in ohio that are manufacturing jobs have 600,000 of them now and we want more are trade jobs because they support exports. so it's incredibly important that we have open markets. i think as jay will tell you we can do better. we don't export as much as our competitors do in compared to our gdp particularly in manufacturing. opening more markets and making sure it's a level playing field and it's opening markets but also on the enforcement side. second, i think the thing that i hear the most about honolulu is probably the regulatory tax environment. and that's the uncertainty that i'm sure, you know, you two hear about a lot and jay hears from its members on the tax side, of course, we have both an individual tax system that is uncertain, unpredictable at the end of the year. you'll see a huge increase in taxes to manufacturers and on the corporate side, of course, we're dealing with an antiquated tax code that we haven't touched in the last two decades while each one of our competentors have reformed theirs making it more competitive. we're at the tax in terms of our rate and the complexity is also at the top end which makes us

less competitive in global market places. so that issue and then on the regulatory side, you know, depending on the business there's almost always a regulation. at the federal level the people talk about and this is why i've introduced legislation that's bipartisan that just forces the regulators here to look at cost benefit analysis and the impact on jobs specifically and also how to use the least burdensome alternative. certainly energy cost is a big deal as is health care costs so it's basically -- what the federal government can do to create the environment for job creation that i hear constantly. and look, we have a little increase in our employment numbers. it's a little below the federal level for the first time in a few years. that's good news. we should celebrate the good news but in my view we still have a structural problem in that our economic systems are not keeping up with the rest of the world. we're not as competitive as we could be. and so that's why i think we need to reboot all these systems and, you know, i mentioned trade

and taxes and regulation, health care and energy, worker retraining is another one i hear about constantly. and i think we need to be much more aggressive here in washington. some republicans say washington should do less. i think washington should actually do more. that in terms of creating jobs. the government doesn't create jobs but in terms of creating again that climate for success. and this requires in my view a much more aggressive bold reform effort. >> that's a very helpful introduction. i think we're going to come back to at least probably three -- five or six that you mentioned. i want to move down a tier here to states. and colorado is obviously not as manufacturing intensive at the starting point as ho. about 75% of gdp and 6% of your jobs. it's moving up and it's moving up rapidly in many disparate factors. i thought what was interesting about your approach to industry events and events in manufacturing is how it really started at the bottom up. you've been around the state. you've been to all the counties.

there's a colorado innovation network that is emerging that is connecting the dots between advanced r & d technology, prototyping and ultimately production. i thought it would be interesting if you could talk about that network that's emerging and how you think state policy plays under this federal system. what are the key areas that you need to work on to buttress the leverage of your potential. >> we certainly -- when i came into office about a year ago we recognized there was a real vacuum of -- they knew they needed to do something about jobs so we went out it's called the bottom up economic development process and we went out to all 64 counties and said what do you want in the next 20 years, 30 years and how do we get there? how can government help? and, of course, we heard get out of the way. less regulation, less taxes. we also heard that we want the state to be more probusiness. we want an environment that's more proadvice. we want to have access to

capital. we want to have stronger innovation and technology. we want to make sure that we have training for our workforce and all over the state in 64 counties we heard people want -- they want to brand colorado as probusiness. now, colorado, obviously, i would argue the most beautiful state in america, no offense to my friends and neighbors. but that means we have to hold ourselves to the highest standard of ethics, highest standards of environmental protection and we have huge amount of natural gas. if we're going to be probusiness we reduce the time for drilling permits but we make sure somebody spills frac fluid into the groundwater or pond we increase the fine. we make sure that doesn't happen. and that bottom-up plan is what is going to help create the colorado innovation network, what we call c.o.i.n. which is taking all the research labs in the various departments at the various universities, colorado state university and university of denver -- all of them and then blending them -- we have 24 federal laboratories and usually these all work kind of across --

or at least in parallel purposes -- colorado innovation network brings them all together with our business schools and then with a big infusion of the business community of trying to make sure that we take ideas and innovations and get the entrepreneurship, right -- innovations are great. but without entrepreneurs they sit on a shelf, right? a book was written about this, it talks a lot about how innovation is great collaboration is critical but in the end you need -- you need that entrepreneurship to really create the jobs and that's part of what c.o.i.n. is really is going to focus with, having the business schools effected with these research labs and have them tied with the business community with internships, et cetera. and, obviously, the idea is to just accelerate job creation. >> it's really the governor is almost the orchestrater of all these disparate systems and institutions and individuals. >> well, the head salesperson, the head orchestrater and i think it's good for each one of our states is going to compete and try to become the most

probusiness state holding ourselves to the highest standards with no magical invention but that i think will begin to transform the whole country as we get four or five or six states that are sufficiently probusiness and recognize they're going to start seeing success. i don't think you're going to solve health care or transportation or education without a strong business community. so as those states do better, other states will follow and i think that creates a rising tide and creates the whole country. >> let's go back to the place where things actually happen. [laughter] >> ouch, federal government, state government, the world exists in places, cities and metropolitan areas particularly in the united states. our schools, our community colleges our advanced research institutions and most importantly our firms, large, small trade associations and so forth. you've been mayor for a short period of time, coming out of the business sector, but one of the first things you did was start a collaboration with a sister city, lexington, about

how long about an hour -- >> an hour away. >> but a place that you had been highly competitive with in the past. >> right. >> and you've got a whole new initiative with lexington that is primarily around making this part of this corridor of northern kentucky that moves up into ohio a platform for advanced manufacturing. what are you doing? what are you thinking about? this is a very interesting kind of multicity multimetro collaboration not generally something that happens in the united states? so what -- what was the impetus and where do you think it's headed? >> i've been mayor for just a little bit over a year and like most cities we say we need jobs and the obvious question is how do we get these jobs? the strategy more or less was to recognize jobs are happening in cities, right? kentucky is 55% of our people live in metropolitan areas now. so most people think of kentucky as a rural state but we're a metropolitan state almost like all the states as well now.

new mayor in kentucky a fellow entrepreneur name jim gray, both of us who are business people who happen to be mayors. we're not lifelong mayors. there's a problem and let's work together. that makes sense. let's do it. they say there's not enough of that going on in the political world. we set our competitive advantage compared to the rest of the country is advanced manufacturing. we have two ford motor company plants, ge appliance park, toyota's north american manufacturing headquarters is in this corridor called the bluegrass economic movement. so we're in the process of identifying what our assets are, what our resources are. how do we loin the business strategy with the government strategy, education, foundation and nonprofits and develop that type of alignment so we can drive excellence in advanced manufacturing. lots of support and interest you can imagine from the private

sector, who kind of feels which i was part of -- feel like you're just kind of hanging out there and succeeding despite, you know, government help or despite the well intentioned alignment. learning a lot of things in the six months the project has been underway especially when it comes to workforce preparation when there's been a lot of talk but not a lot of action. >> we're going to run the circuit and come back and raise a lot of issues that have been raised. jay, national organization, advocating on behalf of american manufacturers. i looked over the weekend at your manufacturing renaissance man and there really were four critical goals there. u.s., best place in the world to manufacture and attract foreign direct investmentst u.s. expand access to global market. the reach as we heard in the prior panel. the 95% of the consumers who live outside of the understand -- united states and we are the world's -- or manufacturing firms of the

world's leading innovators. what's your sense of the federalist conversation because, you know, we're in washington. everyone is obsessed with washington. very self-referential. how do you think about the federal-state-local engagement and the circuitry between them. >> you took -- you took my entire set remarks away. we do focus on those four goals. those four goals, though, are based on the fact that it's 20% more expensive to manufacture in the united states than among our major trading partners around the world. and that's when you take into account several factors but the four leading factors or indicators are tax policy, senator portman is a great leader on trying to resolve that problem. april first we will have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. it's also based on our energy policy. it's based on our regulatory policy and it's based on our tort policy. and it does not take into account differences in labor

costs. so that 20% is really a number that we've imposed on ourselves in this country and that we have an obligation, we think, to fix. the partnership between the federal government, the state government, local government is absolutely critical. i worked for a governor in the 1990s in virginia and at that time, even just a few -- that's not that long ago, states had the luxury of competing against each other. every governor wants to be able to leave office saying that there are more private sector jobs created in their state than are existing in their state than before they became governor but today, whereas we've heard referenced several times already, we're in a worldwide competition for jobs. so the federal government has to be a partner and one of the ways the federal government can be a partner is to reduce that structural cost disadvantage that we are experiencing in this country or reduce that 20% to allow us to be able to compete and succeed with our

international competitors. >> let me start going through and sort of taking each of these issues 'cause i think what this panel is doing and what the prior panel is doing is really describing what could be the pillars for a new manufacturing renaissance. a whole set of different issues -- there's no one committee that basically deals with all this stuff, right? so it's very fragmented by committee and agency in this town, legislators only at the city level does it all come out? >> i run a metropolitan program at brookings. i have to constantly come back. senator portman you were on simpson-bowles let's take the tax issue first. what has to happen vis-a-vis, the tax rate but also structure so that we are provide that platform for advanced manufacturing? >> bruce, i was not on simpson-bowles because i was actually running a campaign in 2010 when that was going on but i was on the super committee. >> i'm sorry. >> which was the successor to

simpson-bowles although less successful. i call it the not so super committee. [laughter] >> to be part of that process. but, you know, our tax system i mentioned earlier is antiquated in the sense we're not keeping up in a global economy that's increasingly competing. i mentioned the corporate tax code is part of that. since ronald reagan in 1986 lowered the rate to 34%, now 35 we really haven't touched the corporate tax code in a substantial way. and during that time, every one of our oecd, meaning the other developed countries in the world, trading partners, have reformed their code. all of them have. >> right. >> and it's not just about the rate, although that's important as jay said we will have the highest rate once japan lowers theirs in april and it's about the code and so if we're going to compete globally as you mentioned 95% of the consumers living outside of the united states, the more interesting statistic for me it's now over 80% of the purchasing company and so a company like ge who makes most of its money overseas

and most of the revenue as well as the fortune 200 as a group we're competing with one hand tied behind our back and given the fact that we have a different global system we tax on a worldwide versus territorial which means other have other companies that are in japan, germany or china. on the individual side our code has gotten to the point where it's so complex and so difficult to work through that it is a disadvantage to companies that are pass-through entities and i grew up in a company that was a subchapter s company. i'm still the owner of a subchapter s company and that's how most of the companies operate. they pay taxes as individuals and these guys know because they've probably been through that too. that needs to be simplified as well and the good news there's a growing consensus on how to do it which is to lower the rate and broaden the base. >> right. >> basically meaning getting rid of a lot of the so-called tax breaks, some call them loopholes, some call them preferences which is a nice way to say it.

the bottom line it's been riddled with more and more exceptions to the code which means the effective tax rate might be lower than the statutory rate but, in fact, there's a lot of inefficiency in it. so brookings your economists love to look at it and say we want to allocate resources, you know, more efficiently. and to do that you got to lower the rate and broaden the base. so the good news is we've got an opportunity now, i think, with this consensus to do that on a corporate side. jay mentioned 35% rate, taking it down to 25%. it can be done. we have a score from the joint tax committee. it can be bipartisan. it certainly was in the super committee. we worked on this with regard to the individual rate. there's a little more i'd say political controversy because the 2001/2003 tax code is ending at the end of this year. >> sure. >> so the so-called bush tax cuts are ending. that's by the way a $5 trillion tax increase, most of which no one wants to see happen.

my view would be let's not only let that happen but let's reform the whole code so that is almost an irrelevant issue as to what expires and what doesn't but rather let's put together a code that is more progrowth, promanufacturing and gives us the ability not just to have a simpler code for all of our constituents we represent but also be more competitive in the global marketplace. >> let me bring the two of you into this conversation and broaden it out so that tax reform includes not just rates broad and base what kind of investments do we need to make. i'm sorry. i have simpson-bowles too much these days and because jeff immelt mentioned it again. >> simpson-bowles, dominici, they are kind of similar. it's fewer brackets and lowering the rates and broaden the base. >> and what i thought was interesting about all those efforts was they talked about the notion of cut and invest. but as we're reforming the tax code so that we can be more

competitive as a general proposition, we are also selecting those kind of investments whether they're advanced r & d, whether they are skilled workers and we'll talk about 10,000 engineers, you know, at a particular period of time, if you think about tax reform from the state and local level, and listening to the national conversation, is it just about the tax code itself or does it also include some of the investment imperatives that we need to make at all levels? who wants to take that? >> well, our key for growth and when you take a look at louisville over the last 18 months, between ford motor company and ge, we have over $2 billion of investment into the community and 4500 new jobs. so that's big for any city, anywhere in the world. and how that came about was the partnership between, obviously, the companies driving it, number

1, but the state and local level coming together with incentives, tax incentives to make the transition much easier for them and then, frankly, a wonder partnership between the companies and their organized labor as well which basically resulted in a two tier labor system compensation system. which some people are critical for -- or critical about but the bottom line for a two-tiered system which you're not talking about having either a $25 an hour a job or 15-hour an you are job or you're talking about a 15-hour job or a zero-an hour job. it's the recognition for a global standard for productivity, quality and safety. so the state and local governments come together in that partnership with government and labor to make it happen on the local level. >> and i'd echo that to a large extent. in colorado as you mentioned doesn't start from a high level in terms of manufacturing experience. but when general electric was looking at doing their solar

manufacturing facility we exceeded with a number of other states and you put your incentives on the table but to a certain extent that's the ante, that's not won you the game. what businesses are looking for is a partnership in the predictability that can see from that partnership. and we worked -- i don't think our incentives were the highest but we worked very hard to convince ge that he would with be the best partners they ever had, even better than kentucky. not level -- >> your niche. >> at our niche at that level. >> the fight begins. [laughter] >> and i think the same thing arrow electronics moved their global headquarters from new york to colorado last year. and, again, it wasn't the incentives that attracted them. we really went out of our way to say, all right, here's an advanced manufacturing company it's the largest company no one has ever heard of. they are a fortune 140 company, close to $20 billion a year and they're going to bring a whole string, a whole cluster of electronic manufacturer, small

manufacturers with them that want to be close to them and those kind of opportunities and when you talk about taxes, one of the things we haven't gotten to in business, what gets rewarded gets done, right? and yet we don't reward companies for creating jobs in any real way and i think that's -- if you sit back and look at it that's probably the single most important thing most of our citizens care about right now. they care about job. quality of life starts with a good job and yet we got to figure out a way in addition to, you know, taxing profits or, you know, other measures but finding a way to provide incentives and some sort of reward for those businesses to create jobs in this country 'cause we know in many cases they have a real disadvantage to do that. >> bruce, if i could just add in there one thing. anybody can put incentives on the table, right? >> right. >> and you feel like, okay, what's next? what comes back time and time to us is what's your workforce? do you have an advanced manufacturing culture? is your pipeline from high school through ph.d. one that supports advanced manufacturing. how do we partner together on

that in some of the things we've heard that are doing better in foreign countries than is being done here. that's the whole culture we're trying to form with our bluegrass economic movement. >> can i stop on this point and then come back. workforce, senator, you mentioned as well as you talked with small and large manufacturers it keeps coming back do we have the skilled workers? it strikes me we've got several issues here. one is what's the perception of manufacturing in the united states? people think that these are, you know, the old caricature of manufacturing jobs, dirty, not technologically sophisticated. i mean, there still are these perceptions about manufacturing, particularly, in a culture that has sort of celebrated, finance and other sectors. so there's both a perception issue. you on the ground level and you at the national level, do you find this is an issue and

secondly, is can you deliver predictable continuously workers either out of high school, out of community college and ultimately the engineers out of advanced institutions? and how that gets wired? as you've talked to firms, what seems to be the central barrier here? i mean, and how much does this cultural issue, perception issue comes up that's something we really need to tackle at a national way. >> i want to mention i visited 100 factories over the years. and even over the time of high unemployment and even though ours is a little lower than it was a couple years ago, but people can't find the skills that they're looking for. and jay has done a study on this and i read it recently. i think 82% of manufacturers said they cannot find the skills they're looking for. now, you know, some of those skills are not there because there isn't the community college and there isn't the

connection with the -- with the universities and so on that there ought to be but some of it i think is perception. there's a small manufacturer in santa is trying to work on this is trying to convince the next generation of workers working in manufacturing is a cool thing to do. the average salary in manufacturing is 67,000 bucks a year and these are high paid jobs. and as you know, these two children who tour them they are increasingly high tech jobs even a few years ago i go to a manufacturer where there was one operator for, you know, a million dollar piece of equipment and they thought that was, you know, pretty efficient. now that same operator has three or four different machines that he's operating all through a monitor, all computerized, all requiring not just the ability to work the monitor but understand the software enough to be able to fix problems. these are high tech jobs that require a lot of training and, therefore, you know, higher salaries and so part of our challenge, i think, is to change

the roughly 40 federal programs that work through agencies and departments and streamline it and make it more efficient and this is what's again frustrating hearing the great things these guys are doing at the state and local level, i don't think the federal government is doing its part and we got to change its image of manufacturing and make it more attractive for the next generation growing up. >> and to the senator's point, at the nim we are working on exactly that. when we talk about the perception of modern manufacturing, 68% of americans understand and believe that manufacturing is critical to economic growth and job creation in the country. but the perception of manufacturing has diminished over time. so when my grandfather stood in line to get a job in manufacturing, manufacturing of that era, 80 years ago is very different than today. it's -- i like the senator's word, it's cool. i use that word all the time on -- when i'm out talking to

young people. it's technologically driven and it's very modern and efficient. we're working -- we have 20 states right now that have implemented a program called dream it, do it which really helps young people experience modern manufacturing and understand its potential but i want to rewind just a little bit to your initial question or your question right before this. it's not just trade associations and governors and mayors and certainly businesses that can change the perception of manufacturing. it really needs to start right at the top. it has to be a commitment from the federal level from the president, from congress to embrace manufacturing to understand its promise and its potential, understand that it has as jeff immelt mentioned earlier the highest multiplier effect of any dollar invested or any job that's created. and we have to have that commitment from the top.

to this president's credit he's outlined a commitment to manufacturing in his state of the union speech. there are many members of congress that are talking about manufacturing. there's certainly governors and mayors that are embracing the promise but there is no coordinated effort. when i worked for a governor on day one, he sat his cabinet down and said you will be my competitiveness cabinet. every single day you will try to think about things that are going to create jobs in this state, that are going to enhance manufacturing, that are going to enhance attracting business to our state and if you're doing anything else, quit doing it. and we have to have that commitment from the top down and the president, whoever that president is, has to work with congress on a daily basis to talk not just about tax reform which is so incredibly critical but trade, workforce issues where 5% of manufacturing jobs go unfilled as the senator mentioned. research and development activity -- all those critical components that are outlined in

the manufacturing renaissance document that you referenced, bruce, need to be part of a comprehensive package to advance manufacturing in this country and to ensure that we embrace it for many generations to come. >> you know, the one thing i'd add on to that -- it is important but we also got to translate down into the culture. >> absolutely. >> describe again and again how kids today -- they would rather be a hairstylist than being advanced manufacturer than they make less money they like the fluid and culture of it. we have to brand it and it has to be in the schools, in our urban school districts kids don't believe they can go to college and they don't think they would be able to get a advanced manufacturing jobs. how do we get more manufacturing jobs. when jeff immelt talked about double the internships and connect those to scholarships and incentives, that's the kind of stuff -- and even how our media, social media we got to be thinking and be very intentional

about how we make this appealing and attractive to, you know -- we're a culture -- to a certain extent even the toughest neighbors are a culture of athletes. kids are reagan us magazine and "people" magazine and, you know, they're not -- they don't believe. they don't push themselves like they could. take that off the record. [laughter] >> part of that is our job as a trade association or as manufacturers making sure that young people have the opportunity -- >> of course. >> to see what happens in a manufacturing facility. when i visit manufacturers around the country, you probably all three of you have probably experienced the same thing. the workforce that is there oftentimes has been there 15, 20, 25 years because they love what they do. they are working with their hands. they're innovating, they're creating new methods and new ways of doing things. >> they're competing. >> they're competing in a global marketplace. >> exactly. >> and they love that challenge and take it on. i mean, i get inspired every time i go to a manufacturer, large or small. you mentioned some of the new flexibility on the labor rules. i mean, increasingly, workers feel like they have a stake in

this. and i think that's critical to our success and a lot of that has been done at the state and local level and that's important. and you said something really interesting where you said states competing with one another and cities for that matter and working at the local level helps because it's a rising tide that lifts all boats. i think that's true. i think the competition is good because you're competing now, you know, not with indiana, your neighbor, you're competing with india and indiana and ohio and you're winning. [laughter] >> but you have to go over to louisville. but, you know, that is really exciting and that's good and my only point is, i think, there's a federal overlay that's not keeping up with that. and to jay's point there has to be an intentional as john said, focus and a concerted effort to put competitiveness number 1 and manufacturing has to be the top of that list given the multiplier effect and the importance of making things. >> i think there's a cultural overlay as well. >> okay. >> so often people now look at

work or education as toil. i got to work. i got to go to school, versus this is a journey of life long learning. i'm picking up new things. i'm learning how to operate in a broader society. so when you go to companies that are invested -- like ge appliances last friday in louisville, you could eat off the floor, number 1. but the self-directed teams -- people are learning how to operate as problem solvers, as leaders as followers so when you take a look at the workplace, advanced manufacturing or anywhere is a place where i'm going to engage with a employer and the contract is i'm always going to be learning new things that are going to be giving me more capability. and theoretically value-added and theoretically compensation abilities to be able to provide for my family. that's great for the workplace but that culture is a huge for our country because then those skills translate into your churches, into your neighborhoods into the ways we look at ourselves as a nation that we're working together for

something bigger than ourselves and i'm an intrical part of that. .. >> this is very interesting sort of trajectory. in d.c., and frankly in state capitals and city halls the conversation tends to be very programmatic, right? what are we going to do on tax? what are we going to do on workforce? what are we going to do on land, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. what we're describing here is a culture shift. >> right. >> where we begin to dignify

work again and we talk about craftsmanship again. one of the most interesting things i see around the country, two things, actually, high schools bringing back what we used to call vocational ed. we now call career and technical services. you go to inner-city high schools where we're teaching manufacturing because the wage effects you're describing. the other interesting thing -- >> by the way one of the things john mentioned i think is working extremely well in some parts of ohio, not as well in others business partners with a high school. >> absolutely. >> instead of partnering with a community college or university, with a high school, intern, co-ops, manufacturing can be cool. there is a company in cleveland that is doing this with a public high school in the cleveland area and they indicate to me both to get kids excited about the stem disciplines but also actually to develop a workforce so these kids do go on and get a two-year

degree end upcoming back to the school. the whole time they're interning and working through the summer there is opportunities for companies to get engaged at relatively young level. so see what a job is. our country and our communities, now those that have educational supports and connected and those that don't have educational supports and are disconnected. this side over here is getting bigger every day. they may not even know what a job is. so for some of our summer job programs, for instance, this mentoring aspect we introduced people to young kids that may not have been out of one mile radius where they lived before, to see what an office looks like and what social skills are required to get a job. we can't get so caught up here that we forget we have a whole group of our society right now that doesn't understand some of these basic work issues we're talking about. it is a big national issue. >> let me bring this up. again, i think the adding of culture shift is critical or else we'll make all the

policy reforms in the world and we're still going to deal with the perception of manufacturing which is not accurate but it's still deeply held in our country. a couple other issues that were raised by some of the prior panels i thought would be good to air here since we have a lot of work going on. energy, okay. so the notion that the united states can have cheap, reliable, predictable, energy, as a platform for manufacturing is an enormous shift. we've got some really hairy environmental issues to deal with. how do we do this? how do we get beyond the polarization? not just, partisan polarization but the real concerns that people have about the environment in ohio or in other parts, in. >> in ohio it is really exciting because we had these new shale finds. in the west they're using to

having natural gas and oil finds periodically. ohio we're again many becoming a producer of natural gas and oil and we believe we're a net exporter next decade. it is huge opportunity for jobs. it is a opportunity for manufacturing jobs because we make a lot of pipe. a new steel in youngstown, ohio. u.s. steel is expanding in northeast ohio as well. we also make pumps and also make other structural steel for the plant. there is a huge opportunity and i do think the environmental issues can be handled among the energy committees. we work a lot with those to be sure the hydraulic fracking can be successfully done and it is properly regulated. john mentioned earlier fracking water doesn't get into the groundwater and so on. the companies that have been doing this for 50, 60 years are good at it and dealt with a lot of these issues. ohio happens to have pretty

good regulations in place. maybe some states need to work on that but i think there is enormous opportunity here. i frankly don't see there is a huge disconnect here between what the community want and what the industry wants when it is done in a safe and in a way with a regulatory environment that, you know, requires them to do it in an appropriate way. so i think it's a great opportunity and specifically for manufacturing, not just extraction of resources but ohio, it is great for us. >> you about it is, i couldn't agree more. it is a great opportunity. it is one of those places, we talked about competition being so valuable but collaboration. putting time spent with people deepening that relationship and creates trust. the big issue there are two marketing gurus in colorado say collaboration is the new competition. they will get mad but he pushed the environmental community and the oil industry to really become

more transparent, right? there's been a level of almost hysteria of people worried about frac fluids and so terrible, i think misleading stories in the media. about a month and a half ago we got the head of leadership of the environmental defense fund to stand side by side with the senior vice president of halliburton and they agreed to a set of regulations that would allow halliburton to protect their trade secrets yet give the environmental community full trust that the chemicals that they're going to reveal what the composition of the chemicals are. coke, right? coke is the most valuable trade secret on earth yet put ingredients on the label. how can we not get there? how do we get to the level of trust? now we're asking our oil and gas companies doing any water wells where they will drill a well, do a baseline. take a water test and sample. colorado we can't find example of fracking. we've been doing this since

i was geologist in the early '80s. we can't find an example fracking getting into groundwater. 10 of hundreds of thousands of frac jobs over the decade. there have been a couple places on east coast where that happened through very bad operators. how do we give the public more assurance? this energy will bring back the chemical industry and create all kinds of jobs at different levels there is disconnect there prwise. >> if, the president said we need all of the above strategy and he is exactly right. the 20% differential i mentioned earlier has one interesting fact for the first time. we have a cost advantage on energy right now. and it is very slight but we need to drive that number up because that will help us in all other areas. the senator and the governor both talked about fracking. obviously we've got to get the policy right. we've got to get all of the regulatory policy right. we've just got to get it done. the potential with shale gas

is enormous. we did a study with pwc that shows the shale, the shale plays will create one million, one million manufacturing jobs in this country in the next few years. you think about the spin-off jobs that occur from that. that has enormous potential. that doesn't even take into account all of the, all of the benefits that businesses will derive from lower cost energy. we really need to focus on that. we also need to take the politics out. congratulations, governor, on that great achievement while you're governor but, you know, a lot of times we simply play politics with energy policy. the keystone pipeline is a great example. that needs to move. we need to make sure that we're trying to encourage every type of information supply and development that we possibly can in this country because it does mean jobs in the future. there's no question about that. >> in the meantime, private industry is driving

innovation. >> absolutely. >> conservation. >> that's right. >> ge appliance hybrid water heater introduced friday. great reduction in home energy cost. go to the auto show. you see fuel efficiency standards, 40, 45 miles per hour -- per gallon as well. the businesses are listening to consumers we want to spend less on energy at the same time. >> this is about global competition. you're absolutely right. you mentioned legislation with jeanne shaheen, a democrat from new hampshire and about energy efficiency and helping companies to have the tools they need to move towards efficiency technology and people are making things with a lot less energy these days. and fewer people and more efficiently and, you know, this is, on the energy side, part of how we're going to get more competitive and be able not just to expand exports but actually be more competitive here in this country serving our own market and taking away market share.

energy efficiency is something where the united states lags not just japan. which is pretty obvious to people but also our european competitors and most of the emerging markets. we have the great opportunity there to do more. >> let me ask you. we're in d.c. might as well talk about politics, right? seems to be on this panel and frankly whenever we get federal officials, governors and mayors together, we seem to move towards the pragmatic space as opposed to partisan space. so if we took the president's advance manufacturing partnership headed by andrew the on the prior panel and head of mit. basically went through the core sets of recommendations for national policy but also frankly for state and local, can we think about a place a year from now, right, beginning of a new administration, whoever is elected, where there's a

small set of big systemic changes that can occur at the national scale to buttress and leverage our manufacturing potential? is that outside the realm of possibility? or are we in three-to-five year cycle where the states and the cities have to innovate and eventually washington will begin to scale up or reflect or, you know, sort of harm the division? is this one of those few issues where we can actually get beyond partisanship? because it seems like the way we're talking about it here who is going to be against these kinds of practical, almost nonidealogical approaches? i -- >> i said at the outset i believe there is a huge opportunity here with all of our challenges we have, with our economic structures. i mentioned energy. also regulations and taxes. there is no reason this can't be bipartisan. >> that's right. >> and the president's own

jobs and competitive council as you indicate has made recommendations as has the advanced manufacturing group. if you look at it. it is regulatory relief which includes some of the things we talked about earlier. we have a bipartisan bill to today that. the administration has not supported it yet. hopefully they will. corporate tax reforms and lowering rates and broading the base. they have recommended the territory system and unlocking trillion locked up overseas and through repatriation. the administration talked about doing this. hopefully they will send something this year. but in political year will be tough to get something done. all of this should be working towards some consensus. there is growing consensus on the tax reform side and on the regulatory side and the energy side. my hope we'll be able to make progress if not this year then right after the election regardless who is elected. >> from the state and city perspective, taking that as sort of a 2012, not a lot happened, actually happens.

a lot gets debated and discussed. not a lot happens at this level, what are you all pushing towards? and then, at the end of the day a year from now, when do you want on that prior list? >> i still think like a business guy. i don't know about you. i just happen to be mayor right now. like when you have a company, if you got these competitors and if you're dysfunctional as a company your competition loves it, right? so to think if you're china or if you're germany and watching us as a country right now bickering over all these things, they love it, especially when it comes to manufacturing and manufacturing policy. so they have federal industrial policies where they're not playing the same rules that we have, we say that is not fair. guess what? the world evolved. how does our capitalism, how does our laissez-faire economy evolve as well if we learn from something germany's

alignment, education, r&d and business and or what china is doing with infrastructure as well? i like to see how we adapt our system to as a result really get unstuck with american manufacturing. >> i echo that and go even further and say i think a lot of the, in the short term, the real innovation is going to happen in cities and to a lesser extent states. as a former mayor i can take some credit. it is one request why don't we get more business people like greg to run for office? and all the risk and reward all the thoughts that go through your decision-making how do we get that mixed in. you need lifetime public servants as well. i think we need innovation short term in cities and lesser extent states. ultimately the big changes have happen at a federal level. >> bruce i want to say we can't afford for it not to be bipartisan, or nonpartisan. every business leader, every american needs to set the table so that manufacturing

renaissance can occur after the next, the next election. >> so that's the final word. i want everyone to thank the panel. then i have some housekeeping to do. so thank you all. that was great. [applause] >> c-span 2 is live today at the mellon auditorium in washington, d.c.. we just saw a little bit of today's discussion from earlier. we're back live now and this discussion is about the future of u.s. manufacturing it is hosted by general electric. we're expecting the keynote speaker, mississippi governor, former mississippi governor, haley barbour. he is expected to the stage in about 15 minutes. 1:00 eastern time. let you know earlier we heard from ohio senator robb portman and colorado governor john hickenlooper and the mayor of louisville, kentucky talking about local and state action to improve manufacturing. we also heard from the heads of several corporations

including dow and boeing. and you can find all of those discussions and sessions online. just go to the c-span video library. a little bit of news today. a number of budget proposals for 2013 coming out. president obama announced the main points of his budget proposal for 2013. and there are more to be unveiled later today. the state department announces details of its proposal at 1:30 eastern time. we're going to have that live on c-span3. the defense department's budget with speakers from the army, the navy and air force. they will take reporters questions and that defense budget announcement will start at 2:00 eastern and that is going to be on our companion network, c-span. looks like folks are starting to take the podium here at the manufacture you ares discussion. >> i want to give you a couple ground rules for the lunch. we're going to have about 15 or 20 minutes for you to enjoy lunch. then governor haley barbour will be making remarks.

if you, you will find on your tables some little cards and during the, during the governor's presentation you may write down any question that you might have. we'll come around and pick those up. and governor barbour will take questions after his remarks. so enjoy your lunch. thank you. ♪ [inaudible conversations]

>> we're going to come back to the forum on competitiveness and manufacturing. they're taking a few more minutes to fill out questions for the keynote speaker, former mississippi governor haley barbour who we should see 15 minutes, 20 minutes or so. take the stage a few minutes past 1:00 eastern time. while we wait for things to get underway here at the mellon auditorium in washington, d.c. we'll look at some of the earlier sessions from the ge forum. we're going to hear from the head of boeing and dow corporations. >> i want to pick up on, we are in washington about some of the government questions, public/private partnership questions. but let me start with the broader economy. we were talking backstage about what you see, what we

all see over the next six months in a political context but just for americans who are going through such a time of slow growth and high joblessness. jim, why don't i start with you and ask you what you're seeing out there and how it looks? >> i see a normal recovery except for real estate and construction which is, often times two or three points on the unemployment, point and a half on gdp growth. but i think, i see pretty moderately strong global demand with the exception of europe, particularly asia, middle east, the u.s. recovering. so finish where i started. pretty normal recovery except for construction, real estate which, for a variety of reasons that you understand just hasn't bottomed out yet and may not for a while. >> we talk about economic growth as a more important indicator even that jobs, andrew. we're 8.3% unemployment that

may experience some volatility but how does that impact or reflect what you're seeing? >> similar. a brighter u.s. now is the time to get us the confidence we all need to keep it going in the right direction. 8.3, 8%, maybe lower than that, what jeff was talking about, i heard some of what you were saying, jeff. jobless recovery in a sense but we have jobs out there. it is whole skills discussion we'll get into. broader u.s., really tough europe is what i see. we think europe will be fine at the end of the day. i was making a point to jeff, europe has been around a long time. they have resiliency if nothing else. this will definitely be a testing time for europe. are a merging world, inflation, emerging world is doing very well. >> jeff, you've been spending the last several minutes going through the macroeconomic picture. a lot of things we talk about in washington is fiscal imbalance, leadership vacuums and what that ultimately does to chill business in america. can you provide more than

just shorthand on that? as you look at a budget outline presented by the president today likely not to be acted upon, a huge budget deficit and leadership deficit continues here because they're so polarized what does it mean to you and the job you're doing around the world? >> david, it adds uncertainty. everybody knows something has to happen. over the holidays i read it before, but over the holidays i read again the deficit commission and i just, i just think that is the sfram work of what has to happen -- framework. i don't love everything and none of the three of us are going to love everything but you look both who was on the commission, their recommendations are sensible. that is the outline of what ultimately has to happen and i just think the sooner we can see that take place it just, i think what makes businesses effective is that we can adjust more easily than other institutions, right? and so we'll adjust. >> you want to know something is going to happen,

what will happen that will affect your business? >> exactly. david, you i think it's, you can go through entitlement reform. a tax, a best tax that is no loopholes rate, mid 20s, high 20s wherever it goes. you do down the deficit accidents recommendations and say look, in some way, shape or form, in the back of my mind all of us are planning for this eventualty, let's do it. none of us can tell you when it will happen but we can tell you what it will look like. >> let's talk specifically about manufacturing. the president during the state of the union address said the following i want to speak out about a laying out a blueprint economy built to last, built on manufacture manufacturinging renewal of american values. the blueprint begins with american manufacturing. that speaks to, andrew, a public/private partnership where government is a player here.

so first, what's the outlook for manufacturing and what's the role of government postively and negatively? >> well, i'm very hopeful that we've actually now got the national conversation getting down to specifics. i'd say a few years ago there wasn't even a national conversation. today we do have one, jeff in his presentation talked about our cost structures coming down for all the right reasons not the least of them being competitive energy in the country finally and competitive labor costs. the prospect from here it has to be a public/private partnership model along the lines of simpson-bowles. we need government and business to work together on the possible future of the country layered back to specifics. on what? regulatory reform, tax rorm. these are program models that the bit and other parts of the business community is working on. we've got specific ideas but we don't see much action. what i worry about the political animal takes over. next six to nine months next to nothing is going to happen so we're going to

have to wait for another year or two. >> let's break do that down a little bit. president talks about in the state of the union and begins with american manufacturing suggesting that the government plays a role. so as a manufacturer, what can government do for you? >> first of all, it is the right focus. manufacturing has a mult flick tiff effect jobwise. jeff, you pointed that out in your talk. three quarters of the technology in this country emanates, services and then, use it in providing services in the full life cycle of products. you get to the next innovation quickly after you've gone down a learning curve on making something. so it is the right focus to start with. i'm a little bit of a, on the partnership side, i'm a little bit more on the regulate us properly and get out of the way kind of guy, okay? i mean i think we know how to design and build things if there's not too much getting in the way of us

doing that. and i think right now there is a little bit of tension that is not productive on the regulatory side. whether it's energy and andrew can talk a lot about it and so can jeff, and or on the labor side where i have a big spreech and, -- speech and fda there is another speech. don't see the same kind of regulatory partnership that is all about protecting the population from what we do but letting us do what we do within a known framework. >> let me pick up on that because there is number of issues there we could get into. >> yeah. >> back to you, jeff, part of this discussion and in part of the state of the union was saying to business, you've got some responsibilities. we want to incentivize but we also want to hold your feet to the fire, use some sticks against you as well. what role, what responsibility do american manufacturers have to bring jobs back home, to try to get involved in a, we're all in it together conversation

with government? >> you know, look, david, i could give you a classic laissez-faire capitalist answer to say, on one hand i could say, we follow the laws. leave us alone. i don't think that word fits today. it doesn't fit the zeitgeist of the age. it doesn't fit overall. i think first and foremost what we owe everybody to compete and win in every corner of the world. first and foremost it is invest in technology, invest in people. take our products. gain market share. fight hard against, you know, all of our global competitors and probably all three of us, you know, i don't really have american competitors anymore. all my competitors are german, japanese, chinese. we're kind of like after 100 years the last man standing in the world we're in. so you know, i'm kind of, love us or hate us, i'm your guy, you know. and that's, you know, so win, number one. but i think, look, i just

think there's got to be a cognizance of how important jobs are, you know? it is just, all three of us, none of us were born in our job. we awe worked our way up through our various companies and the pride people have when they have a job, the respect they have for each other when they have a job, and then the notion that jobs are precious and it is not just that every ge job will go in the u.s. but i think to a certain extent at points in time there is just too much callousness around it and i just think we have to know that -- >> is that away of saying insourcing initiative where there would be greater demands on businesses and that the government doesly arole? andrew, is that appropriate? is that something you can live with? you accept the idea of old laissez-faire arguments have to be put aside? >> i think like jeff and i'm

sure jim will agree i think the context of the question is completely wrong. i have open border competition and this is the most open border country out there so the ideals of free trade which jim can speak about have to stand. so why are you making markets based on false dimensions? i'm competing like jeff said, with people who are subsidized around the world. companies are competing like countries. they're creating incentives. singapore, thailand, mexico, want what we have but germanies do it too. my home country of australia does it too. look at r&d tax credits. we know it is not a level playing field. we know where you like ge is unique in america. dow is unique in america. boeing is unique in america. we compete globally. so we need the type of government that doesn't give us a zero-sum game answer by bringing us back to the country. the world is where we're competing. every job we create in the world we create jobs back here, another myth that we have to break. . .

the president president of the united states raced it in discussion. before we get to regulatory i want to ask a more basic question as a layperson which is jeff you and i have talked about this in the past. where's the demand coming from whether it's for an airplane, i don't know i get on airplanes and it seems like they are all bankrupt. or they buy new aircraft? what about nuclear reactors? >> 95%, 95% of the world's consumers live outside of the united states and 70% of gdp is outside of the united states.

you know, it used to be when jeff and i grew up, if you want and the united states you would win globally. today it's the opposite. you need to win globally and then, because you are facing the same global competitors in the united states. think about the different deal. >> the last decade from owing and ge, so we sell a lot of engines to boeing. with all the chinese airlines, all the latin american airlines, you know our company is a fraction of the size and i think to andrew's point, i just don't feel un-american when i am selling ge engines around the world. i'm sorry. and you know what i tried to explain to people, it's like selling a product globally is only like a thousand times harder than in the u.s.. you are facing competition.

your brand does not mean as much and frequently if the guys first experience with a product, right? the chinese, it basically was their first experience in aircraft so its just one of those where i think when you're talking to guys like us we just don't apologize for having globalized their companies. i understand the complexity and i understand unemployment that jim, -- >> but i would say that i think we, lemminglike over the past 15 years, extended our supply chains a little too far globally in the name of low cost and we lost control in some cases over quality and service when we did that. we underestimated in some cases the value of our workers back here and in so doing that. i think there is a recalibration because even though you have got to be locally competitive there is a jump ball, 10 to 15% of

your jobs and i think you are going to see more come back to the u.s. in part for business reasons and in part because we want to be good citizens. >> when people like me scrutinize the president of the united states heart of it does have to do not just with policy. it has to do with community leadership through communication. how much of the work has to be done by business leaders like yourself to say to american audiences as you did jeff when he spoke to the other network recently and a profile -- that you know you should want to win. 's bfi win, america wins. >> how do you do what clint eastwood did in that ad which is to say we should all be cheering for that whether we are selling cars in detroit are selling them in sri lanka? >> look, i agree with the nuanced points that jim and andrew have made. i think beyond that is globalization is, it's a 20

minute discussion in a world that wants one sentence answers. so i think the trick to globalization is look we have to be vocal. we have to present our cup and he said we have to say where we have been and where we have been wrong. but it's a nuanced discussion on you know ge is a net exporter to china so in other words we export more to china than we import from china but that is a nuanced discussion where you are creating jobs in both places as you do that so i just think we have to chip away at a. >> to state the audience come -- obvious i'm no clint eastwood. [laughter] >> you have a grizzled feel to you. >> quotable. >> that is the point i was going to get to, we had to decided to put a book out called make it in america. make it in america. the brand and the perception of

four words or the one sentence, are articulate another value proposition here in washington but are workers our workers who actually can have a label on their product saying, made in america. that is an american thing to do and we have to change the conversation. >> i want to get back to regulation. give me some individual elements about what makes manufacturing better, how the economy gets better in this area. a shorthanded washington for all of us to cover these issues is we need commonsense regulation, the 21st century regulations. what exactly does that mean and what is not happening in that regard now? >> well my view is that the financial crisis in 2008 promulgated a political backlash that produced a lot of regulation in the financial services area. the discussion broadened from bayer and splattered over every

regulatory agency. we see from the legislative branches and from the top was confrontational. so i think the first thing you have to do is get over, get through the financial services discussion which is a separate issue. and a lot of risk came into our economy that needs to be addressed and then like the president is doing, focus on manufacturing what to think is a little bit of a different animal and i think the fact it's being looked at separately now gives us a chance to get into a more constructive dialogue has dialogue with our regulators now tends to be more confrontational than it should be, more confrontational than it was designed to be and it's been politicized heavily. the nlrb case against us in south carolina was a sham. it was a sham, and it was something that an unconfirmed person in that agency

promulgated and it was something that eventually they went through which was the right thing to do but it had a chilling effect. i mean we can afford to spend a billion dollars in south carolina and get told we can't do it. we didn't stop investing for a second, however. other companies, the small and medium-sized companies that the administration wants to encourage they can't afford to take that kind of chance. and there is example after example of that kind of heavy-handed as opposed to cooperative. i think the regulatory model in this country is meant to be cooperative. let's find a way to keep growing our economy. let's keep driving jobs but let's contain what we do so that we don't inadvertently harm other constituencies. we are not there yet is my view. >> something like shale gas. if the studies are true, and i think there would be people that could articulate it better than i could, we have a boatload of

gas. we have a bunch. that could really dramatically change the future of the country. i mean we could be an energy exporter in our lifetime, yet everybody is waiting for world war iii to erupt between somebody on one side and somebody on the other. we have to reclaim all the water, 100% of the water. we have to do it in an environmentally family way but there's no sense there is going to be an overarching strategy versus you know yard by yard of fight and warfare. it's just not the way you know other countries necessarily approach stuff like this. >> that is a great example of what other countries do. they say i have these amazing new entrepreneurial arms of discovery. it could be a huge ship or here i have the discovery of energy. how do i approach this and say, what do i worry about? who should i consult with on the

regulatory side? who knows anything about hydrofracking actually? it took a long time before they said what actually is going on which has been going on for 30 or 40 or so this process up front, working together on the regulatory side and responsible production. the saudi see a powerful -- not to mention value-added which is now by the way because of shale gas becoming second only to aerospace because of the shale gas discoveries. companies like mine have energy costs. we are not coming back. i'm putting $5 billion into texas and louisiana based on these discoveries and value-added companies. now that should be viewed as a country value add. how do we export responsible regulation to keep jobs in america at the same time protecting our citizens. >> than a related question i think is what has become a more

mainstream example in the steve jobs and president obama discussion. why do you make the iphones in america? there are not enough engineers here. i need to go to china because you don't need to have doctors but you need an advanced education to have enough engineers overseeing the work and i can only do that in china. i can't do that in the u.s. and jim for all of your industries for your particular areas of the economy, how do you make more product in the united states and employ more people in the united states? what happens -- has to happen in your point of view? >> you touched on the educational issue, the stem science technology, engineering and math. we are falling behind in this country when you get to the root cause it's k-12. kids don't turn on and they don't get excited. the quality of teaching is not there so there is a whole thing there that the president is focused on this area and he should do more but that is a long-term frustrating answer

because that source is 15 years from now. i think there is a lot of investment. there is a lot of cash for big companies like ours have available to invest, and i think we need some degree of certainty on tax incentives, regulatory. i think once we, i totally agree with jim. let's take simpson-bowles and lets let sit down and figured out. everybody gets a little and we move on. i think even if the answer is half that we will understand the environment we we are in and you will see a lot of investment. >> you have the fear of whips off because of political leadership? another which do you fear there is enough to sting shin between the parties that if mitt romney becomes the president that you could have such change that you want to keep some of that cash rather than invest it? >> no. i don't fear it. i think there will be in all likelihood something after the

election. it's ridiculous we have to wait that long but after the election, president obama, republican controlled house and senate, i think at that point some reasonable solutions will be promulgated. that is my hope and my belief and it just takes that time. it's too bad with the gerrymandered districts, "fox news," cnn, no one stays in washington on the weekends and talks about it. you are penalized if you compromise. you loosen your hold district. that dynamic is just killing us right now is the country and we have to have a cathartic experience that gets us to the other side are go. >> what the is to take them i'm asking more of a political question to both of you, what does it take for leaders to believe and actually use that leverage, that leadership leverage in the country to move washington a little bit more? you are talking to leaders not only here but around the world. what are you not seeing out of this present or can --

congressional leaders? >> we have been active on this and actually businesses say let's take the deficit on. let's solve it and i think we have spoken more with one voice on this than almost anything else. i think now -- >> you are showing a a lot more initiative and courage than the leadership in congress, rank-and-file in congress or even the president who has said repeatedly through aides and so forth we don't want to put something on the hill that will be designed to fail. >> and they and the world functions best as my job is to -- jet engines. there are certain things, we should make our company's competitive. business has spoken saying reducing the deficit is probably job one. none of us are going to like everything as we come through it and it has to happen sooner than later and roughly 65% of the u.s. economy has been consumer-driven. it is grown dramatically over the last 25 or 30 years

basically because of credit. this economy needs to be powered by investment. that is why certainty is in some ways more important today because that has got to be the engine that helps power this economy back to 3.5% gdp growth. >> i think the election cycles clearly. >> against that and if you are living in a volatile world how do you asked the question you ask. actually a answer by saying okay i believe in the system and you have got to believe in the american system. it is why we are all here so you have to say we can sustain ourselves on the big ideas. it may take time to get there but let's take the basic steps. there was a tranche of ideas, specific proposals. the advanced manufacturing partnership with time cochairing has specific proposals in and around jobs and free trading and worker outreach and communications that you asked about. the president's export council

that mr. -- cochaired a specific outcome entrée. >> look, there are baby steps that suggest the american democracy still has a vitality around business but there is a big gap that exists on the specific big steps, the ones that jim talked about. i always think it comes down to what we do. we face up to the short-term issues of credibility. if we have to do the tough stuff will do the tough stuff in out there we give a picture the future and say as we do this tough stuff we will be a better company. we have it a little easier as the company versus the country but that is the gap that exists there. >> all of you, people think of technology's impact on the economy based on the devices they are using and how it makes their individual daily lives easier, less complicated more pompa gated depending on technology but we note that technology impacts on our economy structurally and jobs.

so what role does technology play in making our manufacturing more competitive around the world? >> well i mean, it depends on the industry and it depends on the company. i would use the dreamliner 787 as an example. i mean, a huge job creator. it is an innovative product with innovative engines and -- >> very innovative. >> very innovative engines but what drags, the long-term investment is probably 10,000 jobs to build the infrastructure in seattle and in south carolina. the ongoing employment is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000 people. the ongoing investment in r&d as we go down the learning curve and production to try to find the next set of composite i will keep us competitive is probably another two or 3000 people. and then the service as i

pointed out early, the lifecycle service of this product over the next 20 or 30 years will probably be in our company and in jeff's because the engine is a proportionate service propensity as another five or 6000 people. so this innovation produces huge employment and produces profits for our company, allows us to reinvest. i was at a breakfast where i was listening to allen greenspan the other morning and he said, i have analyzed the investment in this country and our companies are doing everything except making long-term investments with fundamental innovation. that is the chilling effect of not knowing what the playing field is going to look like tax wise and regulatory. you have to for findwhat battle are we going to fight if we announce some big investment that therein is where the jobs are. therein is where the success from a company is and that is

the thing we are trying to get. we have a lot of ideas. we just need to -- >> you something slightly related for you guys which is give us an example, about operating in a different country where the playing field is level is not the word. just, where you feel like you know what the future isn't it can invest in a more long-term way, regulatory environment is more welcoming and it allows you to do things the way you would like to do it a little bit more. >> if you look at a place like germany. it's got very well-established investment pools. they have modernized their labor systems over the past couple of years. there's a reason why germany is one of the few countries in the world that came out of the recession better than it went that went in and i think you know, the u.s. isn't going to be china. there are different, lots of

differences that germany is not a bad, just not a bad place to think about and i just think it's not a long list. i think well trained people, it's investment tax certainty and then i would say the third piece is some form of export. and everything today is like corporate welfare and stuff like that but if you are trying to sell a boeing 737 with ge engines in africa, you have got a fully subsidize european superstructure and tiny bank financing you know and us. so, i think things like excel are a way that we can level the playing field. we will never have a better package than those two, but it's not really corporate welfare to put us on the same playing field that our global competitors are

on. i would say labor, investment tax and some form of export support to. >> and my world, energy. energy policy which we have all talked about in the absence of -- is really a killer. they have got an energy policy. you know what the renewable standard is in you know what the price is going to be. you understand the views of nuclear so clearly there is a certain idea on major imports whether it be labor or capital. germany is a great example because it's a democracy but you compete against them. in germany, they addressed the question asked which is the human talent. they celebrate engineers and they have these training

programs that pay a lot of attention to the talent pipeline at the factory level for not smokestack industries but stacks of chips. in other words understanding that its advanced manufactures idea and i think that is probably the sinequan eye of the example. you go to singapore and korea and they they're all doing the same. investing in a people pipeline so it gets back to the education and a shortage of skills we have in this country. >> is part of what we are dealing with here in the political debate, and a debate about competition, that we are in the middle of american decline? do you believe that? >> no. >> no. we are going through a phase where our government and industry are uneasy with each

other. each think they are doing the right thing, not connecting. we need to figure it out. and both sides have their arguments so they frame it clinically. we frame it economically. but absolutely not. do i feel that ge bordallo or boeing are more or less competitive now than we were 10 years ago? i think without question we are more competitive than we were 10 years ago because we kept the investment. could we be make you more progress if the partnership was characterized by some of the things that we talked about as opposed to the way we fight it? find it? i think so, but you know i mean the dreamliner, it had its own developmental issues but one of them was labor issues and slowdowns and investment in south carolina because of the government keystone. erick cantor, you know there are

plenty of blame on both sides. decides within a month, not going to decide within a month at the presidents responsible whole thing was politicized as opposed to what is the right thing for our country. but the regulatory process work. >> you don't think it has declined? >> i also think you had better get away from us 1 cents but we are all victim to. salanter does not define the solar industry. from invention to commercialization, three years going on roots in colorado nevada and california. made in america by american ingenuity. solar of the future, not solar panels commodity style that they subsidize in china which is a great industry and maybe the industry we should have. we are working on next-generation electrical storage device material. they are coming out of american labs. innovation is alive and well

here. we just have to get these pieces to work together again. >> you are okay with government playing a role in funding that innovation? that was one of the recommendations from from the council. >> we got used to in this country spectacular failures. it took a while to get the dreamliner. it took -- >> like a fine line. [laughter] >> right, like a fine wine and we have lots of fine wine in this country. it takes a a lot of. >> david, i think i would not look at us. i would talk to the people that work for us in our factories and stuff like that. i think they feel like they feel like they can compete and win with anybody in the world. i actually see the guy that travels the world are relative position has improved in the last decade and it hasn't gone down. number two, when you think about something like the dreamliner it turns out this country is still good at doing hard things. and that is a competitive

advantage over the long-term. that is a competitive advantage. >> can you remember a time, and i'm fairly familiar with ge and some of the messaging, some of the marketing bringing things to life. more recently hey wait a minute we don't get budweiser if not for you guys? does that speak to the fact that we are in a new era where a political climate, a level of populism in the country has reached a level where you need to make a point like that? >> sure, look, companies don't stand on our own. again, i think jim said again andrew said it, none of us feel like we are above it all. we are part of this system and you know we really are and i think we have got to reflect the era of the time. our slogan is imagination at work. guess what? nobody cares about imagination

right now. they only care about works of now we talk about ge work. you know david, today people want solutions. they won't a six. they want resiliency. you know i think basically people tend to say if i have to read another op-ed i'm going to kill myself. i want to see somebody do something about something and i think companies have to be a part of that ecosystem because we want to be. >> we have a few minutes left. one in which take a minute and talk about the washington audience here about what you are looking for on the whole playing field as you think about the future of manufacturing and american competitiveness? what do you want to see in the next six months to a year? what are you looking out for? >> i would say exports focusing on manufacturing. there's a whole series of things related to free trade agreements. export control, love reform, sensible immigration.

there is a whole list and the administration is being responsive to that so we have got to keep pushing that. get to a tax policy that is competitive globally. right now we are not competitive globally. a strong statement on education and then i think there is an industrial base issue. you look at a lot of innovation in this country came from, not only did defense industrial base but other industrial bases have produced these byproducts, everything from gps to microprocessors to the internet, sorry al, the internet and you know so there's an industrial base issue which is about some tax incentives on innovation and r&d so it is not a new list but focus on it and use the president's tone from the top on manufacturing. to actually get some of these things done.

>> this discussion was from earlier today. we are going to join the conversation in progress as the group gathers back here for the second half of the discussion on manufacturing and competitiveness. we expect to hear soon from haley barbour the former governor of mississippi. >> responsible for the business council, and this is kind of an association of the 100 or 125 biggest countries in the indymac. we happened to have a meeting two weeks after hurricane katrina and i invited the governor of louisiana at the time, governor barbour to come and speak to this group. the governor of louisiana did not come. the governor of mississippi, haley barbour, came in with no notes for an hour described to the ceos in the room the crisis management. by that time it was only two weeks after the disaster. the leadership was dealing with at. to look everybody in the eye and say i'm going to make mississippi a pro-business day. i'm going to make a comeback

from his crisis and he really lived up to everything that he said he was going to do and then some so it's my great honor and pleasure today to introduce governor haley barbour. [applause] ♪ >> thank you jeff, thank you. i thank all of you for being here. i have to mention about jeff's story about the business council. i feel like i knew initially and certainly prove to be the case that it's going to be the private sector that rebuilds in the area after a mega-disaster and that is why two weeks after the storm i was willing to go talk to the 125 biggest companies in the united states because despite the help we needed and received from the federal government, from our sister states and charities and everything else, at the end of the day, you are going to rebuild your community and privacy interest is going to rebuild your community.

that is what has happened on the gulf coast with general electric and i appreciate telling that little story. i'm going to talk to you in a minute about manufacturing. about america being competitive in manufacturing from the perspective of the governor. and i want to make lane to you, if i don't get but one thing across, what i want to get across is that we in mississippi haven't given up on manufacturing. they tell a great story -- some of you all are old enough to remember ed sullivan. remember the ed sullivan show on sunday night? more than half the tv sets in america ge tv sets would be tuned into ed sullivan. back in the 50s at sullivan had conrad hilton on a show. conrad hilton, guy who created a new business, the luxury hotel chain, the kind of business,

maybe the bill gates of his day. hilton walks out on the stage and at sullivan turns to him and said, if you could tell the american people but one thing, what could you tell them? conrad hilton never hesitated and he said put the shower curtain inside of the tub. [laughter] there's a guide to -- and if i can't get but one thing across to you, we in america need to emulate what we have tried to do in the city and that is don't give up on manufacturing in america because we don't have to. i come from the poorest state in the country, a small state, a state where when i was a young lawyer 40 years ago, companies that came to mississippi came looking for strong backs and low wages. today they come looking for strong minds. general electric is a great example of that. because we can compete.

as a governor for different times while i was governor, we had companies close and plants in mexico and moved the work to mississippi. and we can do that all over the united states. before getting into that too deeply i do want to comment on what a great partnered general electric has been. we like to think we are, but it's easy to be at good partner when you have a great partner like general electric. they have a couple of facilities in my state, one of which, when it was announced, i think those of you who recognize mississippi's image and i understand that mississippi has suffered with a negative image most of my life, but they decided to open this plant in mississippi, general electric, for the gen x engines and they made composite jet engine fan

blades and assemblies. not that i had the slightest idea of what that was when we were trying to get the company but the vice chairman of ford came down with the announcement that they were going to open this and he said, this is the most sophisticated manufacturing general electric does anywhere in the world. i can assure you 20 years before that people would have been flabbergasted when they heard the second half and we are going to do it in north mississippi. in fact we do manufacture fan blades and assemblies in mississippi, about 60 miles south of memphis, and let's just leave it at this. they have doubled the plant size in the four or so years or five years it has been open. in fact i remember when david joyce from ge aviation came for the opening, and this very

significant facility, and somebody said to him on the team, we put twice as many lockers here is we were supposed to. that is, lockers for the employees who work there to have. we spent a couple of hours at the plant and the managers spent some time with david and as we walked out he says, we are going to fill all the lockers. they not only filled all of the lockers, they have expanded since then. and importantly for us they build another sister plant since then in south mississippi. alice bill is about 20 miles from the university of southern mississippi and part of it i think success for manufacturing is the united states is a strong ties to empower education.

i want to talk a little bit about workforce training in our community colleges but let me mention first our universities. the university of southern mississippi which is a few miles away, for more than 30 years it has had a polymer institute. now those of you who don't know what polymers are, should run for governor of mississippi because i will never forget when i went down campaigning to see the polymer institute i asked ahead the head of it, i said, shelby, what is a polymer? and he really gave me an illuminating answer. polymer is a repeating molecule. grades. [laughter] what the hell does that have to do with anything? of course it's the heart of the composite industry. and we have the composite center now associated with our defense industries and our shipbuilding

industries on the mississippi gulf coast. at to do such things is made paint that won't burn or that won't smoke when you have a naval vessel, the ability to keep from having smoke seven levels down in the ship is obvious once you think about it. well, that is a company that was spun off by the university. they went from research and development to application and commercialization. that is what you need in your research universities to do. we have research universities and in the last 10 years they have become more and more and more begun to go on past the certain development and application of commercialization and ge is a great beneficiary of that as well i'm proud to say a great benefactor because they

helped invest in our polymer institute, which allows us to focus on efforts on advanced manufacturing with advanced -- the composites that are used to make the fan blades and assemblies for the gen x engine are just an example of that. we focus not exclusively by any stretch, but we focus on three clusters for our manufacturing side, aerospace, automotive and energy. we are and all of the of energy state. southern company has a coal-fired generation facility under construction in mississippi, $2.5 billion that will burn indigenous lit -- a

low-grade ranked coal that when i was growing up thought was the a nuisance because you could not farm it. we have learned how to burn like lignite well enough to generate electricity and now this will be the first coal-fired power plant in the united states that will have carbon capture and sequestration on a commercial scale and it will be mad at the rate of a natural gas fired power plant. but, that is the kind of advanced manufacturing we are trying to do. jeff and i were talking about, we have to solar panels manufactures like ge has a big one in aurora, colorado. we have a couple of them in mississippi. we make dynamic glass. what is dynamic glass i would

ask? you can buy glasses and when you go out in the sun they turn into dark glasses but when you are in low light, they are clear. you can make windows for office buildings out of that except you can design them and control them so if it's like it is today, 30 degrees and sunny, you can keep them clear to take in the heat. but if it's like it usually is in the city, sunny and 95, then they can beat dark and simply by the way you set the glass. you use technology to save 11, 12% of the energy bill. we make petroleum out of wood. obviously it's a petroleum substitute. it's not regular petroleum but we make motor fuel out of wood and an off cream and to put in their trucks that hunt and

chevron refined into gasoline that can be dropped in to your gas tank to be used with regular gasoline. in fact, one of our agreements with the company as we would not give them any state support unless a major oil company agreed that they would refine this product with regular petroleum, which they do. so, we are in this, some pretty sophisticated, advanced manufacturing of different types in a state that has never been known for manufacturing. the big russian steel company has a steel mill in mississippi. it's a minimill on the front and. you know it uses a big carbon arc furnace to meltdown the steel but it's a pretty sophisticated mill on the backend for all the products they do. of the 600 some people who were

there, for about 550 is the first deal mill they have ever seen much less worked in. yet it was the most efficient steel mill in north america for the last two years. and we are very proud of it. we are also very proud that the first-year results, the average pay was $92,000 a year. not for the executives, for everybody who works there. primarily because of all the overtime. i mention that because manufacturing jobs are the highest paying jobs in my state. and we have a lot of different kinds of manufacturing. pat card from seattle washington the makers of peterbilt has its only engine manufacturing plant in columbus, mississippi. for years, anybody in the trucking business if you ordered a peterbilt you would ask for a

cummins engine are a caterpillar engine. they did not make their own engines. they decided to do that after they bought a european trucking company and then they had their first, cited their first engine class again it was in columbus, mississippi where european aerospace and defense systems builds helicopters for the united states army or just up the road where navistar builds the mrap, the mine resistant ambush in vehicles that has replaced the humvee in the middle east. we are as i say, we are not a state with a history of manufacturing like the midwestern states but as ge will tell you, we are a great place to manufacture. we have succeeded in replacing thousands of low-skilled, low-paying jobs with high skilled jobs, witnessed in the

year 2010 by our per-capita income in seven years had gone up 30%, even though there were fewer people working. employment was down about 2%, but income was up 30%. and it is largely because of low-skilled low-paying manufacturing jobs like toyota with nissan, with more shipbuilding, more aerospace and so won. by had been governor for a month and i was at mississippi state university our agriculture school and the professor said to make governor i think mississippi has three choices. they can innovate, they can emigrate or they can evaporate.

now that is a pretty cold way to tell the cold truth. if you are going to stay competitive in the global marketplace, you have to innovate. but innovation requires people, workforce that can deploy the new technology. they can make the innovation work. one of the perverse facts about that is generally innovation destroys jobs. generally, innovation means it takes fewer people to produce the same amount or even more units of whatever it is you would use. and that is just the fact. however that is how you stay competitive in the global marketplace. if you want to talk about america staying competitive we have got to use more innovation. we have got to keep going, but then we have to learn, how do we

create other jobs? how do we create things that we were not doing before? that is not easy. but i can tell you essential to it is to have a quality workforce. let me just close by saying something that every governor who has been involved in economic development can tell you. the first thing the customer wants, the first thing the company is looking for is a quality workforce. when toyota chose the city in 2007 for its eight north american assembly plants, the most sought after developmental projects in the united states that year, their first thing out of their mouth was, we pick mississippi because of the quality of the workforce. i think general electric tell you they like mississippi and continue to expand at mississippi because of the quality of the workforce.

obviously education is an underpinning to a quality workforce, but don't let that confuse you into thinking everybody has to go to the university. everybody has to be on the -- track because that is not true. in fact it is wrongheaded. i don't know what percentage, but a small percentage of the students who go to the university in america today need to do that to perform their job. what they go there for us because they need to go there so they can get an interview for their job. the diploma is the certificate that this person is worth considering for a job. even though most of the time, very little relationship which you learn in the university, in my case it was drinking and

chasing -- [laughter] very little relationship -- i am a lawyer so maybe i had more relation than i thought. [laughter] but the fact of the matter is we don't hire people to do what they learn to do at the university but we hire millions of people in the united states to learn to do what they learned in workforce training. yet, we have so stigmatized workforce training and workforce development and job training in the united states that it is almost shunned in our high schools. i can tell you how you got to be an shop at yazoo high in 1964 when i was there. do you know how you got in shop? you smoke them if you got caught smoking they sang it to shop because bad kids went to shop. but do you know that the average auto mechanic with five years

experience in jackson mississippi makes $50,000 a year? twice as much as the average income for a person who works in mississippi. how many of you would learn to do that by their counselor in high school? i think about my own, my anger son is 32. 15 years ago is marcia said reeves has decided he is going to go to the community college and learn a trade, but what they have they have said at the beauty parlor? marshall, what is wrong? that is literally what they would say the beauty parlor. what is wrong? we have got to de-stigmatized workforce training in this country if we are going to take advantage of what we can have for american competitiveness. because it is essential. if you do not have a workforce that can deploy the technology and put in place innovation, you

cannot get the productivity increases that are required. so i'm going to close without thought. if we are going to be an american, if we are going to be a country competitive with manufacturing then we will have to remember to focus, not to the exclusion of all else but if we have to focus on that. my old friend and fellow mississippi and, the ceo and founder of -- has a saying. fred says, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. we expect to be competitive in america and manufacturing. the main thing is for us to invest smartly in a workforce that companies like general

electric will be proud to have working in manufacturing in the united states. stick with the main thing. thank you. [applause] thank you. it's more fun to hear speeches like that when they are out of office, isn't it? [laughter] >> it's more fun giving them when they are out of office. >> i've got a couple of questions and then we -- first thing haley there is a lot of, we talk about the business like g. but there are a lot of small businesses in mississippi and around the country. how do you keep small business competitive and what do you have to think about that may be different in that ricard? >> first of almost of our jobs are created by small businesses. we shouldn't forget the tie between smaller business and bigger business because a lot of smaller business, there biggest

customer base is selling to bigger businesses and we should not forget that. we have tax system that is unfair to small business because most small business in the united states gets taxed on the individual rate. they are a partnership, or proprietorships that pay right now 38.9% and then you add what is going to be added on for the health care program. they have paid too high a rate of taxes and it needs to be reduced. secondly, they suffer more than you from regulation. ge, you have a few thousand people that deal with regulation. at it can make the difference between profitability and non-profitability. when you run up the cost of health insurance, we are talking about today, health insurance costs go up 10%, as it's a whole lot easier for great business to

spread that cost benefits for a small-business a small business. in fact, how does the small businessman hire more people than he is being threatened with a $1.5 trillion tax increase, the largest tax recent american history that falls mainly on employers and he doesn't know the cost of his health insurance or his obligations to provide it and then finally underdog frank, the government, what the government is going to do to the credit of people like that. we are just guessing as we go along so they have a harder time getting credit and a harder time keeping more of what they earned because of their taxes. >> you talked about and i can tell you the university of mississippi, mississippi high-tech schools, when you look at not only in mississippi but other governors as well with budgets, how can we manage our states and still preserve disk rate college system that has

been the source of competitiveness for a longtime? >> jeff a lot of people don't like my saying it but the truth is going to the university is -- about $5000 a year for the basic cost of a dorm and that has gone up seven times in the last eight years because state spending has not, has actually gone down in the last eight years. we have huge programs. we have federal and state money. a majority of college students in mississippi today get some form of student aid. some of our schools the very high percentage that would still a bargain and we need to keep it a bargain. but, right now we are able to continue to have record enrollment in our universities and our community colleges where

we do most of our workforce training. they have had record enrollment almost all of my eight years because it still not that expensive, and that doesn't say there is a lot of -- i worry about the debt. that is something we have to keep an eye on, did that of the students that are going but as long as we will keep it kind of within range and one of my community college president said as long as we keep pell grants affording the cost to go, we do have to keep an eye on cost but so far we are still making a. >> we thought about the mood of the country is not that great. the economy is still coming out of the deep recession. if you are out right now what would be the two or three things you would be pounding the way on in terms of how do we get the economy going and how do we get people unified let's say behind that task?

>> trap lott used to be the republican leader and trent and i went to college together. he likes to forget that he was the third year law student while i was a graduate. the difference between the governor and senator says senators talk and governors do things. governor hickenlooper was here earlier and he is a democratic governor of kind of a purple state and i'm a republican governor of a blood red state. and considered pretty far to the right from that circumstance. you can imagine how much we agree on, because we are both results oriented. people elected me to get things done. we had a huge budget surplus. we were the worst state with a huge budget deficit. we had the worst date in the country for lawsuit abuse. right now they are not satisfied with the results. we have a very anemic recovery

and i will give you just an example. it is just caught me totally by surprise. the january unemployment numbers have been hailed as if this was some great search. if you read the data, but 250,000 people got a job in january, and the obama labor department says in the same month more than 450,000 people, almost twice as many, quit looking for a job because they became so discouraged with their inability to find one. what kind of recovery is that? what kind of recovery is 1.2 million people who dropped out of the workforce last year, the 3 million people have dropped out of the workforce in the last three years? i mean there are 2 million more unemployed, but that is because you don't have to 3 million who quit looking. to me, one of the most

encouraging things have governorship is when the labor participation rate, that is the rate, the percentage of adults who are looking for a job or have one, went from 60% to 64% in eight years. that is because people thought, i can get a job. keeps her unemployment rate higher than it would be otherwise but nationally, the country has come down to meet us. from 67% of people in the workforce to again, 63.7%. just incredibly low by historical standards, because people can't find a job. i spoke the other day at washington and 2000 college students. i told them one of the things they need to be concerned about his old people, my age, clinging to their jobs.

if you look at the data from the labor department, the percentage of people 55 and older who are working is historically very high. and that means jobs are not opening for young people and sure enough the percentage of people who are under 30 years old, who have a job is historically low. and those, the ones who do have a job are not the one up because they are being blocked out. why? because the 64-year-olds are scared to death. they are scared of this. i would say rotten economy, anemic economy, weak economy. it is better than it was you know two years ago, but on main street, it's very hard to tell the difference between the recovery and the recession. shreveport louisiana or jackson mississippi are particularly a small town. >> you came out of the crisis called hurricane katrina with

your reputation going up. what is the one thing we can all learn about leadership that you learned during hurricane katrina? >> well the thing i would say is be lucky enough. >> the senate is about to gavel and so we are going to leave the discussion here but you can find it here later tonight in its entirety. the senate taking up morning business and it 4:30 said they will consider the nomination of a florida judge to the u.s. 11th circuit and we will have the procedural vote on that nomination scheduled for 5:30. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain dr. barry black will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. lord god omnipotent, you are above all nations. take our lives

and use them for your purposes. cleanse our hearts, forgive our sins and teach us to amend our ways as your transforming grace changes our lives. today, inspire our senators to be true servants of your will. in these challenging times, give them the wisdom to labor for justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with you. keep their minds and spirits steady as they strive to please you. we pray in your sacred name. amen.

the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington, d.c., february 13, 2012. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable christopher coons, a senator from the state of delaware, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: the leadership time is reserved, and under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 4:30 p.m. with senators permitted to speak

therein for up to ten minutes each.

the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: following leader remarks, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 4:30 today. following that morning business, the senate will be in a period of -- we will go to executive session to consider the nomination of adalberto jordan to be circuit judge for the 11th circuit. at 5:30, there will be a cloture vote on the jordan nomination. we hope to be able to yield back postcloture time and confirm this nomination this evening. mr. president, the -- in the 1950's, america embarked on the largest public works project in its history, a new web of interstate highways. this came about as a result of then-president eisenhower reflecting upon a time when he was given an assignment as a young major to bring a caravan of vehicles across the country

as part of his duties in the army. it was a terrible experience. roads why dilapidated, rutted. it was something that he never forgot. when he was president of the united states, he decided something should be done about it. and this was really a tremendous undertaking. 47,000 miles of highways would for the first time connect businesses and communities from sea to shining sea. president eisenhower, of course a republican, said the investment would pave the way for a new era of american growth, and he said america will be a nation of great prosperity. it will be more than that. it will be a nation that is getting ahead every day. the expanding horizon is one that staggers the imagination. so said president eisenhower. president eisenhower said a new highway system was essential to our economy, our safety and our progress as a nation. but, mr. president, that's just as true today as it was in 1954.

today, america depends on more than four million miles of roadways to keep our economy humming. we use those roads to take the kids across town, to school, and to take products across the nation to market. with a system of highways, railways and bridges on which the american economy depends and which we invest our resources during the last century has fallen into a state of disrepair. mr. president, this is hard to comprehend, but more than 70,000 of our bridges are structurally deficient. they need major repairs or to be replaced completely, 70,000 bridges. every month in america, enough pedestrians are killed to fill a jumbo jet. many of these deaths could have been prevented by proper sidewalks and crosswalks. bus and train ridership grows every year while public

transportation dollars shrink every year, and one of every five miles of american roads, not up to safety standards. so, mr. president, we have 70,000 bridges that are structurally deficient, and we have 20% of our roads not up to safety standards. the crumbling infrastructure is a terrible drag on our economy, but this crisis is also an opportunity. by rebuilding our transportation system, we can put two million americans back to work and boost our economy right away. the surface transportation bill that's on the floor now this week is one of the most important pieces of legislation we'll consider the entire year. we'll help modernize our transit system, help rebuild america's roads and bridges and create or save millions of american middle-class jobs and will do it in a fiscally responsible way. democrats and republicans agree that making america's transportation system great again will bolster our economy, and that's certainly what this bill is all about.

a bipartisan bill, sponsored, of course, by the chairman of the committee barbara boxer and the ranking member of the committee, senator inhofe. president reagan called a world-class transportation system an investment into tomorrow that we must make today. so it's no wonder this strong bipartisan surface transportation legislation passed the committee unanimously. i am cautiously optimistic that a spirit of cooperation will continue this week, and i hope that the junior senator from south carolina did not speak for the majority of republicans last week when he said this -- quote -- "we don't have shared goals with the democrats." end of quote. i'd like to believe republicans share our goal in strengthening the economy and creating millions of jobs for american workers. i'd like to believe they share a goal as eisenhower and clinton and reagan did of building a world-class transportation system to support a world-class economy. this week, republicans have an opportunity to prove they share

these goals. the surface transportation jobs bill is too important to get bogged down with ideological amendments, unrelated legislation that would limit women's access to health care has no place on a transportation bill. so let's stay laser focused on our most important task, putting two million americans back to work, rebuilding our roadways and railways. together we can keep this nation, as president eisenhower said, moving ahead every day. mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: today, president obama released a budget that isn't really a budget at all. it's a campaign document.

the president's goal isn't to solve our problems but to ignore them for another year, which will only ensure that they get even worse. once again, the president is shirking his responsibility to lead by using this budget to divide us. the game plan is perfectly clear. rather than reach out to congress to craft a consensus budget, the president will take this budget on the road as he did today and talk about the parts he thinks audiences will like. what he won't say is that it's bad for job creation, bad for seniors and that it will make the economy worse. the president's budget is bad for jobs because it includes the biggest tax hike in history and continues policies like the democrats' health care law that are making it harder for small businesses to hire. a little more than a year ago, the president extended current tax rates because he thought raising them would be bad for

jobs. today, he will call for raising them anyway because he thinks it's good for him. the president's budget is bad for our seniors because it doesn't protect the security of medicare and social security and assure those programs keep careening towards insolvency. the president's budget is bad for our country's economic security because yet again the president failed to take the prime opportunity this budget provides to address the nation's $15 trillion debt. contrary to the president's claims out on the road, this budget is literally loaded with deficit reduction gimmicks that would trigger an i.r.s. audit for anybody else and make our current economic situation even worse. and the president isn't going to mention any of those things, but americans deserve to know the whole truth about this budget.

they deserve to know why the president's own party doesn't want to vote on it and sea his own top advisors are trying to deflect serious questions about what's really going on here. yesterday, the president's chief of staff said that the reason this budget won't get anywhere in the senate is that it would take 60 votes to pass, 60 votes to pass, and the democrats don't have that many votes on their own. well, i would suggest that mr. lu review his sunday briefing materials a little more closely next time. as someone who has run office of management and budget for two different presidents, he knows as well as anybody in washington that a simple majority is all it takes to pass a budget resolution here in the senate, a simple majority. in other words, democrats could pass this president's budget without a single republican vote, not one. the inconvenient truth that president obama and his own top

advisors don't want to admit is that this budget isn't going anywhere because the president's own party doesn't want to have anything whatsoever to do with it. indeed, the majority leader here in the senate has already declared it dead on arrival. now, jack lu knows this as well as i do, and the fact that he does proves beyond any doubt that the president has no intention of this budget ever actually being implemented. if you can't even count on -- if he can't even count on members of his own party to support it, who does he expect is going to support it? the truth is, democrats want to have it both ways. the president wants to be able to take his budget around the country and talk about the parts of it he thinks people will like, and democrats in congress want to be able to avoid a vote on it because it's so damaging for job creation, seniors and the economy. well, if anybody wants to know

what a failure of leadership looks like, this is it. this is it. three years ago, president obama promised to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term. he hasn't even come close. and here he is once again proposing the same failed policies that have prolonged this economic crisis well into the president's fourth year in office. after the national debt increased under his watch by more than 40%, he is still throwing good money after bad. he is still spending money we don't have on things we don't need. he still refuses to lead. and democrats in congress have been more than happy to enable it. they haven't passed a budget of their own in three years, and all indications are they will not pass one this year either. a failure of congressional leadership that will surely go down in history.

at this point, nothing seems capable of rousing this president to action. every day, we hear the alarm bill sounding from across the atlantic. it doesn't seem to phase him. every day we hear the warnings that our situation is unsustainable. just a few months ago, the unthinkable happened when america's credit rating was actually lowered for the first time in history. and what's this president's response? a budget he knows even his own party won't support. that's his response to this $15 trillion debt. so this is a charade. a charade. the only question is when this president's own refusal to lead will catch up to all the rest of us. mr. president, i yield the floor.

mr. cornyn: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: mr. president, i want to continue the comments along the line of our distinguished republican leader and talk about the president's proposed budget that was released today. unfortunately, the president's budget proposes more debt, more spending, and higher taxes. it's bad news for job creation and for america's job creators and portends nothing good -- indeed, only only nuss, does it portend ominously for our country getting back on the right economic track and creating the kind of growth that will generate jobs and prosperity. the president's proposed budget, again, ignores his own bipartisan fiscal commission, the simpson-bowles commission which concluded in december of

2010 that america faced a moment of truth, because we simply had spent more money than we were taking in for too long, and it accumulated too much debt, which was killing economic growth and threatening to turn us into a western european country, which we see today in the euro zone is in jeopardy. one week from today millions of americans will celebrate presidents day, our national honor that honors all of our commanders in chief. but this year, president obama will share a distinction that no other president has ever had. he has proposed a budget that dwarfs all the debt accumulated over 22 decades by all of his predecessors. when president obama took office

in january, 2009, the national debt was about $10 trillion, or broken down for every man, woman, and child in america, about $33,000. something that neither political party could be particularly proud of. but today, it's far worse. more than $15 trillion, an increase of more than 50% in three years. and under this budget proposal that the president released today, federal borrowing will never stop. the national debt will more than double to $26 trillion or $75,000 for every man, woman, and child in america. simply put, the president's proposed budget makes it worse, not better. we all know we can't keep this up, and the sad thing is the president understands this, too. but simply refuses to provide

the leadership necessary to put us on the right path. we've heard it before, but i'll repeat it again. former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral mike mullen said that the debt is the biggest threat to our national security. well, how could that be? well it's because as admiral mullen knows and as we are now learning, that when you live in a fiscally constrained times, that some of the first cuts that occur are to the defense department. in fact, while the defense department incurs roughly 20% of discretionary spending, it as hast so far been planned for 50% of the cuts, increasing the national security risk to every american. after promising the american people that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, the president's most recent plan means that america will have an annual deficit of more than a trillion dollars for every year of his

presidency. that's right a trillion dollars of deficit for each of four years of his first term in office. this is unprecedented, and this is dangerous. it's dangerous to our prosperity and to our nation's future. and while the president seems to be unwilling to come to grips with the nature of our debt crisis, my constituents in texas understand that the national debt poses very real security risks because they are already beginning to see the cuts that are occurring or are planned in our national security spending. my constituents in texas are also concerned in a state that happens to be growing fast faster than almost any other part of the country that the threat of higher taxes discourages the people we look to to create jobs, to start new businesses. and rather than have a comprehensive review of our tax code that the simpson-bowles commission proposed, this budget proposes to target

certain industries like the domestic oil and gas industry, despite rising prices at the pump. the white house seems oblivious to what would happen to the jobs that are generated by this industry, and all the revenue that the government would lose if we outsource even more of our energy production to foreign nations. the president appears to feel like small businesses are undertaxed because the so-called millionaires tax that he has proposed will hit many small businesses that we depend upon to create jobs, and indeed, as senator mcconnell just and, it was only -- acknowledged, it was only december of 2010 when the president himself agreed to extend expiring tax provisions because as he stated, higher taxes would be the last thing you would want to do during a fragile economic recovery because we know it will

serve as a wet blanket, it will be a disincentive on job creation. we need a serious discussion on tax reform. the simpson-bowles commission made a responsible proposal. not perfect, but a good start. but the president has simply ignored the recommendations of his own bipartisan commission since those recommendations were made in december, 2010. well, the president's budget also proposes about $1.9 trillion in new taxes, as i indicate. the good news from my perspective, we've already had a number of votes last year on -- on these kinds of tax increases and the congress has rejected them. the bad news is that these assumed tax increases help mask the true size of the deficits in the president's proposed budget, and will do damage to any hope of sustained job

creation. and then there's the phony accounting, the gimmicks. and, unfortunately, mr. president, all you have to do is looking at the gallup poll to see in what regard congress is held, and it's the kind of gamesmanship and the gimmicks in this budget which contribute to people's cynicism about their elected officials and about their government. what does the president do? he says we're going to save money from future war spending and we're going to use that as an offset for new spending and to reduce the deficit. but i have -- i have to observe that that is cynical at best. his budget is claiming artificial savings from money that never would be spent in the first place for wars that hopefully will never be fought. but he's saying because we won't fight this some unspecified war, then we are going to take

that savings as if we would, and save it and offset it to try to balance the budget. even this gimmick cannot hide the fact the president wants to continue the record-level stimulus spending that began on his watch. you'll recall that christina roemer, head of the white house council of coming comik advisors, were told if he you pass this $780 billion stimulus bill, unemployment will never he never go above 8%. if you look at the same charts and what they say about the first quarter of 2012, they project unemployment at 6%. well, obviously the stimulus failed to meet its own projections and what president obama wants to us do is to do more of the same and to spend more borrowed money. the vacuum of leadership that starts at the white house extends, unfortunately, to this

chamber. a senate led by majority leader reid, which he has no plans to present a budget, for the third year in a row. even before the president released his budget, the senate majority leader has already told the american people that the senate will ignore it. he was quoted in the press saying it would be foolish for the majority to propose a budget. why? because he didn't want to sun his members of -- subject his members of his own caucus to hard votes,to to tough decisions. these are exactly the kind of tough decisions the american people sent us here to make and exactly the kind of tough decisions every household and every small business in america is expected to make in order to cope with this economic crisis that we find ourselves in. but this is exactly what majority leader reid has chosen to protect his members from making. why? because it will help solve the problem?

no. because he doesn't want them to be held accountable in the next election. well, we know it's been more than a thousand days since the senate passed a budget and it's just unthinkable to me that we would fail to meet one of our most basic responsibilities. can you imagine a family or a small business operating without a budget? and we know why it's so important and why the absence of a budget has encouraged and facilitated runaway spending because when you budget you figure out how much money you have and you figure out what you must have and what your priorities are, you figure out what you'd like to have but maybe you can't afford to have now so you need to put off, and then you figure out the things you'd want but really can't afford that you're going to have to do without. congress is simply under -- under senator reid and the democratic majority in the senate refused to meet its responsibilities for fiscal discipline. and it's clear that they're

running out of excuses. senator mcconnell pointed out that jack lu, the president's new chief of staff, said the reason why democrats can't pass a budget even though they hold the majority, even though they control the agenda is because of those mean old republicans, because it takes 60 votes to pass a budget. well, mr. lu has been around a long time and he knows that's not true. i would have hoped that he would have corrected the record because he knows and we all know that it takes a simple majority of the senate to pass a budget. but before you can pass a budget, majority leader reid has to call it up and bring it on the floor of the senate and to schedule a vote, which he has simply refused to do. so instead of acting responsibly and proposing a budget and voting on a budget and allowing it to be debated, the president has chosen to take the low road and last year simply to attack

chairman of the house budget committee, paul ryan, and house republicans for the budget they passed. it's not perfect but it's trying to do their job and to make a responsible proposal but rather than meet that responsible proposal with another counterproposal and to try to work out the differences during the legislative process, the president, unfortunately, took the low road and attacked and attacked and attacked, rather than trying to offer a viable solution. well, it should come as no surprise that under the president's watch the national debt has grown to more than $15 trillion and is now larger than the united states economy. that's right our debt is 100% of our gross domestic product. government spending is now 25% of our economy, unfortunately, revenue is about 15%, so we have a 10% gap which represents

the annual deficit, and the cumulative deficits make up that $15 trillion debt. and we know our nation has lost its triple a credit rating from standard & poor's because they're becoming concerned about our willingness, indeed about our ability to meet our most basic responsibilities. all three major rating agencies have assigned a negative outlook to our nation's long-term rating, and what that means is potentially the specter of higher interest rates that we have to pay when china and other countries buy our sovereign debt. and a 1% increase, if they became worried about our ability to pay our debts, they would simply charge us more and that would wipe out any savings that we might otherwise be able to make through cuts. well, the warning sound has been heard and the fiscal tsunami that many budget experts in the past have said would not hit

this nation is fast approaching. it is a challenge that faces the country today, not just tomorrow, and we need solutions. and the way that the american people feel this overhang of debt and the lack of clarity with regard to taxes and regulation in our future is in the stagnant job growth that we've seen. no sensible job creator is going to start a new business or to expand an existing business with such huge debt and such great uncertainty about their taxes, the regulatory overreach and the economic environment. they're simply not going to do it. and all we have to do is look across the atlantic ocean and watch our european friends and what they're going through today and see what will happen when governments spend and debt -- overspend and debt is allowed to go -- to run unchecked. i guess what's so disappointing, mr. president, is that president obama has had multiple

opportunities to embrace a bipartisan fiscal overhaul plan, and the one i keep mentioning is the simpson bowles plan. and the reason i do is because it's his debt commission that he appointed. it was bipartisan. we had three republican senators who were on that commission who voted for it. $4 trillion worth of cuts, tax reform that would lower the marginal tax rates, eliminate trillion-dollar-plus in expenditures and would create economic growth and certainty for our economy and help put america back to work in the meantime. unfortunately, the president, instead of embracing that bipartisan proposal, the budget submission he makes today indicates the president has chosen once again to remain on the sidelines and to campaign rather than try to come up with real solutions. the president's plan fails to right the ship and will continue to lead us down a path of more

debt, higher taxes, and runaway spending. a path that has brought the economies of many european countries to the brink. mr. president, i yield the floor and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: plirntionz ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. portman: mr. president, i'm here to talk about the president's budget, which he submitted today. in an area of trillion-dollar deficits and an historic debt and the greatest level of government spending since world war ii, i believe the president's submission today was not a responsible budget. instead of keeping his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half in his first term, this budget assumes continued deficits this year and next in the trillion-dollar range. given the promises president obama made when he came to the white house and how poorly the last budget was received by republicans and democrats alike in congress -- in fact, it was voted on here on the floor of the senate and it was defeated by a vote of 97-0 -- given those things, i'd hoped that president obama would step forward and turn the rhetoric into action and put forward a responsible budget to deal with the fiscal

problems that our country faces. no more punting, no more gimmicks, a real budget that honestly confronts the fiscal crisis we've got and helps to get us back on track. instead, we see a document today that's really more tailored toward campaign talking points than it is addressing the $15 trillion debt that we now have, and, again, these trillion-dollar deficits. the president begins in this budget by proposing a new stimulus of $350 billion. and, by the way, that's $350 billion with no offsets, in other words, no spending reductions to pay for it. the president's budget then claims $5.3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. as i've looked at this budget today, it seems to me only a minuscule amount of this is from new spending cuts. in fact, as i read this budget, $19.9 -- 19.9% of the claimed deficit reduction consists of the following. one, tax increases, about

$1.9 trillion. two, iraq-afghanistan war savings, which is viewed by most here in congress as a gimmick, on both sides of the aisle, in other words, by spending money that was not going to be spend anyway. that's $848 billion. third, already enacted discretionary caps and entitlement changes, primarily from the budget control act. these were the so-called sequesters or across-the-board spending cuts that congress has already enacted. that's $1.7 trillion. and, finally, net interest savings from those policies, which the budget says is going to be $800 billion. so out of the claimed $5.3 trillion in deficit reduction, that leaves about . .1%, $4 billion, of the claimed savings over the decade. so 99.9% of the deficit reduction that he claims is either from tax increases or, again, changes in spending that either have already occurred or they're not going to occur. on top of that, the president

hid in his baseline so the baseline he assumes for his spending, he hides about $479 billion in new spending. now, this is on pell grants and on a medicare doc fix. so the claimed savings, even the $4 billion, vanish completely. overall, when compared to the current policy baseline, the president would tax $4 trillion more, spend about $2 trillion more over the next ten years of this budget. the yearly deficit would end the decade in the $600 billion range, even assuming peace, prosperity and historically low interest rates. and the national debt over the next ten years would rise by $11 trillion, for a total debt of over $25 trillion. ten years from now. the main tax hike would end the 2001-2003 tax cuts for singles making over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000. there will be a lot of debate on the floor regarding this tax

policy over the next year as we come toward the end of the year when all of these tax cuts, $5 trillion of them, are scheduled to end. but just with regard to this tax cut, this will result in lower economic growth and more job losses, according to the congressional budget office. they have now testified before the budget committee as to the fact that this will result in a higher unemployment next year. this is in large part because, according to internal revenue service data, 48% of small business income -- 48% of small business income -- would be subject to higher taxes under this budget proposal. so i support tax reform. i think it's important. but simply taking the current code and adding higher tax rates is going to have an impact on small business and, therefore, on our economy and on jobs. and this is ultimately about jobs and it's about everyday economic concerns that people in ohio and around the country ha have. in this budget document, we do see some honesty but it doesn't make me optimistic at all.

acknowledging the impact this budget will have on the economy, the president's budget actually concedes unemployment rates next year higher than this year and the year after higher than this year. his prediction is that unemployment rates will be 8.9% in 2012 and 8.6% in 2013. totally unack sejm ac -- unaccee and a testament to the fact that washington can't rely on short-term sweeteners and balance the budget in order to get this economy out of our fiscal mess. mr. president, again, i'm disappointed in the budget we've seen today. i would hope that the senate will work its will, put together its own budget, taking the president's budget and other ideas but then coming up with something that actually does address the very real fiscal problems that we face, brings such a budget to the floor of this senate, have it debated by both sides, work out what we haven't done in the senate for over 1,000 days, which is prepare a blueprint for the

fiscal and economic future of our country. until we get such a budget, i fear we'll continue to see this lack of economic growth and job loss that all of us would like to see addressed. thank you, mr. president. i note the absence of a quorum. i yield the floor and note 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 nebraska. mr. johanns: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be set aside. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. johanns: thank you,

mr. president. mr. president, i rise today to comment on the developments of the past few weeks which, in my view, have been both incredibly tragic but maybe, on the other hand, reassuring. on one hand, it's tragic that our own government launched an attack on first amendment rights. the president launched this assault unapologetically in the black-and-white print of a rule that clearly restricts religious liberties. it says contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs must be provided free of charge to women. what the president did not anticipate by his rule was the backlash that it would generate. it is reassuring, on the other hand, to know americans will make their voices heard when their constitutional rights are being trampled.

for the first time in a long time in many, many years, people of many different faiths as well as the defenders of the constitution have found a unifying rallying cry. they are sending the message that enough is enough it's time to stop this administration's march into every single facet of our lives. at issue is one of the very basic rights in this country. it is one of the basic rights that this country was founded to protect. i.tit's the right to freely exercise religion, a right the president pledged to uphold when taking the oath of office. many americans were lulled into complacency in 2009 by promises

that pearntly the president did not intend to uphold. back then i came to the senate floor to address this identical issue. in the thick of the very contentious health care debate, i urged my pro-life colleagues and the pro-life community to stand up against the health care bill that was being considered here in the senate. i pointed out that the hyde amendment, which prohibits taxpayer dollars from being used for abortion, was absolutely absent in the bill, something that now appears to be no accident whatsoever. on that day, i shared national right-to-life's very real concerns that the bill -- quote -- "tries to conceal that

unpopular reality with layers of contrived definitions and hollow bookkeeping requirements" -- unquote. unfortunately, though, empty promises that the bill respected life were not enough to convince my presumably pro-life colleagues to support the bill. after all, they had heard the promises straight from the president's mouth. remember when he told americans that -- quote -- "under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." unquote. congress ignored the warnings, charged forward, blurry-eyed, voting in the middle of the night, and passed the health care bill that we all now know

violates the very conscience rights the president himself, by his own words, promised to protect. now, as the law is being put into place, we are truly heading into unchartered waters for this nation. on friday, after weeks of criticism, the president announced a so-called compromise, and we were told this day, today, by his chief of staff that it will be that way or it will be the highway. so what is the compromise? it would still force every plan to offer free contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs, even plans offered by religious organizations with deeply held

religious beliefs. now, the president claims religious employers with objections -- well, you see, they won't technically be required to offer the coverage because insurance companies will be forced to offer it -- free. what? are we as americans expected to believe that the many religious organizations paying the employer's share of the health care costs are not really paying for these services? what kind of an accounting gimmick is is that in what kind of sleight of hand? the president is blinded by his ideology. you see, mr. president, this fight is about religious and moral beliefs. it's not about accounting.

what we have witnessed this past week is another attempt to hide the unpopular reality with layers of misleading rhetoric and hollow promises. the truth: the truth is that many individuals who object to contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs as a matter of religious principle will still have to provide them and pay for them. don't fool yourself. they aren't going to be free. drug companies don't just walk in and give away drugs free. pharmacists don't dispense them free. the cost, ofng, will b of course passed along to every employer and every american in the form of premiums that we pay. calling these services "free" is

flat wrong. there is a cost, and, unfortunately, it's a high one at that. they come at the cost of our religious freedoms. the administration's position is that it can force insurers to provide contraceptive coverage for -- quote -- "free" -- unquote -- because the drugs are cheaper than the cost of being pregnant. our government said that at the very highest level. that logic is unprecedented, and it is downright disturbing. who's to say that in days to come the administration won't order health plans to just cover abortion?

free on the premise that it's cheaper than the cost of prenatal care, birth, and caring for a human life? and the same twisted logic could apply for physician-assisted suicide and a whole array of controversial procedures. now, many out there may try to refute this by repeating the president's claim that the law prohibits maneprohibits mandate, but that same claim promised to protect the religious liberties he is now forcing many of us to violate. well, many of us will not sit idly by and watch this unprecedenced effort, and i am not alone. the president should listen to the country. the gimmicks of the 2009 bill

may have put some to sleep. this time americans aren't being fooled. americans of all faiths, all beliefs, of different views on a whole variety of topics share a love for their constitution and the rights embodied in that constitution. well, they're awake now, and their eyes are fully open. as a catholic myself, i could not be more proud of the catholic bishops for standing up strong. their statement rejecting the president's smoke-and-mirrors compromise is compelling, and it is spot on. the bishops said, and i'm quoting, "today's proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion into the internal governance of religious

institutions and to threaten government coercion of religious people, to violate their most deeply held convictions." unquote. and they go on to say, quote, "in a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and its founding principle, we should not be limited to negotiating within these parameters. the only complete solution is for h.h.s. to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services" -- unquote. as we were told by the president's chief of staff, negotiating is offer. it will not be our way or the highway. wcialg the bishopwell, the bish.

the bishops called the president's attempt to appease them unacceptable. yes, america has been awakened. and now congress must act on their objections. there is legislation waiting to be debated that would protect the religious liberties granted in our constitution. the legislation introduced by senator roy blunt holds president obama to his promises. this legislation continues the 200-year tradition of this great nation, ensuring those who believe in the sanctity of life are not forced to have a hand i someone else's death. it protects conscience rights across the board. there is a bottom line, and the bottom line is this:

if president obama is allowed to dictate to religious organizations what beliefs they will be allowed to hold or not to hold, then this country we all love will be a much different place, and it will being a much different place for our children and grandchildren. you see, if the president succeeds here, then our constitution would no longer be the defining document of a great nation. well, we do know the position of this administration, and i stand here today to categorically reject it. mr. president, thank you. i yield the floor, and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. corker: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee. mr. corker: you'd like to vitiate -- i'd like unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. corker: thank you, mr. president. i rise today -- i came down today to talk about the highway bill that we're on, and i just want to say, i appreciate the way we're dealing with each committee's portion of the bill as we go along, and i know we're on the base bill at present. but before i get into that, i do want to make some comments about the budget. i know that we've had an

inability in the united states senate to even pass a budget over the last 1,100 days. i know the presiding officer, a friend of mine, led a city and had to do this each year. we had to do the same thing in our state and city. and i am -- i think all of us who come to this body are always shocked at the lack of fiscal discipline that takes place in washington in general. but i have to say in looking at the administration's budget that was put forth today, i really think it makes a mockery of the american people. our state has been blessed to have governors who were republicans and democrats. we've had people on both sides of the aisle. our state has been governed well for a long, long time. and i really believe that if a governor of our state put forth a budget like the budget that was put forth today, they would be run out of our state.

because it's not a serious budget. and i know the presiding officer and i have been to many, many meetings looking at some of the proposals that have been put out by groups like bowles-simpson and it's just stunning to me that when we know the biggest issue that our country faces is ourselves -- meaning our own lack of ability to deal with the fiscal issues that are before us and to deal with all the reforms that we know have to take place -- when we know that we are our greatest enemy, to have a document that's been put out the way this one has been put out in almost a flippant way, almost in a way to say, you know, we don't have to deal with this issue sear -- the serious issues that our country has to face, it's just -- it's a pretty unbelievable situation. there's no focus on the kind of tax reform that i think so many of us

support that would broaden the base and lower marginal rate and generate tremendous economic growth. there's no focus on dealing with programs like medicare and social security that people depend upon, that people have counted upon all their life, and yet we know they're not going to exist in a very short amount of time unless we do something. instead this document totally puts its head in the sand on these issues. it just doesn't deal with it. mr. president, our presiding officer, i'll say to you that i think it's irresponsible for a president facing the kind of issues that our country is facial, who's seeking another -- country is facing, who is seeking another term not to lay out what he believes is the approach for to us deal with these issues. just as i believe whoever the republican nominee is, i think it's incumbent upon them to do exactly the same they think. i think that all of us need to know what our chief executive

officer's plans are for the country, provision of this country as it relates to, again the most important issue that we have to deal with. the thing that's most appalling is that we have millions of people looking for jobs right now. unemployment is exceptionally high, and i think almost every member of this body that talks to people out there who actually are part of small business and treat jobs, what they will tell you is one of things they're concerned about is the future of our country. that's the biggest overhang that's keeping them from investing. these issues are tied together in a most unique way. the greatest threat to our future is our inability to deal with fiscal issues. our chief executive officer, the president, has laid out a laughable document, one that really, again, makes a mockery of the american people. and yet at the same time it's that document and it's us acting on real fiscal skphreupb --

discipline that would drive our economy to grow and create jobs. i'm very disopponented which brings me to the -- i'm very disappointed which brings me to the point at hand. we have a highway bill, the first time we've dealt with the highway bill since i've been in the united states senate for five years. we keep kicking the can down the road. it is my understanding the e.p.w. committee passed this out 100%. passed this out. apparently did some very good work working together to pass a base bill out. it's also my understanding, though, that the finance committee, which was charged with paying for this, has come up with pay-fors that work like this. we're going to spend this money over a two-year period, but we're not going to pay for it -- we're going to pay for it over a ten-year period. again, i look at the presiding officer, somebody i know who was responsible in the job that he had prior to being here. i'm sure he is in this job too.

but here's what we're doing. we're going to have republicans down here constantly railing against the president's budget. my friends on the other side of the aisle won't do that out of respect, but i'm sure many of them are wondering what in the world has been handed to us. at the same time we have a piece of legislation on the floor that we're going to be dealing with that, candidly, does a lot of the same things. we're going to spend money over the next two years, and yet we're going to pay for it over the next ten. mr. president, i think that is absolutely irresponsible, and i hope that before this highway bill leaves the floor, will either -- we'll either reduce the amount we're spending on it which i hate to see happen because i know we do need to spend money on infrastructure around our country. or we'll figure out a way to spend for it where if we're going to spend money over a two-year period, we will also generate revenues to pay for that over a two-year period. this bill does not do that. i do want to remind my

republican friends, and i know we had republican support in the finance committee, that one of the things we railed about most with the health care bill which divided our country in so many ways, is that we took six years' worth of costs and ten years' worth of revenues. all of us said it was a sleight of hand, and it was a sleight of hand. there is no question. it was not honest in the way it was presented. but even since that time, this most controversial bill, what we've done is actually moved away, and now we're talking about in this highway bill spending money over a two-year period, but using pay-fors over a ten-year period. so that means our respected presiding officer, what that means is the next time we pass a highway bill under this same mode, we're just continuing to run up tremendous debts for these young people who are sitting before us as pages, who come here to learn about how our country operates to, see houflly

senators -- hopefully senators acting in a responsible way. mr. president, the fact is there will be a lot of focus today on the president's budget, and i know there's a lot of disappointment on both sides of the aisle regarding what that budget says. but the thing that we can do in this body over the next week or so, as we're looking at this highway bill, is to ensure that we don't fall into that same trap here in congress in passing a highway bill that's not paid for, that really uses future revenues, which we'll probably never see because we'll flip it out and change it and use it in another way, right after this bill is passed. mr. president, i thank you for listening, and i yield the floor. and i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call: quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. mr. johnson: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. johnson: i ask unanimous consent to speak for not more than 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. johnson: i came to the floor before the debate on president obama's just submitted budget desends into the argument over the details that are not going to have a great effect on our debt and deficit issue. i'd like to take a look and ask the american people to take a look at the larger picture here and do it with a few charts and graphs. the first chart i'd like to put up describes for my standpoint what the real root cause of the problem is. it is the size, the scope, all the rules, all the regulations, all the government intrusion into our lives and the

cost of government. what this graph depicts is as of last year the federal government was 24% of the size of our economy. 24 cents of every dollar that our economy generates flows through the federal government. when you add on state and local governments which are about 16%, the total take of government at all levels of the united states now last year was 39.2%. again, 39 cents of every dollar flows through some form of government, and, mr. president, john about you but i don't find government particularly effective or efficient at so many things that they do. and to make that relative, we're watching what is happening to greece right now. it's in flames because that social experiment is collapsing. but if you compare the united states in terms of its size of government to european style socialist nations, you can see norway spends 40% of g.d.p. on its government, greece, we just mentioned greece, 7%.

italy -- 47%. italy, who had a mini debt crisis of their own, 9% and france is 53%. mr. president, unfortunately, america has arrived at the lower limit, the lower level of european style socialism and that is not a good metric. the next chart that i want to describe so many people i understand want a balanced approach. revenue and spending reform to address the debt and deficit issue. listen, i want more revenue too, but i think we need to raise revenue the old fashioned way by growing our economy. everything we do in this country, everything we do in washington needs to be targeted toward economic growth. but i think what this chart describes is the fact we have a spending problem. it's not that we tax americans too little, it's because we spend way too much. ten years ago, our federal government spent $1.9 trillion.

last year we spent $3.6 trillion. we doubled spending in just ten years and of course the president's budget that he just unveiled today will spend $3.8 trillion in 2007. and -- 2013. and nobody is cutting cutting spending. all we're talking about the reducing the rate of growth in spending. you can tell by the chart. a aer court president obama's budget, ten years in the future in 2022 he's proposed spending 5.8 trmedz. last year's -- trillion dollars last year's budge would have spent $4.7 trillion. that's what the argument is about, increasing it to either $5.8 trillion or $4.7 trillion. another way of looking at that is looking at ten-year spending numbers. in the 1990's, a very successful decade, the federal government spent $16 trillion over a ten-year period, $16 trillion. over the last ten years, we

spent $28 trillion. and, again, the debate moving forward is president obama in his just released budget wants to spend $47 trillion over the next ten years. the house budget from last year would have spent $40 trillion. by the way, when you hear about that six or seven trillion dollars worth of draconian cuts, that's what we're talking about. all we're talking about is reducing the rate of growth in spending in the size of government. now, you see an awful lot of charts describing the nation's debt. and how it has exploded. i like this chart because we started on september 30, 1987, when our entire federal debt stood at $2.3 trillion. mr. president, it took us 200 years to incur $2.3 trillion worth of debt. last year in the budget control act, we gave the president authority basically, i didn't,

i voted against it but this body gave the president authority to increase the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. we'll blow through that debt limit in around two years. think of that. see you see what's happening. 2001, $5.8 trillion, 2008 right before president obama entered office, we were at $10 trillion. currently $15.3 trillion and the president's just released budget, he's proposing adding $10.6 trillion to our debt over the next ten years, to come in at a whopping $25.9 trillion. the question is, will we really be able to borrow that much or will we face the day i fear,the, the day of reckoning when investors look at the united states and say, you know, i'm not going to loan you any more money or what's more likely to happen is they'll say i'll loan you money but at dramatically higher interest rates. that's what we need to be concerned about. that's what a debt crisis is

going to be. take look a agree greece, take a look at italy. one more chart i want to shoip here showing the extent of the problem of the unfunded liability together with the debt. this is last year's chart. we haven't been able to get the new one printed yet. but last year the trustees of both medicare and social security published the unfunded liability of those two programs. when you add those unfunded liabilities to the federal debt and what we owe federal retirees, the total liability of the united states as reported last year was $99 trillion. the new figure for this year, the accountants in have rejiggered the figures saying it's now $72 trillion, but whichever figure you change take, if you compare that to the private net assets of the united states -- household assets, small business assets, large business assets -- that number is 79 trppedz --

$79 trillion. so the federal government has made promises, incurred debt that are equal 0 or exceed the net private asset base of the united states. that's a definition of a problem. that's a definition of a huge problem that, unfortunately, this president and this town is not grappling with. we're not going to terms with that. let me specifically home in on one of those entitlement programs, social security. in 2010, we went net cash negative in social security. which means the amount of taxes collected were $51 trillion less than the benefits were paid out. last year we were $46 trillion in the red. if you take a look at this chart, what we see without reforming the program, without providing the reforms that would

save social security, within the next 24 years years, by the year 2035, we will incur a $6 trillion cash deficit in social security. and, again, when you take a look at the president's budget this year, is that even being addressed? the house budget addressed medicare last year. and people like my -- my congressman from wisconsin were demonized for doing it. here you had an individual that had the courage to first of all acknowledge the problem, and put forward a proposal and he's demonized. political demagoguery is not going to solve our problem. a serious budget is what we need to solve the problem. now, because we're not serious about even putting forward a budget and, unfortunately, in this body the majority is -- the majority leader is saying he won't bring a budget to the floor for a vote. there's no need to. we're only going into curr

$10.6 trillion more debt in the next 1e7b years. i want the american people to think about that. i'm an accountant. this is the first time i've been involved with the financial entity and let's face it, america is the largest financial entity in the world, where i've been working with that entity that doesn't have a budget. that's a national scandal. we need to correct that. let me talk about some of the deficit risks because we're not serious, we're not even addressing, we're not acknowledging. what i started talking about earlier, not dealing with the debt and deficit issue dramatically increases our risk of higher interest rates, higher interest expense. the c.b.o. reports that for every 1% increase in the interest expense, times $15 trillion, times ten years, that would add $1.5 trillion to our debt. $1.5 trillion. greece when they hit their debt crisis, their interest rates

spiked by 8%. if that happened here it would cost us $1.2 trillion, it would wipe out all discretionary spending. that's the day of reckoning we need to avoid by putting forward serious proposals. another risk that we're not talking about is what happens if we don't grow according to projections the president lays out in his budget or the c.b.o. projects? again, you look to the c.b.o. for every 1% that we miss our growth targets by, add $3.1 trillion to our debt and deficit over the next ten years. $3.1 trillion. another risk is the true cost of the health care law. 38 republican senators sent a letter to c.b.o. director pleading with him to please reassess the very unrealistic estimate the c.b.o. made in terms of the number of employees that will lose their employer-sponsored care. their estimate says only a million. but we have studies that have

conducted that say 30% to 50% of employers will drop coverage. when that happens, when employers lose their employer sponsored care and get dumped into engines changes at subsidized rates the cost of obamacare won't be $95 billion a year, it's more likely to be half a trillion dollars to a trillion dollars a year. multifly plie that over ten years and you can see the deficit risk inherent in the health care law. it insides to be repeal. the last point i'd like to make is a key part of president obama's sproazed deficit reduction in his budget is the tax on millionaires which are defined by people making over $250,000. that's interesting math right there. two points: i said earlier we should not enact anything in washington that would harm economic growth. increasing taxes will harm economic growth. that's what the c.b.o. says, that's what federal reserve chairman bernanke says and it just makes common sense.

i just want any america that actual thinks that's a good idea to ask themselves one question -- how many jobs that will tax -- will that tax increase create? how much of that tax increase help us grow the economy? and the answer is, it won't. there was an interesting study that was just released on maryland's millionaire's tax that they enacted in 2007. when they passed that tax, they estimated it would raise $330 million. well, the facts are in. that tax increase only generated $120 million, only 36% of what they originally estimated. so president obama's hoping to raise i guess $1.5 trim yo trilh the million air'millionaire's t. take that number, multiply by 36%, then take a look at the harm it's going to cause to economic growth and reduce it even further. it simply won't work. it might feel good but it is -- it will be -- it will do great

harm to our economy. so to sum it all up, mr. president, what this country needs is we need real leadersh leadership. we need the president to lead. we need a serious budget. and we need the united states senate to pass a complete and a serious budget for 2013. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. sessions: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, i want to share some remarks about the president's budget that he submitted today. and this is it, the real budget. the president asked that the press pay for their copies this year. maybe that saved a little money. but it's a real do you mean docs submitted every year by every president, according to the law. although the law also requires the united states senate to pass a budget every year, we've violated that for over a thousand days. and, in fact, mr. -- the majority leader, senator reid, has said it would be foolish for him to produce a budget, foolish for our colleagues to produce a budget, because i can only assume he thought it wouldn't be good politics.

it certainly wouldn't be foolish for america to have a budget. and i would make a commitment that if i have anything to do about it and this republican conference were to achieve a majority in the senate next year, we will have a budget and it will change the debt course of america. it will be ten years. it will be a document that brings debt under control, and to the maximum extent possible, would encourage economic growth. that's a responsibility i believe that leaders have to deal with now.the president hass budget that claims to reduce the deficit over -- by $4 trillion. and i will talk about that, but it does not reduce the deficit $4 trillion. basically, it doesn't reduce the deficit at all.

this is his fourth year as president. this is his last budget of his presidential term. he'll have an opportunity in it -- he has that opportunity to lay out a plan for the future to suggest what taxes we ought to have, how much spending we should have, where we can save money by reducing spending, what we need to do in the short run, a ten-year term, 20-, 30-year term. all of that should be dealt with because an executive like a governor or a mayor of a city that's in financial trouble, a state that's struggling financially, you got to deal with your debt. they present their proposals, they fight for them before the legislature, they make compromises when necessary, and that's how they do their business. but because we don't have a constitutional amendment that requires a budget to be

balanced, it becomes easier to just borrow the money, not cut spending and continue the deficit course we're on. so our analysis -- the budget committee analysis -- i am the ranking republican on the budget committee. the few hours that we've had it and the few hours that we've had over the weekend to see some of the tables, we have reached a number of conclusions that are not goo good. i would say that autumn of things. -- i would say a couple of things. mr. bernanke at the budget committee last year, chaired by senator conrad, who announced we should have a $5 trillion reduction over ten years, not $4 trillion. and he said he would like to see a balanced budget. i think senator conrad is right on both accounts.

but he's basically been told that if he even has a budget in committee this year, it won't be brought up on the floor. so i don't know what we'll do, whether we'll have a budget markup or not. but mr. bernanke indicated that when you reach budget levels as high as we are today, gross debt being 100% of the gross domestic product, the country is at risk particularly when inevitable shocks in the world occur; you don't have the margin of strength necessary perhaps to ride out those crises and we could go into a crisis. i just happened to see this morning on the msnbc, mr. richard hass, the president of the council on foreign relations, and he said we could have a debt crisis next year, talk about greece. he said we could have a greece-like crisis next year and he laid out a scenario. this is the council on foreign

relations, one of the most prestigious organizations around. so here are some indisputable facts about the budget before us. first, there is no $4 trillion deficit reduction. there is not a $4 trillion deficit reduction. i know that's hard to believe, and we're talking about a difference between $4 trillion o.the president submits a budge, we're worried about all of these accounts and we're $4 trillion off? well, it's a hard thing to imagine, but i'm -- i will explain to you why i say that. what we know is this: you that under the president's budget -- and the number he's provided for us based on his growth projections and other projecti projections that are in it -- he

projects that when ten years is up, 2022, we will have added to the total debt of america $11.3 trillion. added that much debt. every year hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. the lowest single year being $575 billion in debt, and the last several years the debt is increasing annually each year. so it would be $11.3 trillion. under the current law, the budget control act that passed last summer, that had the sequester in it and the reductions in spending, under that unchanged, and that's the current law. this budget deals with what to do now, what to do on top of the current law that we have. under the budget control act, the deficit would increase over ten years by $11.5 trillion,

$270 billion perhaps less debt accruing under the president's budget than current law. well, that's not much. the budget deficit this year is $1,300,000,000,000. we're talking about $11.5 trillion. that's $11,500,000,000,000. and so we're just going to reduce that $11,500,000,000,000 by $270 billion or so and claim somehow we've changed the debt course of america? it's not true. the american people are tired of that. it's this kind of talk, this kind of misrepresentations and gimmickry that have got us to the point that the nation is on

a fiscally unsustainable path, as every expert has told us. indeed, we are borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that's spent this year. literally so, we take in $2.2 trillion, we spend $3.7 trillion. that's not an acceptable path. we've been told that. so we've seen gimmicks before, and i have a bill called the honest budget act, that tightens up on a lot of the more common, smaller gimmicks that need to be eliminated, and it's called the honest budget afnlgt but i would just say that we've never seen gimmicks this large. they're so large that it's hard to believe that anyone would attempt to use them, but so large people don't think it's possible that the administration would not be completely truthful in asserting them.

for example, the budget that he submitted for this year claims credit for cuts that occurred last year as part of the budget control process. $1.2 trillion in budget control acts. he claims he's cutting the budget $2.1 trillion counting those numbers. that's not the numbers we were operating under today. those have already been done. that's one of the biggest spins i guess we've ever seen in terms of making numbers look better than they should. but there's more. amazingly, this budget eliminates, erases the $1.2 trillion in budget control act

sequester spending reductions. we can argue whether they are done in the right way, but this was -- and whether some, particularlyence distinguish, is taking -- and whether some, particularly defense, is taking too big of a cut on the sequester. but we should not give up on the sequester. we should poo not acknowledge tt the sequester is not viable and the $1.2 trillion that we agreed to cut just a few months ago, less thatte than a year ago, iso longer operable and we're just going to spend that money and not cut anymore. that's a stunning reversal, and it is the kind of thing that validates the charges that you hear from the american people, oh, yes, you promised to cut money in the future. you've got a ten-year plan that cuts spending, but we know what you politicians are going to do

five years, three years, six years down the road when those spending cuts come up. you're going to say, oh, we can't do that. we've got constituents who are complaining. we don't have -- we can't cut this or that. and we'll put the money back in and the savings will never occur because they are false promises in the future. and people have complained about that and correctly. that was part of the tea party movement, a growing disrespect for the integrity of congress when it makes things -- projections for the future. but look at this: in august we agreed to $2.1 trillion in total cuts, and $1.2 trillion in the sequester. less than a year later the president says, oh, that's too much. we can't do that. we're going to spend $47

trillion in the next ten years. we can't cut $1.2 trillion? when we're facing the biggest debt crisis the nation has ever faced? what kind of world are we living in? no wonder we're going broke. and people are out to hide what we're doing. i don't think it's right. well, the president says, yes, i'm -- i'm not cutting that $1 trillion. i'm going to spend the $1.2 trillion. i'm going to spend that but don't worry, i'm raising taxes to pay pour it. -- to pay for it. well, but his budget prognosticators and commentators and his promoters in their statements about this budget claim that it reduces the budget, this tax increase does, by $1.2 trillion.

well, if you cut -- if you increase spending $1.2 trillion and raise taxes an equal amount, you haven't saved any money. you're just not increasing the debt anymore that you would have. so we've eliminated the cuts, making spending go up, and we've raised taxes, and that's a wash. that's not another $1.2 trillion savings. that's ho how they get the $4 trillion. that's a really sad state of affairs to claim credit in a way that is just not fair. and we had the problem with the war costs. i was disappointed at the state of the union the president said, and we're going to spend half of the war savings on highways. well, i am i'm for highways.

i like to spend more on highways. i'm unhappy we diverted money and it should have been spent on highways, to general spending and it should have been spent on highways, as promised. the president said we're going to spend half of those savings on the war on highways. but there is no war savings. we agreed -- congress did -- throughout this war, it's been treated as an emergency. the attack on 9/11, we treated it as an emergency. the money was borrowed. every dollar spent on the war has been borrowed. there's no source of money being paid out to the war, so when the war costs dropped, you can grab that money and spend it. there's no money there. when the war costs dropped, the american people had a right to expect, we'd borrow less money, we don't have to borrow as much. but this is how they claim. they're claiming that the -- the

natural reduction of war spending creates a surplus of money that can be spent. how illogical is that? there is no money in the war budget account. it's all borrowed. so there's never been any -- there was never any money to be saved in the war account. only less money to be borrowed. -- as the war came down. and who ever thought that the war would continue at $100-plus billion per year? we've always expected those costs to come down. it's been a long, difficult process, and i'm glad to see we can bring troops home and hopefully we're doing it in a way that's not risking the

efforts that thousands of americans have given to our country to put us in a position to withdraw successfully. but we're not going so fast that we jeopardize that. but what about taxes? the president has been arguing for sometime that, well, you can't cut the deficit without tax increases. i know you've got to cut spending, but you can't cut the deficit without tax increases. we've got to have more tax increases. first he said he wanted a tax on the rich that would bring in $800 billion. now this budget calls for additional taxes of $1.9 trillion in new taxes, all across in a lot of different areas. at any rate, this is what we're talking about. so in his statement released

with the budget, he said there was $2.5 in spending reductions for every dollar of tax increases. we've been talking about that. what should be the ratio? some people said, look, i know you shouldn't have one to one taxes increase for every spending reduction. we've got to get the deficit down. you republicans that don't like taxes, we'll talk about $4 in spending cuts for at least $1 in tax increases. the president said in the spring last year three to one. that was a figure that was being bandied about. what does this budget do? is it 2.5-1? is it 3-1? no. this is their statement that it is 2.5-1 is utterly untrue.

i remember people telling us if you raise taxes, they won't reduce the deficit. they'll spend it. we've heard that over and over again, and that maxim is certainly proved by this budget. the taxes that are in this budget are used to pay for more spending. there are no spending cuts in the budget. the budget calls for a $1.5 trillion in increased spending. and the taxes are on top of that. so the taxes aren't used to reduce the deficit. just like people have suspected all along, that that's not an accurate statement but indeed taxes are used to create more spending to, create an even bigger government. what about the debt size in its entirety? what are the numbers there?

let's look at this chart. the red is the increase in deficits over the next ten years as occasioned by the budget control act that's the current law that was passed last summer. last august really. september. and the president's budget is the dotted line. so if you look at what's occurring over the ten-year period, we're starting at $14 trillion, $15 trillion in debt today, and where does it end up? it ends up at $26 trillion in debt, under the budget control act. it saved $2 trillion supposedly. and i guess that would have reduced the total debt from $13 trillion to $11.5 trillion.

$13.5 trillion to $11.5 trillion. it made some progress. we all knew that wasn't nearly enough, but it was at least a step. and colleagues, democratic colleagues didn't want to cut any more money. and so that's the number reached last year, and we agreed we need to come back and do some more work. the president's budget that he claims reduces the debt by $4 trillion would increase the debt -- excuse me. the president's budget which claims to reduce the gross in our debt by $4 trillion actually only reduces the growth in debt less than $300 billion tpr-rbgs $11 -- from $11.5 to 11.2. that's not enough. we've had experts say we need $4 trillion to $5 trillion to $6

trillion. many believe we ought to put this country on a path to a balanced budget and stay there, as i do. and we can do that. that's the numbers i would say, $273 billion. only alter this red line by the slightest amount, not nearly enough to make a difference in the financial markets, not nearly enough to create confidence in the business community that the united states has a plan for its future that will work. furthermore, the president's plan does not provide any noticeable effective effort to do something about medicare, social security, medicaid. these programs that are moving every year, gradually, inexorably out of control, into default and will endanger those programs for future generations. i think that's a serious criticism we should make.

finally, i would note that the interest on the debt, what do we pay on the interest of the debt? this year this nation, 2012, will pay $225 billion in interest on the debt. that's almost half the entire defense budget. but under the plan submitted by the president -- and these numbers i'm quoting from are in the president's own budget. i'm simply restating the numbers that his office of management and budget have determined -- interest in 2022, ten years from now, will be $850 billion. from $230 billion -- $225 billion to $850 billion. the increase in interest alone exceeds the defense budget.

$850 billion exceeds any item, including social security and medicare, in our budget today. and certainly exceeds the defense budget. it would be the fastest-growing item in the entire budget, because when you run up debt, you go from $14 trillion gross debt to $26 trillion gross debt, and we have extraordinarily low interest rates today. they will not hold. some think they're going up more than the president estimates in his account. but you add the interest changes and the large amount of tkerbl debt added -- additional debt added it goes from $225 to $850, crowding out spending for a host of programs we're going to have to deal with. where are we going to find this $500 billion? by the way, this is one year's interest payment. not ten years. in one year we'll be paying $850

billion. so, you take that $600 billion a year and you run it over ten years, or $500 billion over ten years, we're talking about $4 trillion or $5 trillion in interest to be paid over ten years. and what about the next ten years, when it's running $1 trillion a year in interest, as we age and our entitlement programs continue to go into default? mr. hendrake sp-rbgs -- mr. hendraker, a good analyst and blogger, suggested that this whole debt that we're seeing today, and this claim of $4 trillion in savings is why we should never have had the secret negotiations all year. the president has asserted all

year that he had a plan to save $4 trillion. i guess this is it. and what does it do? nothing. does it change the debt course? no. it leads us on a course that's unacceptable, does not deal with the surging entitlements that indeed count for over half of the spending already in the united states of america. entitlements, medicare, medicaid, social security are already nearly 60% of the federal government's spending. how can you control spending if you don't even talk about those programs? and they're growing faster. the only they think growing faster is the interest on the debt. so they have a deep -- we have a deep and serious challenge to bring those programs under control. so, mr. president, i would just close by saying that our debt course has not been altered. our debt course is

unsustainable. we now are moving to $26 trillion in debt. and i remember last year when chairman of the fed, mr. bernanke, testified before the committee and said something to this effect. he said, you see those projections of your spending and debt trajectory. and in the out years you have these projections of what it's going to be like. basically he said you're not going to get there because you're going to have a debt crisis before that happens, before those years pass. mr. erskine bowles, the man chosen by president obama to head the deficit commission with alan simpson, they signed a written statement to the budget committee last year, and they said the course we're on will lead america to the most predictable financial crisis in our history. so you can clearly see the path we're on.

it's a path to financial crisis. we've got to realize we cannot continue to put this off. and i find it deeply disappointing that the president of the united states in his fourth year in office lays out a plan that does nothing to improve the financial status of our country, that does nothing to talk and deal seriously with our entitlement programs, and indeed what he's indicated is that anybody else in congress, whether it's congressman ron in the house budget committees or members of this senate, who have the temerity to make any suggestions about containing and saving social security, medicare, will be attacked by him. so not only is he not proposing a plan that would help the situation, he's lying in wait to politically go after anybody that seriously proposes changes

that could put america on a sound debt course. i don't think that's acceptable. i'm deeply disappointed in the budget and wish it had been so much better. because i believe truly that it could have had support from the congress to do some things of an historic nature. they were discussed in some of these secret committee meetings, but never, never came to fruition. mr. president, i thank the chair and would yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: no

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. leahy: i ask consent the call of the quorum be dispend with. the presiding officer: without objection, the morning business is closed, the senate will proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination which the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, adalberto jose jordan of florida to be united states circuit judge for the 11th circuit. the presiding officer: under the previous order, there will be one hour for debate, equally

divided in the usual form. mr. leahy: thank you. mr. president, i ask consent that the time be divided in such a way that the time will run out at 5:30, equally between now and then between myself or my designee and the republican leader or his designee. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: mr. president, it pains me in a way to have to come here and talk about this, but this is the eighth time the majority leader has had to file a cloture petition to overcome yet another republican filibuster of one of president obama's superbly qualified judicial nominees. now, i've been here with -- during the time of president ford, president carter, president reagan, president george h.w. bush, president

clinton, president bush and now president obama. i've been here when the senate a number of times was in republican control, a number of times the democratic control. never during all that time have i seen anything where the majority leader has had to file so many cloture petitions on superbly qualified judicial nominees, whether it's republican or democratic president. now, -- and why i think that for some reason president obama gets singled out when this wasn't done to president ford, president reagan, president george h.w. bush, president clinton, president george w. bush, you look at the nature of the qualification. the nominee we have before us is a former federal prosecutor,

he's currently a federal district court judge in the southern district of florida, and judge adalberto jordan is the kind of nominee who in the past would have been confirmed without delay, actually probably would have done it on a voice vote shortly after coming out of our committee rather than wait four months for senators to consent to proceed on his nomination. now, this is a nomination has a strong and committed support of the senior senator from florida, senator nelson, as well as that of senator rubio, the other senator from florida. not only does he have the support of the two senators, one a democratic senator, the other a republican, the distinguished presiding officer will recall that when we voted on him last october, every single republican and every single democrat on the judiciary committee voted for him. he came out unanimously.

so it would be a little bit strange if any of those senators now switched their votes because there's nothing different today than there was then. in october, way last fall. when he was nominated by the district court -- to the district court by president clinton in 1999, even while the while senate republicans were pocket filibustering more than 60 of president clinton's judicial nominees, judge jordan was confirmed without delay, somewhat overwhelming vote, 93-1. and in one of us in -- any one of us in elective office would love to have margins like that. the needless delay in judge jordan's nomination is the latest example of the tactics that have all but paralyzed the senate confirmation process.

they're actually damaging our federal courts. it shouldn't take four months and a cloture motion which is hard to schedule because of all the other things we have to do, just to proceed to a nomination such as that of judge jordan to fill a judicial emergency. it's not just a normal -- filling a vacancy, it's a judicial emergency on the 11th circuit. this good judge has already demonstrated as a federal prosecutor, as a district judge his qualities. they need him on the 11th circuit. it shouldn't take more months of more cloture motions before the senate finally votes on the nearly 20 other superbly qualified judicial nominees who have been stalled by senate republicans for months while vacancies continue to plague our federal courts and delay justice for the american people.

all these courts where there is no judge because they're bottlenecked here and the people who have litigation, they don't say i'm a republican or i'm a democrat, they say i've got an important case to be heard, why -- why won't the senate confirm the judge who has been nominated for here? i would tell you, mr. president, on every single one of those judges being stalled, every single democratic senator has agreed long ago to go to a vote. the objection on every single one of those judges being held up are because a republican -- because of republican objections. we don't care whether they're republican or democratic litigants. we just want judges there. in fact, let's talk about judge jordan for a moment. why is he so exceptional? when he is confirmed, he'll be

the first cuban-born judge to serve on the u.s. court of appeals for the 11th circuit. we ought to be doing -- everybody should be down here cheering and supporting this. he should be commended and supported, not filibustered and on structured. just jordan is a consensus nominee. if somebody like this man has to go through and overcome a filibuster to be confirmed, what are we talking about? at this point moses the lawgiver would have a hard time being confirmed. and of course i'm sure there would be some on the other side who would demand to see moses the lawgiver's birth certificate to make sure he wasn't born in kenya. i don't know where that may have popped into my mind, but it did. now, i say this because this

judge is the kind of consensus nominee i've been urging senate republicans to stop stalling. he represents the kind of consensus nominees that this president has sent to the senate but have been needlessly and harmfully stalled for months and months with no good reason. two highly respected senators from this body, one a democrat, one a republican, senator bill nelson, senator marco rubio, they both agree on this person. shouldn't we move forward long before now. there's no justification for delaying this action over the last four months while a judiciary emergency emergency vacancy went unfilled. there is no justified reason for forcing the majority leader to file cloture for the senate to hold a vote on this qualified consensus nominee. there is no justification for senate republicans' refusal to hold votes on the nearly 20 qualified judicial nominees who also remain stalled before the senate awaiting a vote.

the filibuster of judge jordan is just the current example of senate republicans' delay tactics with respect to president obama's qualified consensus nominees. let me give you a little history, a few facts. as we enter the fourth year of president obama's administration, we're far behind the pace set by the senate during president george w. bush's first term. by the end of 2004, the end of president bush's first term, the senate confirmed in those 48 months 205 district and circuit nominees. 100 of them were confirmed during the 17 months of those 48 months that i was chairman of the judiciary committee. i moved his -- president bush's judges notwithstanding the fact that 60 of president clinton's judges had had been pocket

filibustered. i wanted to change that for the good of the federal judiciary. i wanted to restore respect in the united states senate as well as the federal judiciary. but now we've gone back to the son-in-law-old, same-old. the senate has confirmed only 126 of president obama's nominees, nowhere near the pace there was for president bush. that leaves 86 judicial vacancies. in fact, the vacancy rate is apt to remain twice what it was in 2004. but i would suggest to this body, mr. president, that the slow pace of confirmation of president obama's judicial nominees, that's no accident. it's the result of deliberate obstruction and delays. here we are in the middle of february planning to hold a vote

of when the 19 nominees have been confirmed by voice vote last year. during president bush's administration, republican senators insisted that filibusters of judicial nominees were unconstitutional. many of them said they would never, ever support the filibuster of a judicial nomination, never, said a republican president. well, that never lasted only until president obama. a democratic senator came in -- president came in. then senate republicans reversed course. they filibustered president obama's very first judicial nomination. the same senators who had said solemnly on the floor of the senate they would never filibuster. oh, we have a new president now. we have to filibuster his. come on. you wonder why, you wonder why people are concerned about those

who represent them. in fact, that first filibuster was -- portended what was going to happen. senate republicans have actually required cloture votes, votes to stop a filibuster even for nominees who ultimately were confirmed unanimously once we got past a filibuster. in fact, this eighth republican filibuster as i noted earlier of president obama's judicial nominees. but i would also say, aside from the gamesmanship involved, it hurts the whole country. currently 86 judicial vacancies across the country. that means that nearly one out of every ten federal judgeships is vacant, is nearly double the

vacancy rate, nearly double what it had been reduced to by this point in the bush administration when democrats, showing unprecedented speed, cooperated to bring judicial vacancies down to 46. i'm going to say that it hurts, that we'll all get our pay, we'll all get our perks, but one in ten of these courts are vacant. if you're one of the people seeking justice at a federal court, you come and here's a sign saying closed, nobody at home. you know, when you think of things like that, is it any wonder that only 10% of the american people favor congress favorably. actually, this kind of activity,

i'm surprised it gets up to 10%. i'm just wondering whether my friends on the other side of the aisle, the senate republicans, are intent on bringing the approval rating even lower into single digits. judge adalberto jordan is decidedly the kind of qualified person that this nominee need. this is the kind of person that we all say when the press asks me, this is the kind of nominee we need. this would help everything. if we had this kind of nominee, then we would filibuster. when introducing judge jordan to the senate judiciary committee last october, senator rubio praised the nominee's knowledge of the law, experience and participation in community, stating that he looks forward to judge jordan's appointment. i certainly believe what senator rubio said. i am very truthful in these things.

but, you know, the day that we reported him out of the committee unanimously, we cleared with every single democrat, every single democratic senator in this chamber ready to go forward with a vote. the only place we had was the rejection on the republican side. that's gone on for four months. so i hope we get this cloture vote and the senate is finally allowed to vote to confirm this nomination. so i again urge senate republicans to stop the destruct ive delays that plagued the confirmation process. the american people deserve federal courts ready to serve them. not empty benches, not long delays, not partisan games. mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum, and i ask consent that the time be equally divided. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call: