, not

having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to. the point of order is sustained and the amendment falls. the senator from new york is recognized. mr. schumer: mr. president, i have seven unanimous consent quests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent these requests be agreed to and the requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. schumer: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that upon disposition of the amendments in order this morning, the senate then proceed to a period of morning business until 12:30 with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each and that at 12:30 the senate stand in recess until 2:15. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. burris: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois is recognized. mr. burris: i'd like unanimous

consent to speak in morning business. the presiding officer: the senate is in morning business. mr. burris: thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: senators shall suspend. the senate will be in order. the senate will be in order. mr. burris: thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois is recognized. mr. burris: there was an article in last thursday's "chicago tribune," my hometown newspaper that, really caught my attention. it's shocking news for many of my fellow illinoisans, so i'd like to share it with my colleagues today. according to state records, illinoisans who lose their jobs and have to buy their own health insurance will see their

premiums increase by as much as 60% this year. the presiding officer: the senator will suspend. could we please have order in the chamber. senators will take conversations off the floor. the senator from illinois is recognized. mr. burris: as "the tribune" notes, this is affecting more people than ever before because of the economic crisis. there are currently more than 500,000 customers -- consumers in illinois who have individual health plans. their base rates, which stands at 8.5% at the moment, will jump to more than 60%. and those who are just -- just the base rates, mr. president. and those are just the base rates.

elderly folk will likely see additional increases on top of that. some of those who have a history of illness. so will people who live in certain areas or who have only had a policy for a short period of time. insurance companies will pile on additional increases for all these folks, on top of the 60% increase that will affect every illinoisan with an individual health plan. let me remind my colleagues that these are mostly folk who have lost their employment, so they don't have a steady stream of income to absorb these increases. and they don't have a choice but to pay whatever the insurance companies demand or go without the coverage they need. this is bad news by itself, mr. president, but it gets worse.

because they are not the only ones who will see their premiums go up. small businesses are finding it harder than ever to afford coverage for their employees because they are being hit with big rate hikes, even though business isn't as good as it was a few years ago. and companies like illinois blue cross have even acknowledged that they'll be increasing their rates by an average of 10% across the board. and much more for some of their customers. we've seen this kind of thing before, mr. president. just recently in california, a health insurance company raised its rates by 39%, a move that sparked national outrage and investigations by state and federal regulators. so when we hear about this kind of behavior, there is an obvious question for us to ask. the same question that many folks in illinois will be asking when they get their insurance

bills over the next few months. and that question, mr. president, is: why? why are insurance companies raising rates by as much as 60%? why does it keep getting harder and harder to pay for health coverage when benefits are being slashed at the same time? it just doesn't make any sense. but when illinoisans pick up their phones and they call their insurance providers, they ask them why. they probably won't be able to get an answer. most insurance companies don't release that information and don't feel they have an obligation to explain the outrageous rate hikes. only americans don't have a way of finding out. mr. president, that is exactly why we need to pass comprehensive health care reform

without delay. to restore competition to the insurance industry so folks can shop around and try to get a fair deal. to help us hold insurance companies accountable so we can keep them honest, and to provide cost savings so hard-working americans and small businesses can breathe a little easier in these difficult times. mr. president, the senate health reform bill would have accomplished all of these things and more. and if we had combined our bill with the house version at the end of last year and sent it to president obama, we would have had a law on the books by now. we would almost certainly not be seeing these dramatic premium increases. instead, people's premiums would be going down significantly, and 31 million more americans would have health care coverage.

this "chicago tribune" article would have read very differently if we had finished this health care bill a few months ago, as we easily should have done. but because of our inaction here in washington, because of the delays and the obstructionism, these companies continue to have free reign. so as we struggle to find common ground between the house and the senate, we must never forget that the american people are locked in a much more serious struggle. we have experienced the worst economic crisis since the great depression. the unemployment rate exceeds 10% in illinois, and it stands just under 10% nationwide. millions have watched helplessly as their hard-earned economic security vanished overnight. individuals and families are finding it harder than ever to make ends meet. and one of these greatest challenges they face is paying

for health insurance. so under the current system, too many people are forced to choose between keeping food on the table and buying health coverage. it's a terrible choice, mr. president. it's a terrible choice. premiums are so high that it's almost impossible to afford quality coverage. and as "the chicago tribune" reported, they are about to even get higher. but without insurance, we're all just one accident or catastrophic illness away from bankruptcy or even death. so, it's time to turn our attention away from the partisan fight that consumed washington every day and focus on the fight that's taking place in america's heartland. my colleagues and i must never forget why we entered public

service in the first place. why are we here? what is our purpose? we must always remember that ou actions and our failures to take action have real consequences for ordinary people from coast to coast. this legislation will -- was stalled and delayed for better than part of a year. and as a result of this obstructionism, we're about to see premiums go up by 60% instead of going down. if our republican friends had come to the table and acted in the spirit of compromise and listened to the will of the american people, we would have passed health care reform and a dozen other things by now. but instead, it's the same old politics, mr. president. it's easy to find excuses. it's very difficult to govern. so once again i invite my

colleagues across the aisle to join us in these efforts. come to the negotiating table. you heard president obama speak yesterday very vividly and outright and forthright about what we need to do to bring health care reform to the american people. we have to -- we have a fresh sense of momentum, a new opportunity to deliver on this promise of reform. so let's keep having this conversation. let's confront these challenges together as american people have asked us to do. let's move forward as one congress, as one nation. it's time for republicans and democrats to say enough is enough to big insurance. no more outrageous rate hikes. no more coverage denials. no more abuse. and it's time for republicans

and democrats to reaffirm our commitment to the hard-working people we represent in illinois and across the country. it's time to pass comprehensive health reform so that every american can get a great deal on health insurance and foreclose the possibility of losing their life or their assets. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas is recognized. mrs. lincoln: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. link lng thank you, mr. president. -- mrs. lincoln: thank you, mr. president. i rise today in support of a proposal on the bill that we're currently dealing with that will hold the bailout wall street companies and their executives more accountable to the american taxpayers much over the last two -- taxpayers. over the last two years the tarp recipients have paid out tens of billions of dollars in employee bonuses, while at the same time the -- the large financial

institutions. mr. president enough is enough. all we have to do is look across this great land of ours and to see so many people and small businesses and small communities across america who are in difficult times. this amendment, the taxpayer fairness act included in the senate jobs bill would put in place a one-time windfall tax on bonuses paid in 2010 to executives of companies that received taxpayers bailout. specifically it provides a 50% tax on bonuses above $400,000 paid to executives at financial institutions that received at least $5 billion in taxpayer support. that's just so common sense, mr. president, to all of us here to realize how important it is to be respectful of the taxpayers, making sure that as we have made available these resources to

these wall street industries to -- to just at least have the acknowledgement and respect from them of what the rest of america is going through. i have fought for years to hold wall street more accountable. during the tarp debate in the fall of 2008, i pushed for stricter limits on executive compensation, which went unheeded in the bush treasury department implementation of the program. later that year i also cosponsored legislation that would have capped executive salaries at bailed out banks. in march of 2009, i sent a letter to the a.i.g. chairman calling on his executives to forfeit their $165 million bonuses or face unprecedented congressional action to strip them of their so-called performance-based rewards. during the debate on the recovery act, mr. president, in early 2009, the senate passed my amendment to place an excise tax

on bonuses from financial institutions that had received taxpayer dollars under tarp. wall street needs to understand, mr. president, that in these extraordinary times they must change their ways of doing business. they must play by the same rules that arkansas families and businesses have to play by and other small towns and states across the nation. a small business owner in our state of arkansas has a bad year, they have two options, they either buckle down and trim the fat or they go out of business. they do not come to the steps of the capitol and ask for a government check and they surely do not give themselves a lavish pay raise. arkansans are rightly irritated, just as i am, mr. president. let us not forget that the actions of some of these firms are what sent our economy into dire straits in the very beginning. and for almost two years now -- two years, mr. president, americans have paid the price for wall street's mistakes.

they've lost jobs. they've seen their property values diminish and they've seen their retirement savings depleted. so it flies in the face of common sense and general prudence of those accountable to the -- to reward themselves when the rest of the country is shouldering the burden that they created. this amendment must be enacted to send the message to wall street that we will not stand for such behavior. mr. president, the time is right and now for us to send the message to all of america that we're not going to stand for this type of fiscal irresponsibility. i encourage my colleagues to stand with main street, not wall street, and support this important amendment. thank you, mr. president. and i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas is recognized. a senator: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer:itho objection, so ordered. under the previous order, the senate stands in recess until 2:15 p.m.

>> a guidebook, a to travel log if you will, but also a kind of a mini history work of biography of each of these presidents. let's face it, you can tell a lot about people at the end of their lives. >> a year ago last month president obama signed the economic stimulus bill into law making $787 billion available. since then the federal government has committed almost 346 billion to states for stimulus projects. that's up two billion from last week. just under 195 billion has

been paid out for those projects. for more about the economic stimulus go online to c-span.org/stimulus. you will find video like christina roemer speaking today on the bill's effects and more economic recovery proposals. enacting hiring tax credit as well as additional financial relief to states and capital to small banks. also on our web site, links to government and watchdog groups tracking the spending. at c-span.org/stimulus. >> caterpillar ceo jim owens will speak shortly at a conference on post-recession economic policy hosted by the national association for business economics. live coverage at 12:55 eastern here on c-span2. meanwhile an economic outlook for this year from chinese premier when bao. speaking at chinese opening of chinese people's congress and eliminating corruption and relations with taiwan during the half hour

portion. our coverage is courtesy of state-run china central television. >> for 2010. >> [speaking in native tongue] >> this is a, crucial year for continuing to deal with the global financial crisis, maintaining steady and rapid economic development and accelerating the transformation of the patterns of economic growth. it list an important year for achieving all the targets of the 5-year plan and laying a solid foundation for the development of the 12th five-year plan. although this year's development environment might be better than last year's, we're still face very complex situation. some positive influences are growing while others are diminishing. short term and long-term problems are interwoven.

domestic and international factors, mutually affect each other and dilemmas facing economic and social development are increasing. internationally, the global economy will hopefully turn around. international financial markets are stablizing. and the overall trend toward increased economic globalization has not changed. considerable changes and adjustments in the world economic structure will bring new development opportunities. at the same time, many destablizing factors remain. -- global -- financial risks have not been completely eliminated. individual countries face difficult choices in phasing out their stimulus packages. larger fluctuations may occur in price of major

commodities and exchange rates among major currencies. trade protectionism is clearly reasserting itself. and global problems such as climate change, food safety and energy and resources remain complex. domestically our country is still in an important series of strategic opportunities. >> [speaking in native tongue] >> translator: the foundation for economic turn around is becoming stronger. market confidence has increased. the policies we adopted to boost domestic demand and improve the well-being continues to show results and enterprises are constantly becoming more competitive and better able to adapt to market changes. nevertheless these, there are still some serious problems effecting economic

and social development. there is insufficient internal impetus driving economic growth. our independent innovation ability is not strong. there's still considerable excess production capacity in some industries. and it is becoming more difficult to restructure them. while the pressure on employment is constantly growing, overall there is a structural shortage of labor. the foundation for keeping a culture production and farmers incomes growing steadily is weak. latent risks in the banking and public finance sectors are increasing. and major problems in the areas of health care, education, housing, income distribution and public administration urgently require solutions. we must make a comprehensive

and correct judgment of the situation and we must not interpret the situation, the economic turnaround, as a fundamental improvement in the economic situation. we need it strengthen our awareness of potential dangers. make use of favorable conditions and positive factors, strive to resolve problems. make even more thorough preparations to deal with risks and challenges of all kinds and firmly keep, and firmly keep the initiative in our work. [applause] to do a good job of our government work this year, we need to conscientiously implement the guiding principles of the 17 national people's party congress, and the third and fourth plenary sessions of

central committees. importance of the of our guide, thoroughly scientific outlook on development, strive to apply macro control of purpose and maintain steady and rab -- rapid economic development. work hard to accelerate economic restructuring and transformation of the pattern of economic growth. press ahead with reform and opening up, and with independent inthey vision. strive to improve people's well-being and promote social harm mow any and stability. make headway efforts to encourage social, economic, political, cultural, social and ecological development. pick up the pace of the building a moderately prosperous society in all aspectses. and work hard to achieve

sound, rapid, economic social development. this year the main targets we have set for economic and social development are, increasing gdp by approximately 8%. creating jobs for more than nine million people entering the urban workforce. keeping the urban registered unemployment rate no higher than 4.6%. holding the rise in consumer prices to 3% and improving the balance of payments. here i would like to stress that in targeting a gdp increase of around 8%, formally emphasizing sound development, and we need to guide all sectors to focus

on transforming the pattern of economic development, and restructuring the economy in their work. by targeting an increase in consumer prices of around 3%, for giving full consideration to the carryover effects of last year's price changes, reverberations caused by price changes for major international commodities, continued impact of increases in domestic supplies and money and credit, and consumers ability to bear price increases while also leaving room for reform in the consumer's ability to bear price increases. this year we'll focus on the following eight years areas. first, exercising better

macro control and gaining steady and rapid economic development. we need to continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a moderately easy monetary policy. we need to maintain continuity and stability in our policies, while constantly making them better targeted, and more flexible as circumstances, conditions change. and keep a good grasp of the intensity, face and focus of their implementation. we need to skillfully handle the relationship between maintaining steady and rapid economic development, structuring the economy and managing inflation expectation and we must not only maintain sufficient policy intensity and consolidated momentum 6

economic turnaround but we also need to accelerate economic rye structuring and make -- restructuring and progressing transforming the pattern of economic development. in addition we need to manage inflation expectations well and keep the overall level of prices stable. we'll continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy. first we'll keep the state and government bonds at appropriate levels. this year we have projected a deficit of 1.05 trillion yuan which consists of 850 billion in central government deficits, and, 200 billion yuan in government bond which will be included in local government budgets. these arrangements are based mainly on the consideration

that this year the revenue will fall significantly short of expenditures. regarding revenue last year, one of the measures to increase revenue will either not be repeated, or will be decreased. we also need to continue to implement the policy of structural tax reductions, consequently revenue will not increase very quickly. regarding expenditures that continue to implement a package plan for dealing with the global financial crisis. and increased spending to complete work on projects now under construction, inform and improve people's well-being and maintain

stability. second we'll continue to implement structural tax reduction policy to expand domestic demand and promote economic restructuring. third we'll improve the structure of expenditures, maintain expenditures in some areas while reducing them in others and spend our money where it counts the most. we'll con incontinue to give preferences to agriculture farmers in rural areas and improving people's health and support energy conservation and protection and development in the underdeveloped areas. we'll strictly control regular expenditures and do all we can to reduce public spending. fourth, we'll effectively improve government debt. strengthen internal and external retrains and effectively guard against and fend off public finance risks. in addition we need to strengthen tax collection and supervision as well as

provision of non-tax revenue in accordance with the law. strictly crack down on tax fraud and collect all due taxes. but continue to implement a moderately easy monetary policy. first we'll ensure there are proper and sufficient supplies of money and credit. this year's target for expanding the broad money supply is around 17%. and we'll increase the total quantity of renminbi loans by approximately 17.5 trillion. both of these increases are less than the actual increases last year, they're still modestly, moderately easy policy goals. and they can satisfy reasonable financial demands of economic and social development. in addition, these goals are

beneficial for managing inflation expectations and making financial support for economic development for sustainable. second, for improving the credit structure, for implementing a credit policy that guaranties credit in some areas and limits it in others. increase support for important areas of -- effectively alleviate the difficulties farmers and small enter it prices -- enterprises have in the financing and strictly control loans in industries to energy intensive, highly-polluting or saddled with overtaxing. we'll strengthen loan supervision and insure loans are used to support the real economy. we will actively expand direct financing. we'll improve the system of multilevel capital markets. increase financing by selling equities and issuing

bonds and better satisfy the diverse demands for investments and financing. fourth, we'll strengthen risk management and make financial oversight and supervision more effective. we'll explore ways to establish a system of prudent macro management, strengthen monitoring the cross-border flow of capital and guard against all kinds of financial risk. we'll continue to improve the mechanism for setting the renminbi exchange rate and keep it basically stable at an appropriate and balanced level. we're energetic expand consumer demand but continue to increase farmer's incomes, basic pensions of retirees. allowances to some entitlement groups,

assistance allowances for urban and rural residences and people's purchasing power especially low and income earners. we'll expand traditional consumption and promote the operating of the consumption structure while actively cultivating of areas of information, tourism, culture, services, to the elderly and health services. we'll increase consumer credit, and strengthen infrastructure such as logistic systems, and vigorously develop e-commerce. we're overhaul and standardize markets to create a convenient faith and worry-free environment for consumers. we'll continue to implement and improve all of our policies and measures for encouraging consumption. we'll consider, considerably raise the maximum price for

home appliances in the countryside, and improve the criteria for qualifying for subsidies and the way. contracts and quality of projects and services. we'll often improve the policies getting consumers to trade home appliances for new ones and getting residents to buy motor vehicles instead of purchase tax for small automobiles at 7.5%. we must implement these policies and measures. and do it well. and make sure the benefits reach the people. [applause] >> we'll leave this recorded program and take you to the national association for business economics there.

their economic policy conference the group is going to hear next from the chairman and ceo of caterpillar incorporated, jim owens. live coverage here on c-span2. >> every single tuesday morning since about last october. so they have worked very hard. please all of you stand, and be recognized. [applause] finally, none of this would happen without the exceptional work of our great staff here in washington and i think all of you as we know our new executive director tom beard. tom beard worked harder and has more ideas than i think everybody ever has in the world. so, tom, please stand and be recognized. for the great work you do.

finally, todd doesn't do it alone. he has great support from his staff and consultants that work for us. melissa bruce, and, also, great support we have from suzanne. please all of you please stand. [applause] now for our luncheon program today, truly very pleased and, very grateful to have as a sponsor for our lunch today, my employer. three of my associates have come with me today and i'd like to introduce them. the director of the business and economic institute. kathy gallagher. kathy. [applause] professor, director of our mba program. [applause] and randy, executive

director of our institute and professor of entrepreneurship. randy? [applause] we thought it might be most appropriate for randy to introduce today's luncheon speaker jim owens for three reasons. first, like, fdic chairman sheila bair from yesterday, randy has a law degree. that is always handy to have a lawyer on site in case any of our forecasts go awry. [laughter] second, like jim owens, randy has the ability to actually apply economic principles, start it up and run several businesses successfully. and third, unlike many of us ivory tower types, randy actually has been up close and personal to pieces of cat equipment having worked in the central valley of california for a number of years. he knows cat dealerships. he actually ridden a piece of cat equipment. so randy, please introduce

our speaker. [applause] >> thank you, doctor. jim owens has a remarkable career. not only holding from n.c. state degrees in economics including a ph.d. he started that career from academics moving into the business world in 1972 when he was initially hired by caterpillar corporation as a corporate economist. 1975 became the chief economist. in 1990 he made a diversion to our neck of the woods in san diego and ran solar turbines for three years prior to returning to peoria, becoming cfo the cat. along that way he operated most of the divisions of the corporation. not only that, he's serves on board of directors at alcoa and ibm and currently

on the presidential, president's economic recovery advisory board. as someone who has cat stock in my 401(k) it is up 145% in the last year, to the day, thank you very much. he was named by n.c. state their 2009 person of the year. a formidable award from a wonderful university. and completes his work at cat as ceo in june of this year and will retire as chairman of the board in october of 2010 and looks forward to time with the grandchildren, traveling and continuing to support educational and economic endeavors throughout the country. on behalf of point loma has reason university, we're -- nazarene university, we're welcome to jim owens [applause]

>> thank you very much, randy. that was a most kind and generous introduction. i can tell you all i'm delighted to be back and have an opportunity to speak to the nape group. it is quite an honor to be on the program with dr. roemer this morning, dr. evans. i sat in on those two presentations. we've got a good shot of economic policy from the white house perspective and i think to the federal reserve's perspective. i will try to give you a little bit of thoughts from the business community side of things. let's see here. i thought i would start with, how in the world -- did this happen? randy started, i joined caterpillar in 1972. let me say first of all, coming from north carolina i had a lot of background in the textiles industry. had invested a few more years in graduate school to get a doctorate. i was really fascinated by the fact that caterpillar

had a professional economics department that did econometric modeling and those kind of things. that is very important to the capital goods business. so i could leverage my education. secondly they were, i would say a policy activist company. chairman at the time, guy by the name of bill blacky. a prominent ceo in the country. very strong advocate for free trade. worked very closely with the administration at that time. so when i interviewed there, all of that kind of played into my decision to move from north carolina, near the ocean to the midwest. i figured i would be there three or four years and get back to the civilized part of the world. and, kind of fell in love with caterpillar. it's been a great, great journey. i'm wrapping up 38 years. my first eight years as an economist i was a member of nape. i was saying at the table, my last nape conference i attended was in the spring of 1980 in new york.

30 years later, nice to be back with you all. just briefly about caterpillar just for background perspective. many of you would know us from the yellow equipment maybe you see along the highway or large construction sites. we're the largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment in the world. very broad range of that. pretty well-known for that part of our business. we also have a very broad and industry-leading engine line with multiple brands. the caterpillar diesel engine is very well-known. the we also own solar turbines. mak, engine manufacturer. a large engine manufacturer in germany. perkins, mid-range and smaller engines in the u.k. we cover the spectrum of engines from 25 horsepower to 30,000. we have a broad array of service businesses. that's just been growing. cat financial services is in fact one of the largest captive finance companies in the world.

we're kind of old fashioned in this space in that we just loan to people to buy our equipment. we tend to know who we loan to. we are asset-based lenders. if something bad happens we tend to work with the customer to try to get through the bad patch. if it can't be done and we have to, we can repossess the equipment and we know how to remarket and resell that equipment. so it's a global portfolio. a key part of our marketing strategy but a very important stand alone business division also. we are also, we provide logistic services for a lot of other companies. we are probably the largest industrial remanufacturer in the world, and by that i mean we take back engines or parts thereof or transmissions and rehabilitate them, if you will and put them back in service as virtually new product. and that's a very large and growing business and very much a sustainability story. and we have recently

acquired a company called progress rail services which expands our reach into the maintenance, right-of-way, not right-of-way, but the maintenance side of rails, rail services worldwide and they do a lot of work with railcars and they take a, a spent railcar, if you will and completely remanufacturer it and put it back in service as new or scrap the metal so none of it goes to a landfill. an important part of our business. actually a part of our business strategy because the service businesses is a lot less cyclical than the capital goods business. last year these service businesses were almost 50% of our total sales. that's another story. just a perspective on the construction equipment line, you can see the small loader. you can get one of those for your backyard. about the cost of and economy car. the large truck, the 797, is that will carry about 400 tons of material at a time. you get one of those for 5,

$6 million apiece. depending on what kind, if you want stereo, air-conditioning features. but we can -- uh-oh. okay. we're back. and, actually the, cost about four of the them to get one tire for the big truck. but, caterpillar's a global player. most of us feel that caterpillar is kind of a household name in the united states and certainly we're very proud american company but we're also a global player. about the 50% of our employees are inside, 50% outside the united states. we have nearly 500 locations around the world located in 50 different countries. we operate four of our product line, both caterpillar machines and engines, we sell through independently-owned dealers which give us a very strong local presence. they have assigned geography

i. if they take care of our customers. the average cat machine engine lasts about 20 years. so when we sell it we expect to maintain it and have a relationship with the customer for a very long time. also, uniquely, we not only sell new equipment but we will rent you equipment for periods of time anywhere from one to three years to even a week or two or a day or two. . . implosion

in the asian tigers and their currencies and probably the worst economic crisis that i've ever witnessed in terms of the magnitude of the drop in gdp and the impact on construction in employment across particularly indonesia, thailand, the key tiger economies of asia at the time. probably what's unappreciated out of that came literally a collapse in the global commodity markets. global mining as an activity hit a 25-year low in the year 2002. it's kind of a long sliding recession if you will. in this period, caterpillar acquired a number of companies and through those acquisitions we were able to sustain our sales level at right around $20 billion but we plateaued at that level. our target had been to achieve $30 billion in sales and revenue

by the year, i think, 2006. we were able to get that done a couple of years early as the recovery got underway in 2003. and this was really a global economic recovery. how quickly we forget in the wake of the latest crisis but 2004 through 2006 were the three fastest years of global gdp growth since world war ii. three conservative years. -- consecutive years. that did big things for global commodity prices, emerging markets became -- really starting to move up the scale in terms of having critical mass impact on the global economy. and a lot of the markets that we could -- we have served. i'll talk about strategy in a minute but the strategy i rolled out early but to drive ourselves to $50 billion by the year 2010. and as you can see, we were a little premature with that in

that this booming market condition globally really drove our sales and revenue opportunities. so we were in this period from '04 to '07 aggressively growing other capacity to accommodate this kind of a growth in top line sales and revenue. and, of course, at the same time working on a lot of new product development and new product technology because of changing emission laws. our earnings track that pretty well although the pull-through particularly in the last couple of years was less than desired. and you can see in 2009 -- actually, at the end of 2008 when credit markets globally essentially went into seizure post-lehman brothers, our markets literally collapsed almost overnight. it wasn't quite instant but it was within a few months. if you go back to september/october 2009, just

before the lehman brothers collapse, we had about a three-year order-backlog, for example, of all of our large mining equipment. we were essentially sold out with firm orders. not so firm it turns out. because by the end of the year as global credit markets went into seizures, commodity prices dropped radically. i mean, more happened in one-quarter of time, one 90-day stretch in terms of collapsing commodity prices, collapsing equity markets, credit availability essentially vanishing than any of us could imagine. so you can imagine running a company with 140,000 people operating on 50 countries and how many moving parts there were simultaneously. i think we did a pretty good job of reacting to that. we knew we were going to go into a free-fall in terms of top line sales and revenue totally unprecedented in our corporate history. but we did a lot of courageous

things back in the fall of 2008. first off we told our dealers if you don't need it -- you don't have a firm customer order it that you think they can pay for we will allow you to cancel the horde we would back up the value chain. so we had massive cancellations of orders in the fourth quarter of the year that had a big impact actually on 2008 sales. they would have been probably 52 or $3 billion a year had we not accepted all those cancellations. that helped 2009 be a little bit better and cushioned us a little bit. 2009 as you can see dropped $19 billion on the top line. that's with a b and that's a lot of tractors i can tell you and a lot of people. [laughter] >> and we were pretty well prepared for that. now, as we look at the future which, i guess, is what i really want to talk about, we have kind of views of the near term future

and that's making the right policy decisions. not only here in the united states but around the world. and we're pretty much trying to think about this -- what scenarios could play out. our best case scenario, quite frankly, is for a somewhat normal global cyclical recovery. and we think there are a lot of positives for that. i mean, today if you look around the world, very low inflation, a lot of idle capacity that can be brought back online, very low interest rates and accommodative monetary policy around the world, unprecedented -- really unprecedented fiscal stimulus on a global scale. and again industries with a lot of excess capacity. across the emerging market theater, very high infrastructure needs. they were in an investment boom. they were reactivating that as we speak. mass urbanization particularly in china but in a number of

other emerging markets. and with that comes a huge increase in the middle class which we think is driving investment in commodities, we're kind of in the sweet spot of their investment cycle. and our equipment fleet on average is relatively old. so all of these things play into kind of our best case corporate scenario for a pretty solid recovery over the next three or four years. we think there's an uncommonly high risk, though, given all of the economic trauma we've gone through of a great recession which we've defined as a multiyear kind of recessionary environment or a very, very sluggish recovery. and that would involve problems continuing principally in the highly developed economies in the world that's highly integrated. so if severe problems continue in the u.s., europe and japan it eventually affects everybody in a big way.

big risk is central banks exiting or implementing exit strategies too quickly, tightening too quickly and credit availability not being what we expect. further declines in home and commercial property prices was a risk. we think that's probably diminishing as a risk now. and a commodity price downward spiral. again, these risks we outlined, you know, late last year as we thought about these two different scenarios and, quite frankly, discussed them with our investing public. just to he show you what we think these two scenarios mean for our business, we think that the best case -- and by the way, the best case called for relatively economic recovery in the united states, europe and japan and a pretty robust recovery across most of the high growth emerging markets of the world particularly, china, india, southeast asia, latin america, notably brazil but the

whole west coast of latin america, parts of the middle east, southern cone of africa, russia. we think the growth rate in these countries collectively is going to be 2.3 to 3x the growth rate in the oecd world for the next decade or two. profound implications of the world economy that we're trying to plan for. but depending upon -- which of these two scenarios plays out, this is kind of the range of top line sales and revenues we think we have to work with. what this really says to our management teams is we have to be very, very nimble and prepared to deal -- to seize the opportunities on the upside and to deal with sustaining attractive financial viability on the downside. just briefly our economics team, which we still rely on quite a bit at caterpillar -- the closer you get to big capital goods, the mother difficult it is to forecast, i think. knowing your customers well doesn't help you a lot.

it turns out that none of the miners want a truck until all the miners want a truck. [laughter] >> it's a pretty big challenge of the marketing team looking them in the eye to figure it out. we rely on our economics team and, in fact, this year again we raised our forecasts significantly based on our macroeconomic assessment of the world before our marketing teams were prepared to do that. as you can see, we're calling for about a 3.4% increase in global gdp in 2010. and that's quite an improvement from the negative 2% which is the worse that we recorded since the '30s in 2009. again, pretty good growth in the u.s. i think our 3.4% gdp estimate in the u.s. is a little higher than the consensus, but we think that's -- there's a good case for that.

europe and japan and the other industrialized countries quite a bit weaker in terms of their growth. but certainly a turn-around. and again the marketing theater around the world coming back to fairly robust levels of growth. again, that has a huge impact on driving commodity prices and there's kind of a virtual circle of higher commodity prices helping other emerging markets because most of the commodities in this global economy come from the emerging market theater. just kind of a backward reflection in 2005, 18 months or so into my tenure i rolled out a strategy we spent a lot of time working and thinking about. i had a lot of fundamental economic principles embedded in here reflecting my economist training, i think, maybe most important we started with values based management and feeling that we really want to

re-enforce the way we treat our people and the team is the key to success. and integrity, excellence, teamwork, commitment -- these things were foundational to everything we wanted to do in a strategy. i think there's more than just words behind. and we really worked hard through boom times and bust to walk the talk with those values. we also had, you know, a strategic profile that really tried to -- something that most companies don't have to lay out exactly what types of customers we want to serve, what types of technologies we want to develop. and, you know, the characteristics of markets that we want to serve. in other words we wanted to be a noncommodityized to focus. i wanted to point out even in 2005 when we rolled this out in the early stages of the boom, we were very mindful of cyclicality

and the need -- and the critical need for our company to manage ourselves so in the boom times so that we had the flexibility to take cost out. i didn't dwell on it when i went by the chart for '09 but in the early '80s, the last great recession, we lost about a million dollars a day for three consecutive years. we lost our credit rating and we barely survived. most of our american competitors went bankrupt. in 2009, we sustained our credit rating at investment grade a1p1. we improved our balance sheet. reduced our zet plus equity during the year. we maintained our dividends. and we had the second highest year of research and engineering spent in the history of the company and about the third highest year of cap x in the history of the company so we were continuing to invest for our future but that all came

with the strategy that had us prepared division by division to deal with a great deal of cyclicality. we had all of our divisions come look at a 25 year retrospective. what's the worst case? what could happen and how do i build a cash structure to sustain probability. so that strategic thinking paid a huge dividends when the time was right in 2009. now, what i really wanted to talk about today with all that preamble is the policy needs. and i think really we all have a role to play in shaping policy particularly for the united states. i mean, our home country. and most of where all of us live. for the united states to stay globally competitive, which i would argue is one of the things that we absolutely must do if we're going to be a great country 20, 30 years from now -- we know there's three things

that have to happen. i think probably everybody in the room would agree to this. we've got to have more savings as a country. we were getting down to virtually zero. that won't work long term. we got to have more investment. in our country. in a host of areas but savings investment we remember from the textbook go together. and we're going to need to export more. the twin deficits, the very large fiscal deficit and the very large trade deficit were a big part of what spawned the instability in the global economic system we'd just gone through. so it seems to me thoughtful people would think these three things we got to find some ways to address. i'm going to go through very quickly some thinking that we have at caterpillar and i have on policy. to deal with the crisis. first off, i don't think i could be more complimentary of what the federal reserve has done in particular in seeing us through

a horrific recession that was -- if you think back to a year ago, as christina was talking about this morning, it was pretty scary in the first quarter last year with global markets in free-fall and credit markets in seizure as to where we go from here. if we think about the stabilization that's occurred, the decisions taken last fall may not have been perfect. made in the middle of the night without a lot of data but i think those decisions are going to serve us extraordinarily well and have served us extraordinarily well in preventing an outright depression. and people were using the "d" word a year ago. so providing liquidity to avoid a prolonged recession and deflation. as i listened to charlie evans this morning, i think the fed really gets that. the japanese have tried deflation for about 20 years. it hasn't worked very well. modern industrial economies don't know how to deal with it.

so certainly we want to keep a focus on low inflation. but not letting it go negative, i think, is critically important. from a business perspective -- and i think i'd speak for a big cross-section of the business community, i think it's important that the policy issue right now is maintaining the independence of the federal reserve. having it be politically engaged strikes me as -- that would be very problematic. so i would champion that very strongly. on the fiscal policy side, i certainly agree with remarks this morning by our chairman of the council of economic advisors. we needed fiscal stimulus last spring. with the economy in the state that it was in. and good people will argue about how many jobs are created or saved or, you know, there's a lot of moving parts in this economy but we certainly needed fiscal stimulus. i would have liked to see more investment orientation to the

fiscal stimulus as opposed to sort of maintenance consumption-oriented activity but nevertheless that's picking at the margins. we now, i think, have to really focus -- we've underinvested, for example, infrastructure in this country for quite a while. since the interstate highway system was built and completed in the early 70s, our investment rate and infrastructure has been about one-half the rate of growth of the economy. one of the things i worry about is as i travel extensively and work outside of the united states is many of the countries that we compete with in another 20 or 30 years will have a much better infrastructure than we do in the united states. and when i say infrastructure, i mean, roads, ports, logistic parks, rail services, airports, telecommunications and power grid. all-encompassing. they are investing hugely in

state-of-the-art modern facilities that is dazzling. and we're letting ours age and we're underinvesting in it. this is problematic for us as a country. so i would have liked to see a little more investment directed that way if we have to do deficit spending. certainly long-term deficits matter and they matter a great deal and we don't want to transfer this challenge to our children and grandchildren. ultimately somebody has got to pay for it. and in times of full employment, which we recently enjoyed, we the public have got to find a way to pay for the government services that we want. and then i think another huge problem -- and i'm in a state that's got one of these huge problems, the state of illinois, where a state government negotiate with -- for service providers, labor unions within the state and don't give out in many cases very high wages but they do promise extensive post-retirement benefits. be that in the form of medical

benefits for life or pension plans that are unfunded or underfunded or both. and i think we've got to take a look both state and federal governments and cause them to do the accounting the same way the corporations do it. if you commit to an obligation you have to put it on the books and you have to recognize that obligation is there. i think that in and of itself would give us a lot better fiscal discipline than we currently have. and for some of our states to be rated aa -- i mean, the way corporations are getting evaluated these days as to their credit rating, i mean, they're all over us for the details but then for for the states what will they have to do in terms of tax increases to pay the obligations they're committing to? it's off the charts. so we need to be looking at that. tax system as a whole, you know, there's a lot of things about it. but we all have opinions about it. we need to some way find ways to incent more investment and innovation. this is key to our long-term

economic health. you can make a case that our tax code has gotten so big that it's so broken that maybe we ought to throw it out and reinvent it. but i'm not sure we don't need to go to some kind of a consumption tax scheme which most of the world has. as opposed to an income tax scheme. you can still find a way to deal with social issues. and in the area of corporate taxation, again, it may sound like a invested interest and it is to a certain extent but i think the key question for our country is, do we want large multinational companies to headquarter here and compete in the world? if we go to -- if we eliminate the deferral system that we currently have and keep one of the highest tax rates in the world, we virtually eliminate the possibility of that happening long term. so that really needs to be rethought. we keep proposing that. it sounds like a good populace idea but it won't work. and it's going to destroy a lot

of jobs and wealth in our country if we aren't careful. and then finally trade. most of us economists went through school learning about comparative advantage and competitive advantage and trade being a win-win proposition. but politically now we've got it framed as a win-lose proposition. and, you know, i think -- i'm pretty convinced that we the united states with 5% of the world's population can't build a big enough wall down the southern border to protect ours and give us greatness 20, 30 years from now. only through the best ideas, the most innovative society and the best educated are we going to be a great and leading and a national economic power a decade or two from now. so i think we've got to force ourselves to compete. and companies like caterpillar to compete if you want a lower quality tractor at a higher price, protect me.

i don't think that's what my customers want. i have to compete to win their business. that's the best way to keep me honest. but i would sure like to see some push to get the free trade agreements that we have negotiated through. these are win-win. they create a lot of high-paying jobs in our country. they create export opportunity. the doha round of negotiations need to move forward. we need a trading system that helps keep the level playing field on the world's stage and then we want to encourage u.s. companies to export from here and to create investments around the world that allows us to be leaders. all these things, i think, are critically important. i'm sure all of you could probably put together your list of these things. you would have some slightly different things that we would emphasize but i would guess about 80% of policy issues at least amongst us economists we could have a pretty thoughtful discussion and we could come up with some rational and good policy recommendations.

i guess my -- what my plea to nabe today is i think we have a citizens obligation to get engaged. i try to give this message to my ceo colleagues in different forums and tell them we got to get back to the -- you know, the post-enron world, where people went into hibernation or something. we have to get back to the rotary club and the kiwanis clubs and the community activities and help people understand business and understand what it takes to have a competitive economy and to support good policies. i mean,, quite frankly, we can't look at washington and point a finger and blame them. i talk to congressmen one-on-one. they virtually say, jim, i get it on this trade thing. i agree. we need to be a great trading nation and we need to be open. but my constituents aren't for it. and there's no way i can vote for it. so this education role -- i'm not pleading for us to all

become lobbyists. it's a bigger task and the task is that we all need to become citizen activists and we need to help educate and shape public opinion and to get more support for rational economic policies. you know, if you think back to -- i mean, there's not an actuary in the country, i don't think, that doesn't know that social security is upside down. right? or medicare or medicaid for that matter. and that we have a huge demographic bubble coming that's creating a massive problem. and our budget deficit really stems from these programs that are unfunded. it's a ticking bomb. but when president bush suggested it, i mean, that we address social security -- we may have disagreed with how he wanted to address it but the fact that it needed to be addressed one way or the other -- there's a lot of things you can do with more flexibility a few years in advance of, you

know, when the train wreck occurs -- i mean, he didn't get support even from his own party in the end. certainly none from the other party. and no support from the public or the business community. so i think we're all a pretty enlightened group. my call here today is we need to rally the troops to engage with the public to help understand some of the difficult challenging problems that our country faces over the next few years if we're going to create an economic environment that's really healthy and good for our children and grandchildren and keeping our economy as one of the best, most globally competitive economies in the world. we're not talking much about when we develop monetary fiscal policy and regulation in this country. we aren't putting it through the litmus test will that help us be more globally competitive? is that important?

i think it's very important. and i think business economists within companies, economists across the academic fields -- we need to rally together and take on the mantle that we got to do a better job of getting they say message points out and beginning to shape public opinion on education on some of the things that we need to do to be sure that we got a strong, vibrant globally competitive economy going forward. so let me stop there. i'd be delighted to take any questions or rebuttals. [applause] >> we need to use the microphone for questions. >> thank you for your remarks. >> turn that mic on, if you

would. >> is this better? >> yeah, perfect. >> as for myself, maybe others in the room would be interested to learn a little bit about your personal story. and how you managed to move from the ph.d. geek into the business side and succeed so well on the business side since so many of us start in the same place and find that it's not always so easy to make that transition? >> i'll be delighted to. you know, i said i came to caterpillar because they had a professional economics department. i did start out doing econo metric modeling and detailed forecasting work. i had a unique opportunity my first three years to spend a lot of time with senior caterpillar leaders and work on white papers and things at the time our outgoing chairman was working with the commerce secretary pretty closely so i got to know the company from the very topside view of our senior executive team. then i went to geneva

switzerland, for a small time kid from north carolina it was a great place to get globalized. and i had responsibility from everything from moscow to johannesburg. i was curious and i got to travel and spend time with economic groups and bank economists around the theater. i started working more and more during that period with our business teams so working on price elasticity type things and helping them with pricing strategies in different parts of the region, working on projections of wage negotiations around factories in europe and i got to know and work with our business people during that stretch. i came back to peoria in 1980, which was the beginning of a very difficult run for caterpillar. knowing that we had a very high cost structure and a very inflexible cost structure. we had a very tight -- sort of a

detroit-like auto union structure with very large plants concentrated in illinois and a fixed cost structure that wouldn't fluctuate and we knew that we were making things in-house that we could buy from suppliers even in the u.s. cheaper than we were making them. i led a task force to make-buy analysis. mainly deciding we should outsource to suppliers. and be more cost competitive and more flexible. so i did that for two years. that was a politically unpopular things to do it turns out. barely survived that one. [laughter] >> then they put me sort of in the foreign legion. i had the responsibility to develop licensees and joint ventures primarily for market access and in aids. -- asia. i had malaysia, china in the early days and india. and in those days if you wanted to sell something, you had to manufacture something there. we were trying to find a way to

get our foot in the door and i set up a lot of licensee and joint ventures and that required a more holistic business-thinking. after that one of my mentors in life who's about to become our chairman sent me to indonesia to run a factory and he basically said, you know, jim you can't be a smart staff guy your whole life. we don't think you can make anything run and we're not going to take any big chances on you by running a big factory in illinois so we'll give you one in indonesia with a rice patty. it was a big family decision i had two children at the time and one who was newly in college. but i went to indonesia. family enjoyed it. we had a great time. they had great international schools there. the people were wonderful there. so our business went from about $25 million a year, one of my predecessors had set it up and got it started to about $100 million inside the three years

that i was there. so i was hanging on and growing as fast as we could grow with the assembly plant. and getting to know a lot of, you know, the local politicians and thinking about how we expanded our reach across the s ossion group of countries. my mentor became the chairman. i was asked to come back as the president of our gas turbin division in san diego and be sort of the ceo of that business. and an officer of the company, which was a huge promotion and a great opportunity. they picked me because i had a strong strategic and financial background. not because i knew anything about turbines. fortunately the team there knew a lot about turbines. i knew a lot about caterpillar and our willingness to invest. the oil and gas market which had been pretty depressed for a long time to come back a bit.

i convinced the team we could take price increases on the oil and gas side and we shouldn't be looking at total market share. we should look at segment market share and thinking about how to do that. anyway, took some price increases. got our earnings up. started investing in product technology. that business has turned out to be one of our huge successes. three years into it, caterpillar came to me and said we need you to come back to peoria -- this is by the way in san diego, california, so pretty good living place. we need you to come back to peoria as the chief financial officer. i said no, i'll stay here and see how things work out. same boss said, i don't think you understand. this is what we need you to do. [laughter] >> so i explained that to my wife. we came back as the chief financial officer only about 18 months and then i became a group president. it's been -- it's been a great run. i think just trying to continue to learn all the way along.

i still try to do that every day. >> thank you very much for your remarks today. i have a very minor public policy question to ask you about. healthcare reform. i'd be interested in what your thoughts are on that. what recommendations you've made. and particularly with regard to the thrust of the current legislation which is to continue an employer-based healthcare system as versus moving away from an employer-based healthcare system as many have suggested? >> well, i don't want to suggest that i'm in any way very expert in this area. i've spent a lot of time working on it and we think if the current legislation passed getting rid of medicare part d and a couple other things cost us of a one time hit of about $100 million so that's a concern. and then about $10 million a year in terms of incremental cost.

i think most people in industry are concerned about it because they feel it's not addressing cost. we're bringing a lot more uninsureds into the system but the cost of medical service is not going down. i don't want to sound biased towards the insurance industry but if you look at the value chain, they're kind of the whipping boy of this whole thing. the insurance industry -- their margins is 2.3 or 4%. that means 2 or 3 cents on the dollar for revenues they get in. so they're basically passing on the cost of healthcare cost. i think we've got huge, huge challenges as a country to think about. we're spending a huge amount of the money in the last 60 days of life but if a politician said that, he would get hung out. i mean, these are some of the challenges we've got to deal with. medical malpractice, it's not just the cost of the malpractice. it's all of the tests that

drives to be sure there is no possibility i didn't leave any stone unturned that drives a lot of cost in the system. and a system that, you know, basically because people have had cadillac healthcare plans they haven't had to think of the cost of what they're buying themselves, then we don't have millions of consumers doing a good job of shopping for healthcare services. so, you know, i'm worried about passing a very large entitlement program that i fear costs will go go up faster than we'd like. but i don't put myself as an expert on this space. >> ken simons, yesterday there was a new price increase. the energy administration said diesel prices were six-month

high, copper, gypsum aluminum have been moving quite sharply. have these taken your company by surprise. are you expecting further price increases. do you expect them to spread to the general economies to say to consumer prices? >> we monitored this pretty carefully. and, in fact, i talk to the chicago fed about cost trends around the world. basically we would -- last year's we ended up with a slightly negative total material cost increase on a global scale, and we are big buyers of all kinds of industrial materials that go into our products. and this year we expect another slight reduction in total material cost on a worldwide basis. so we're not seeing a lot of risk of inflation. commodity prices have stayed reasonably strong, which i think the good thing is about that that drives investment therefore creates supply.

and we're seeing investment starting to pick up as people are gaining confidence again. our -- the biggest part of our turn-around -- you notice our forecast was for 10 to 25% increase in sales this year. which looks on the surface pretty large. a big part of that is the inventory cycle. we, you know, reduced a huge amount of dealer inventory on a global basis last year. close to $3 billion worth. and so just the absence of that gives you pretty big pop in sales. and the global oil and gas industry, global mining industries are really starting to come back and that's what's driving the rest of the strength. a lot of uncertainty around it because commodity prices are pretty volatile. but so far our groups are pretty optimistic that we're going to manage material costs flat to slightly down this year. >> i guess i'm sneaking in as the last question. thank you for your remarks. they were great.

i want to focus on your last slide and the political objectives. and i thought it was great you brought those up and we do need to increase awareness and specifically on the entitlements. when you have large organizations like the aarp supporting them, continuing on forever how do you suggest combating that. unless it's grassroots, unless it's people stepping forward and being educated and knowing that this is going to be a problem i think a lot of people are just being ostriches and it's never going to affect me. not nobody but the majority of people are happy to hear the aarp line and they will not have to take responsibility. so how do you shift that? >> that's a great question. i don't have all the answers. one of the suggestions i put on here and a great starting point and i think intellectually honest people would say we need to start here would be the proper accounting. you know, for states to promise

post-retirement medical benefits and pension plans that they don't have any reserves for can't pay for on the hopes they'll be able to raise taxes in the future but they haven't told the public about it or then for states who mismanage themselves to say we'd like some federal help, you know, i don't know how that's going to work 'cause some states have managed themselves pretty well. it seems to me the same standards that apply to the corporate public sector in terms of accounting integrity ought to apply to the federal government and the state governments. and i think if professionally at least if we could encourage that to happen then at least we bring the problem to the surface. then we begin to think about it. but you know i think a lot of people would be -- you know, if everybody is just looking out for themselves, i think if you polled the large businesses in the country they would say some means testing is probably appropriate. i mean, there's only so many

different ways you can -- there's means testing, there's upping the age, there's reducing the benefits. a few ways to get at it. creating an investment fund maybe to support some of these things but there's only a defined number of different ways we can solve the problem. but right now we're choosing to be ostriches as a public and we do that at our risk because this problem is going to -- i think you had a presentation yesterday morning on the magnitude of the deficit and how big the problem is becoming. i mean, all of the discretionary spend, you know, is less than 20% of the budget. so it can't possibly be resolved by being more efficient which all the politicians like to talk about. that's easy. but that's not going to solve the problem. we've got to address the entitlement piece. i don't think there's any thinking person that hasn't figured that out but we haven't communicated it to the public and we need to find a way to do that. but thank you all very much.

i've enjoyed the opportunity. [applause] >> thank you jim. you've given us a lot to think about and that economists really can make good. [laughter] >> we certainly enjoyed the session so far but we're not done yet. you have a good afternoon of some very important events at 2:00. you have an important decision to make. you can either choose the session on whether or not the next boom/bust cycle will be commodities or you can go to the session on what bank regulatory or financial regulatory reform should and will look like after the financial crisis. and then our closing session we wanted to make it a big bang and one not to be missed.

we talked a lot about the federal budget deficit and we will hear from congress which ultimately will have to make a decision. and we will have a very interesting discussion, a debate perhaps two economists one the chief economist of the senate budget committee and chief economist from the house budget committee. one is a democrat and one is a republican so stay tuned. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> and the national association of business economics holding their policy conference in washington. you may have heard the speaker mentioned "other events." we have actually covered on the c-span networks and you'll find some of those including this morning's speech by christina romer of the president's council of economic advisors. you'll find that online later at c-span.org. we're going to take you live now over to the white house. the briefing room here. the briefing is scheduled to get underway shortly. president obama today meeting with the greek prime minister to talk about the debt situation and other issues. later today at the white house a

bipartisan group of senators, cabinet secretaries and the epa administrator meeting to talk about energy legislation. we're live here on c-span2 waiting for the white house briefing. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> waiting at the white house briefing room for robert gibbs to take reporters' questions. just a reminder coming up in about 20 minutes the u.s. senate gavels back in back from their party caucus meetings to resume consideration of a bill that extends several expired tax provisions, unemployment benefits and cobra health insurance.

a vote likely later on this afternoon on moving forward with that bill. senate coverage at 2:15 here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> waiting at the briefing room for robert gibbs and the daily briefly possibly getting questions today about the retirement of house representative eric massa. politico reporting steny hoyer saying he was pushed out of the house because of his support of the healthcare bill. white house press secretary robert gibbs had harsh words for mr. massa. i think this whole story is ridiculous he said this morning during an appearance on "good morning america." that from politico reporting today.

the president meanwhile today meeting with greek prime minister george papandreou. and later today the president has a meeting on energy legislation. he'll be talking with a bipartisan group of senators, several cabinet secretaries and the epa administrator, lisa jackson. the u.s. house is back in session this afternoon. 15 bills on the agenda in the house. you can follow the house on c-span. one of the bills later this week will be congressman kucinich's war powers. whether or not to continue the war in afghanistan. that's later in the week in the u.s. house. and the senate coming in here just a couple minutes, about 10 minutes away. they'll gavel back from their party meetings. with continued work on a bill extending several tax provisions, unemployment benefits and cobra health insurance and votes likely later on today. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> robert gibbs set to brief reporters momentarily some we're waiting also for the start of the u.s. senate. the resumption of their session this afternoon. they'll be back at 2:15. continued work on the measure that extends tax breaks and unemployment benefits, cobra health insurance. the senate is set to vote -- a vote to limit debate at 2:30 this afternoon. majority leader reid expressing hope that the senate could

finish work on the bill sometime today or this week. what's possibly ahead in the u.s. senate they could turn to work on a jobs bill that the senate amended -- excuse me, the house amended last week. and that legislation passed through the house late last week. the senate again back in about 10 minutes at 2:15 eastern. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> here on c-span2 waiting for the start of the briefing, the white house briefing with robert gibbs. hope to get you at least a couple minutes before the senate comes in at 2:30 to resume debate on the package of tax extensions and unemployment benefits, cobra health insurance. there is a plan vote to limit debate at 2:30 eastern. that'll be coming up shortly on the senate floor. c-span where you hear nonfiction authors on booktv. beginning saturdays at 8:00 am eastern and this sunday live on booktv your chance to talk to karl rove starting at 10:00 am eastern on sunday. the former senior advisor to president bush and current fox news contributor will take your phone calls, emails, and tweets about his new memoir called "courage and consequence." that is this sunday 10:00 am eastern on booktv here on c-span2.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> well, folks, we had high hopes of being able to bring the briefing live. we will record it and show it to you later in our program schedule. we will move on as the u.s. senate is about to gavel back in to continue work on a measure that extends tax breaks and unemployment benefits. the chamber will be voting in just a little bit. a vote to limit debate about 2:30 eastern. majority leader reid has expressed some hope that senators can complete the bill sometime today or this week. after that in the u.s. senate members could turn to work on a jobs bill. the house amended last week. and legislation that extends faa programs. meanwhile, the house is in. gaveled back if for legislative work. 15 bills this afternoon. a number -- a number of bills one including the 189th anniversary of the independence of greece and also recognizing and honoring the victims of the earthquake last week in chile. the house is live on c-span. now to the senate on c-span2.

the senator from montana. mr. baucus: mr. president, shortly we'll vote -- mr. present, shortly we'll vote on the motion to ininvoke cloture cloture on this urgent legislation to create jobs and extend tax provisions. we've had a good debate. the senate considered this bill in seven separate days over the course of two work weeks. we considered more than 30 amendments. we conducted more than a dozen roll call votes. it's now time to bring this debate to a close. this is not just some technical bill. this measure helps real people. failure to enact this bill would cause real hardship. failure to enact this bill would cost jobs. this bill would help 500,000 workers who lose their jobs nationwide including nearly 1,600 in my state of montana, to

remain eligible help paying for their health insurance under the cobra health insurance program. unless we act within weeks, the average doctor in america would stand to lose more than $16,600 in payments from medicare. the average doctor in montana would lose $13,000. this bill would help nearly 40 million medicare beneficiaries and nearly 9 million tricare beneficiaries nationwide to continue to have access to their doctors. that includes nearly 144,000 montanans with medicare and nearly 33,000 montanans with tricare. and within weeks this bill would help 400,000 americans to be ineligible for expanded unemployment insurance benefits. thus, this important legislation would prevent millions of americans from falling through the safety net. it would extend vital programs that we have only temporarily

and put hands in of the america. we expand critical practices and tax incentives that create jobs. so, i urge my colleagues to vote to help americans hurt by this great depression. i urge my colleagues to vote to preserve and create jobs and urge my colleagues to vote to invoke cloture on this substitute amendment. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. lemieux: mr. president, i rise today to speak in opposition to this tax extenders bill, and i do so with a heavy heart because there are good things in this bill that would be good for my state of florida. it would be good to extend unemployment benefits. it would be good to extend cobra. it would good to extend and help

with medicaid funding. and it's important to make sure that we have enough money going to doctors and medicare so they can provide services. but, mr. president, i can no longer stand by, even on a bill like this, and vote for it when it's going to add $100 billion to our deficit. mr. president, if the majority party in this kphaeupl pwer did the right -- in this chamber did the right thing and paid for this bill, if we cut wasteful spending, if we cut duplicative programs in other areas and paid for this bill, 80 or 90 senators would vote for it. but at some point, even though these programs may be good for your state, a senator has an obligation to stand up and say no more. no more spending our kids' future. no more putting debt on the next generation. no more bankrupting the promise of this country. no more. we can't afford it.

we have a $12.4 trillion debt. we're supposed to have pay-as-you-go pay-as-you-go -- pay-as-you-go rules here. the president signed it. all the language was laudatory. we're not going to spend our children's money anymore. we're going to be fiscally sponsor. then here comes this bill, $100 billion in spending, and we declare it an emergency so that we don't have to follow the rules. it occurred to me this weekend, as i played with my six- and four-year-old son that this isn't paygo. it's play-doh. you can make whatever you want of it. but it's not real enforcement. we should pay for the spending in this chamber so that we do not increase the debt on our children. so we should vote against cloture on this bill not because the leadership has not allowed

us to have amendments. they have, and i appreciate that. but we should vote against it because this bill should only pass if we can pay for it. no matter how good the program is, it is not good if we saddle our children with $100 billion more in debt. the public debt in this country is going to double in five years and triple in ten. it has now come out that the estimates of the national debt in 2020 will add another $10 trillion. the day of reckoning is at hand, and we just can't stand by, even though there are good things in this bill, things that would help my state, on this occasion i have to put country first. mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. a senator: thank you, mr. president. request unanimous consent that a quorum -- that a quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. the senate's in a quorum call. is there objection? without objection. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, as you know, we have a vote coming on cloture on a -- on a matter that has been

moving through the tax extender bill. and i wanted to make it very clear that i will be voting for cloture. but that, in fact, does not mean i support the actual bill when it comes to a vote. that being said, i have very serious concerns about the overall cost of the bill. but my vote for cloture signals that i believe we need to keep the process moving and the debate and allow this measure to be considered by the full senate. i promised my constituents that i would change -- try to change the tone of politics as usual in washington and there has been a week of debate in allowing this bill to receive an up and down vote would be a step, i feel in right direction. i will say, however, that i am opposed to the tax extender bill at this point because it adds more than $100 billion to our national debt. and, in my eyes, provides no way to actually pay for it. and our national debt is at

record high and we cannot burden fruit ear generations with mountain of debt and bills that they cannot pay. as i said when i first came here, i believe in process and i believe that we should have an opportunity after fum and fair debate to move -- after full and fair debate to move bills forward and hopefully send back a product that we can all live with. thank you, mr. president, and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: i ask that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. the senate needs to comto order. the senator from montana. mr. baucus: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that there be order for the following amendments to be considered and greed to en bloc in an instance where the amendment is modified, that it be modified with the changes at the desk and as modified the amendments be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, en bloc, further, that in the instance where the amendment is not pending, that where appropriate the amendment be reported by number. lincoln amendment number 3401 pending to be modified. reid amendment 3417 pending. isakson-cardin amendment, 3430 pending and as modified. merkley amendment 3372, to be modified. warner amendment 3442, to be modified. whitehouse amendment 3365, to be

modified. rockefeller amendment 3371, to be modified. and baucus technical amendment, which is at the desk. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: mr. president, reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: i would ask the request be modified to allowed senator isakson to speak for 2 1/2 minutes following the agreement to this unanimous consent request and that i thereafter be recognized to offer a unanimous consent request regarding something on this bill. the presiding officer: is there objection? seeing and hearing none, so ordered. the senator from georgia. mr. isakson: i want to thank the leader for his courtesy. i want to thank him for his help on this legislation. but in particular, chairman baucus and his staff, chairman grassley and his staff, and, in particular, my staff, ed egey, in particular, who did a great job of addressing the pension problems in this country. this amendment gives corporations two alternatives to

accept to adopt to smooth their obligations on pensions. it will raise $3.5 billion against the debt. it will save the pension of many americans, and i just want to acknowledge the leadership of senator baucus from montana, senator grassley and their staffs to help us accomplish it. and once again, i would ask unanimous consent the rest of my statement be entered into the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: mr. president, there was a debate this morning and a lot of talk outside the chamber regarding the tanf summer jobs program. the objection that a number of senators raised was that it was paid for over ten years rather than five years. in an effort to compromise this, senators murray and kerry have agreed that we would drop anything relating to tanf, this amendment, and over five years pay for summer jobs in the amount of $743 million. as everyone will remember, that was originally $1.5 billion, so

this, it would be lowered to the $743 million, it's paid for over five years. tanf it not included in any of this, much to the consternation of a lot of us. but i would ask consent that that amendment would be allowed, we would be happy to have another vote on it, if necessary. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. objection is heard. mr. reid: and i would -- i failed to mention that this -- this does not violate paygo. the presiding officer: objection is heard.

the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. sm. the clerk: cloture motion. we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the baucus substitute amendment number 3336 to h.r. 4213, the tax extenders act of 2009. signed by 17 senators. the presiding officer: by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. the question is: is it the sense of the senate that debate on amendment number 3336, offered by the senator from montana, mr. baucus, to h.r. 4213, an act to amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to extend certain expiring provisions and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close? the yeas and nays are mandatorye rule. the clerk will call the roll.

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: anyone wishing to vote or change their vote? hearing none, on this vote the

yeas are 66, the nays are 34. three-fifths of the senators duly sworn and having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: