capital to keep winning. a lot of them didn't have enough capital and they pulled back their loan balance and credit lines and that was the big catalyst for the recession. so this is a very helpful exercise. ..

>> i think it's getting better. when we first did in 2009, the stresses were not to stress. i think is a 10.3% unemployment rate was the stress. unemployment hit 10.1. now 13% clearly is a distress, very distressed economic environment. so that is, the fact they're making results public to individual institutions, that is also very good. and that means they're differentiating among institutions. they are saying some are stronger than others. they are all meeting capital standards and they're all still solvent after the stress test, but some are better than others. and i think that is good, too. during the financial stabilization measures, called bailouts, there was a lot of kind of painting everybody with the same brush. you don't want to punish good bank management by putting a but

in the same crew. i think these stress tests differentiate, i think that's constructive for everyone. perhaps a little more pressure on the banks that are not doing so well for market participants to ask them questions and challenge them as to why they are not doing better. so those are the positive things. i think about the stress test. so you take a few punches so i will tell you, ali, i think the stress test could be better. one area is that the focus is really on what we called risk based capital. so there are two types of capital standards for banks. wine is capital base of what's called risk weighted assets. a bank an action have lower capital if they say their assets are not very risky. there's a lot of subjectivity that goes into how risky assets are. the risk based capital actually is not always a good barometer. a leverage ratio which is the other measure we do here in the u.s. is simply, equities to

total assets. so that is you don't try to wait or exercise any judgment. the leverage as capital as a percentage of total assets. precrisis, there's a lot of academic analysis, further analysis showed that those things that reported very strong risk-based ratios were very weak leverage ratios were the ones that got into trouble. leverage ratios, when the crisis came, really the market completely discounted the risk-based capital ratio. everybody looked at leverage ratios. if you look at the stress test results, and i would encourage those of you would like to to do so, that you should also look at the leverage number. because there are a number of banks that actually have capital, leverage capital ratios below 3%, which implies a leverage of over 33 to one in the stress snippet if i were a regular i would be very troubled

by the. so i would hope next year that the fed will also make decisions about capital adequacy were heavily focused on the leverage ratio as well as the risk-based ratio. there are some questions about how the losses on housing, housing is a big, big question, big drag on the u.s. economy. a lot of exposure into the mortgage market it directly with loads and second liens the banks hold in their portfolios or to their mortgage-backed securities. so they're some of the market commentary is happening whether the losses that are in a housing are as robust as they might be. i don't really express cd on that but i do think it's healthy that analysts and investors and others are taking the data that the fed has made available and doing their own analysis. because regulators are not infallible. a lot of this is subject to judgment. take a look at these stress test results and doing their own

analysis and asking questions i think is a very, very healthy process and begin a very good discipline on the banks themselves. also, the stress tests are really focused on credit losses. what happens if a bar can't make good on his or her loan? that was clearly the driver of the 2008 crisis. people couldn't pay their mortgages. going for though, and i saw this as been addressed by some of your other speakers you have today, what's the future risk, right? and perhaps should interest rate be delved into the stress inherent of the stress tests? because clearly interest rates are not going to stay this low for ever. and as the economy kicks up steam and there are alternative places for investors to put the money, and as europe also repairs itself, interest rates are going to go up. so i think stressing interest rate risk as well as liquidity risk in futures stress test

would be very helpful. a lot of banks had capital solvency problems, but at one point all of them had liquidity problems. they didn't have enough cash to meet obligations even though they were solving. so doing a better job of stressing liquidity i think going forward with the extra and helpful your overall, i think it would good that we start in 2009. they get better. i'm very pleased it's so open and transparent. >> one of issues were talked about which was risk-based capital ratios is the things that the bank would determine were safe as little as five years ago were not safe. many of these cases these banks would have held sovereign debt. >> that's right. >> how do we in the world of evaluating banks, to some consensus on how we evaluate what a bank holds? >> i think there will always be some judgment, which is why you need both a leverage ratio in

the risk-based ratio. we have that in the training. we did not have it in your. you're right, european banks were at zero capital, and that has really been a key part of the problem the european banking system has no. you will always have an imperfect judgment about how risky bank assets are. i do think though that it's important to have hard and fast parameters about what the risk weighting can be. some of you may have heard of the basel ii capital, and i pursley fought very hard. basel ii basically allowed very large banks to use their own judgment and own models. there was no work essentially over how safe they can say their assets were. they did that in europe. we stopped at here. in europe the european banks, not all of them, a couple of them, to which they get a better job than others, most of them were saying and there's a barclays report on this, shows the european banks were saying

even during the depths of the reception that their assets were getting favorite pixar, that can happen. your loan defaults are going up. so you really cannot rely completely on bank judgment and models to do this. so we feel strong the need to be some hard and fast parameters, your minimum capital a mortgage cannot be below extra governmental capital on sovereign debt cannot be below ask. that's basically the approach and basel i, and it was another capital framework called a standardized approach that they approved several years ago that took a similar approach of having hard and fast levels for each category, duplicative of what the risk weighting can be. >> you make a good point that the 19 banks that we do these stress tests on, it's necessary for different things to be measured differently. we would love to be able to put all banks on one grid and figure out how it works but it's important for the systemically important banks. why don't have a process,

particularly one that is public, for all the rest of the banks? one of the issues we struggle with is the fdic does have a list of banks that are in danger, but that's not public you should. >> right. so, i think the troubled bank list is really banks that really are in trouble. and that actually a struggle only about 20% of things that go in this troubled bank list actually feel. that's the reason they're put on the list of their given close supervisory attention, and most are nursed back to health. the reason for keeping a confidential is for bank runs. so i think and contrast that to a stress test that applies to everybody, and really is, you know, it could show if the bank was insolvent. with a large institutions the first you would do this, it did show some very severe capital shortfalls in some of the banks. the first year the government basically said -- the government

said we were coming with capital to backstop the week banks. and fortunately they've gotten stronger as i don't think any are on the precipice the way some of the more in 2009. so elusive balance between transparency and protecting its ability and not trying to guard against bank runs or weak institutions that may still be softened but need special attention to get back to help. >> you and i got to got to know each other when things are to go poorly for a number of banks. the ftc had really developed what seemed in the midst of this financial crisis a relatively inefficient system whereby in many cases these banks would announce they were closing up on a friday afternoon, and on a saturday morning people want to get them in and the new branch will be over the money because they have been acquired with few exceptions. looking back on it, are the things, tell me what you, think really worked well and those things that you would've done carefully now that you know what

you know. >> that's a really good question. i think the first thing, one thing, when any pashtun when indy mac bank close. that bank was quickly becoming installed but it was not, it handled a liquidity run which is called by a senior public official questioning its financial stability. and without massive amounts of uninsured deposits running, and had to close early, which did not give us enough time for us to find a buyer first. that was in july 2008, early on the we only had a handful of failures. the primary regulator of the bank wanted to close in a few hours before regular closing hours to facilitate calls to members of congress to let another back with closing which is typically courtesy. and so i questioned that but i went along with it. i wish i hadn't, because what

happened was the bank was closed on the primary regulator a few hours before normal closing. still people coming to the bank, there was a loop on some of the cable network shows showing a woman i whenever to come banging on the door try to get in. i was just horrified. the irony was, we had arranged for a press conference, a telephone press conference friday after indy mac was closed for press to call in to explain the process but we didn't have national up what's called a bridge institution. hardly anybody called them. but as soon as this loop of this woman knocking on the door, and you probably remember this. >> very well. >> it really just scared people. i was annoyed with some of the cable news networks that they were hyping this up so badly. i regret that we did not wait. the rule was we don't close any of these institutions until after regular closing hours. one thing we did the right though that i think helped indymac and the subs were

failures, that was going time that ever happened, was we start a public education campaign in 2008 in conjunction with the 75th anniversary. we thought having our 75th anniversary would be a good catalyst for having a purely aggressive public education campaign about deposit insurance. because we've had this benign period in banking and for so many years people are just forgotten that banks failed, they don't need to worry about it. they under the fdic injured limbs. so we did start that early, and i think that did help us. we ramped up those efforts. we really ramped those of after indymac. but it really help. the other thing which i wish i that early was there was a lot of controversy about whether nontraditional investors like hedge funds should be able to charter, get a bank charter and bought a building or bid on a failed bank process. we stepped our toe, we put our

toe in the. in 2008 we really, we needed bank buyers. we needed the capital coming into the system. it wasn't like we're going to be choosy about, you can come in but you can. we tried not to exercise judgment based on business models anyway. if you capital, good management you should get a charter. nonetheless, these nontraditional investors, it's not a regulatory culture, and so we started letting them bid. other occ and the states started chartering their new banks. so we let them into a bidding process and i really saw some things that were quite troubling. particularly part of their proposal was being they could flip the property, flickr probably very quickly, flip the bank very quickly. i did not want people, i wanted bidders but i didn't want people come in the banking system that were not looking at this as a long-term investment. so we did, a few of them slipped by, and we got passionate requires much higher capital as

was and other. that pretty much putting into that. there were a few that got through before we did it. those are the two things i would've done differently in retrospect. but overall i think the fdic performed very well. we close about 350 banks while i was there, in addition to some of the larger banks that were in ill health. it really, with the exception with indymac it went quite smoothly. "60 minutes" did a piece on a bank failure, and that was another high-risk decision i make him because he let a "60 minutes" crew, you're not quite sure what's going to happen or where it's going to go but i have faith. so we let them a company our team on a bank failure. and it went -- it was wonderful. there was a gentleman, it was close to friday. sultan of the bank.

on sat -- open again on saturday morn. we had these critters at the door talking to the after they talked to him or he said okay, i'm just going to leave my money in your and "60 minutes" film the whole thing. he was saying how wonderful the fdic is. [laughter] it was a very big confidence process and with a lot more than all the paid advertising a public service messages that we have done. it was really, it turned out to be a very good thing. >> i don't know if our friend is still in the audience, but peter, is he here? i'm going to ask a question peter would've as. mostly because he told me he was going to ask it. to what degree, first of all, larry pointed out. he said this is probably, i do how we fear this out but he said he felt the saudis might be centerleft audience and that he comes from the center-right. but you certainly from an

economic perspective didn't come from the centerleft. and yet you are strong, you are a strong regular. you believe in more regulation and to some degree however you want to code it yourself talking about things that are a good amount of regulation for the banking system. how do you square that with a world that is talk about less regulation for financial services, even though the public is a necessary it that way, we are in this world that says government mess this up, and loosened the reins to allow these banks to make some money. >> so, you need some, ronald reagan, i believe in basic republican philosophies as ronald reagan once said the role of government is not to protect us from ourselves but it's to protect us from each other. there's a difference between free markets and free for all markets. market need some basic rules and if you don't have some basic rules, commonsense rules that are enforced innocent people get

hurt. and innocent people got hurt in this crisis, and government fundamentally failed in its responsibilities. that's not to absolve banks or other, it shouldn't be, i should say financial institutions. so much of this occurred and what is called the shadow sector, not with fdic insured banks. that's not to absolve managers from what they did. they get paid a lot of money to manage their banks responsibly and they shouldn't have examiners come in our government come in there and telling them how to act responsibly. but nontheless, government does have a role. you need some basic commonsense rules, and we forgot that. we get carried away with this idea of self-policing markets, and is just didn't work. i like regulations that are based on reinforcing economic incentive. that's what i like capital standard to make people put skin in the game. if they take risk and lose money, make it hurt for them. not for the government, make it hard for them.

making people whose securitize loans retain some downside risk if those close and the mortgages and the securitizations go bad. i think activity based regulation is good, but if i'm going to every rule and unique types of roles that says you can only make mortgages where the borrower can repay the loan. that's going to get you into thousands of question. what kind of documentation? what about adjustable-rate? you need to make sure they can pay the adjustable rate. the answer is yes, but there's lots of different questions you can ask. but if i say to that person, if you originate this loan and put it in securitization, for every 1 dollar of lost will take five or 10 cents yourself, then they will stop and think about it and say okay, this person has a desperate mortgage so there are any 35% starbury, what's my chance of taking a loss? i think this kind of regulation are based on economic incentives really innovate, could be much more. if you need -- i really like

skin in the game requirements. >> i want to invite those of you have questions to go to the mic. we do every few more minutes for questions. while we save anybody has got in, i want to ask you, some weeks ago you on a show with me, and clark was on as well. but he was crowing about the canadian banking system. is there a banking system out there that is something we can take some lessons from, is canada it? is it somewhere else? >> they have never had a banking crisis, as far as i can tell pics i think they're clearly doing something right. i do think the regulatory culture in canada is stronger. i think the people, would say that trade off is less innovation. not all innovation is bad. you need some innovation. we clearly went too far in one direction. so i do think we have something stolen, and stronger regulatory culture, stronger acceptance of

regulation and better industry support for commonsense rigatoni structure i do think is something we could import. >> paul volcker said earlier, forget, forget financial information, forget that it didn't do anything for. please identify yourself and who you are with. >> warn codes, retired from the international monetary fund. >> you just threw that out like it was nothing. >> still actively consulting with them by the way. market discipline of banks relies in parts on depositors care in which bank they put their money and. deposit insurance removes that particular incentive. it is moment focus on smaller funds. the coverage limit was raised recently and was pretty high to begin with. do you think it is too high in terms of getting the right balance between protecting -- >> that was raised on your watch. >> that is a very good question.

congress only says that the deposit insurance i would support the temporary hike. and i think that the permit, it can be justified. i'm not sure people with less, $250,000, especially these days, they don't know her is to put their money, that the folks that are those insured deposit limits are going to add a lot to market discipline. certainly the average main street family, they're not going to go to the fdic website and download call reports are going to financial analyst reports. it is not going to get a lot of market discipline from main street depositors. and i do think it's important for them to have a safe place they know they can keep the money and it's going to be readily available to them but i think is a good public policy for the. deposit insurance has provided that insurance and it's worked very well. i do think though that large uninsured depositors, as was bondholders, need to have a lot of skin in the game and

understand there are risks of loss. but that's one of the reasons why it so vigorously opposed to big to fail. too big to fail says bondholders and shareholders, he will not take any losses. these large bond investors are quite capable of walking or getting answers from the big institution or large financial institution, analyzing what's on the balance sheet if they're not getting the information they need asking questions themselves. we do need market discipline from that sector, and if we don't then we're really in this you. but that was the driver of the site but i think a lot of investors were not providing a lot of key funding to institutions, thinking the government would not let them down. which is why we fought so hard and dodd-frank for regulations to make sure the ftc would have the tools to impose losses on any insurance creditor. >> final question.

>> my name is bonnie. i'm a business reporter at the "huffington post." my question is, do you think that the financial industry in its current form is aren't economic growth in anyway? what do you think the government needs to do to make the financial industry a more sustainable source of growth? >> that is a really good question. i think, look, we did what we had to do in 2008-2000. i think perhaps in 2000 we could've done a better job of getting important things aren't the balance sheet. i think with could've got a lot of these mortgages restructured if we are forced banks to do a better job of cleaning up the balance sheet. we didn't do that so that's water under the bridge. but i think that would've no. i think if we have the resolution tools to put fully solvent institutions, i think our economy would be stronger now, to go to prom is when you prop up inefficient players, you have a bloated sector. there is a correcting mechanism

in the market, and financial services got to be. we kind of let it bake with the bailout. nobody really except for lehman brothers and wamu, which wasn't fdic insured institution, were allowed to fail. so you prop up the inefficient, they're still there to compete and you still have a very large financial sector. if you look at the bank balance sheets, i'm delighted banks are getting healthier and that means they'll be in a better position to land, and loan balances are stranded take a. the revenues are all going down. it went down last year. it's a smaller pie and a lot are out there competing for but i do think there's going to continue to be a hindrance to the economic recovery that it's just over time it's going to have to downside instead of how to more quickly when these institutions fail from 2000. >> unfortunately that's all the time we had. sheila bair, thanks very much. always a pleasure talking with you. [applause] >> today the senate continues

debate on a bill to help small businesses raise funds on the internet, and changes rules for them to go public. centers will hold a series of votes at about 11:30 a.m. is an including one we authorizing the export-import bank. its charter runs out at the end of may. live senate coverage begins at 10 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. top military commanders in afghanistan go before the house armed services committee today. john allen will explain recent comments in that country. c. live coverage at 10 eastern on c-span3. the nation's highest court begins oral arguments next week on health care law. the court is hearing several challenges to laws past two years ago. justices agreed to release audio on the argued each day and we will bring it to you at about 2 p.m. eastern on monday, tuesday and wednesday of next week on c-span3. c-span raider and at c-span.org. today is primary day in illinois

with 54 republican presidential delegates at stake. will have live coverage tonight as a result and speeches. polls have met romney and rick santorum in a tight a week ago. now mr. romney are printed in illinois surged in some polls. >> a new america where it is made real for all. without regard to race our belief on economic conditions. i mean a new america which everlasting attacks the agent idea that men can solve their differences by killing each other. [applause] >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 in the rain for the office, and lost.

go to our website c-span.org/thecontenders to see video of the contenders for a lasting impact on american politics. >> the profit of the radical liberal left continues to offer only one solution to the problems which confront us. they tell us again and again and again, we should spend our way out of trouble and spend our way into a better tomorrow. >> c-span.org/thecontenders. >> and now back to the atlantic magazines economic summit. in this half-hour portion, economist laura d'andrea tyson from the president's council on jobs and competitiveness talks about the current economic situation. >> laura tyson is the global management of the hospital of business but the really, how i really know her was when she was at the berkeley roundtable on international become. we know her because she was

president clinton's economic adviser. she is now on a key advisory board on the economy and jobs for president obama. but i wanted to start a conversation about your days with mark, we read your book on basically how to manage the economy back in. you were, i see bernard schwarzer in front other than. you were kind of, i wouldn't say passionate bernard schwartz was an acolyte in that sense because you are talking about the importance of infrastructure and industry policy. i guess the question i would like to start out with is why we are today given your experience in both the clinton and somewhat in the obama administration, although you're an adviser, not an official of the obama administration, what do you think you wouldn't have thought or wouldn't have written given your government experienced? >> of course no one knows in the audience what i wrote there. i can is framed in a way which

relates to what we've been hearing today. i was involved very early on, really in the definition of competitiveness. competitiveness as a term was not commonly used, believe it or not, a court of a century ago, which is about how long i've been working on it. and actually was quite a foreign concept to economist who might think of something like comparative advantage. at those of us who begin to we about competitiveness begin to think about nation as creating a set of foundations to make themselves a competitive place to locate. high value added this. we were at the time about investing in the foundations of public, the public foundations of competitiveness. infrastructure, research, education, and we were very much of the mind that other countries were beginning to pay attention to this. and that our time as a global

superpower in the world economy was actually limited, that we're going to face tougher competition and we may recognize that and begin to make those kinds of investments. and to begin to think carefully about, not just those public investments in competitiveness but also what kinds of activities we wanted to be engaged in. so i heard several speakers today talk about the importance as we go forward of the energy sector. so that is, you could call that an industrial policy. you look at the sectors of the economy and say, this is a sector that has all kinds of effects on the rest of the economy. we don't want to be strategically dependent on a resource that comes primarily politically unstable countries, many of which are not our

allies. so that would be a kind of strategic industrial policy. >> do you think we need that sort of industrial policy today? before you answer, i wish her a little anecdote. late last year i heard domenic bartley, the managing ceo of mckinsey speak at a conference in france and the gave a remarkable talk in which he said their biggest clients were clamoring and wanted an industrial policy in america, that they felt that, these are large-scale multinational corporations for which those two words were about as you could imagine. and he said they all wanted, but they saw a directionless washington tied up and not moving ahead. i tweeted it at the time, and thought that i would have, you know, the high priest of mckinsey come and pound on my door for misquoting their guy, but he stood by it. when i talk to the folks in the white house and some the people who were involved in the auto bailout and also looking at of

strategic sectors, one of the individuals whom i can't name said we can't say the an industrial policy inside the obama white house, that those two words immediately stop discussion. maybe things have changed, but you sit on the inside of some of these meeting and your their allegedly found on the table with barack obama telling him what to do. is investor policy back? >> we've had very polite meetings. there's a no pounding -- >> he told me pounded the table once. >> unit, i'm on the presence jobs council. the president had the volcker commission and i was also honored to serve on the. and by the way, on that, what we did was on infrastructures are want to say you've heard again and again, and i'm not going to repeated, or maybe just going to underscored once. amazing bipartisan, labor-management, around the country, around the country support for the idea that in order to enhance our future

competitiveness, a long-term goal, and/or to create jobs for construction workers now and in the next few years, the best thing we could do given the interest rates the government faces is a major infrastructure policy. yes, we can spend an extra trillion dollars the next five years on high return projects. yes, they were spending about half of what we should be spending on our infrastructure on transportation alone. so this is an area where you can just talk about linchpin of competitiveness. and i know these ceos who talk about looking at places around the world, that's what's at the top of their lives but another thing at the top of their lives, by the way, is tax policy. we haven't talked a lot about that here. the president did just issue a framework for a business taxation. it suggests that we actually should go after a lower corporate tax rate.

it suggests that we should go after broadening the base. there are some controversial parts to the. i don't agree with everything he said, but the notion that in order to be competitive as a location in order to promote certain activities. now, where was the investor policy and that? the president said in his business tax framework that there should be special treatment for manufacturing. and even more special treatment for advanced manufacturing. he basically was saying the general principle he wants to broaden the base and take away a lot of preferences, but, but he felt that given the spillover benefits of manufacturing for innovation, for exports, what do we export? we export manufactured project they want to import? we import manufactured product. yes, services are growing. there is no way we can get out of our trade deficit or improve

our current account deficit without a significant increase in manufacturing picu a problem here that later. so basically you can call the industrial policy, you can call it manufacturing policy that what the administration has concluded is that for spillover benefit reasons there are lots of things that policy can do with a small adjustment to give some preference to manufacturing. that is one area where i have seen the industrial policy but let me give you another area again. presence jobs council. this is basically primary chief executive officers of large and small companies. now, they came together to talk about what they do to be the important source of job creation in the near term, and in that case we focus on things like increasing the speed of these are processing, or increasing the speed of getting an infrastructure process which is already funded out the door. so you could start getting the people on the job right away. so things you can do particularly to the last report

focused on competitiveness. and there we were actually focusing on things like setting up an infrastructure bank in a multi-your infrastructure plan, setting up what jane referred to, the way the president talked about it, some additional funding for community colleges. again, i listened to most of the presentations today, and a repeated theme is a significant number of jobs in the united states right now are unfilled because of a lack of adequate skills. the estimate are all over the map, but let's take 5% of manufacturing jobs. that's a large number. survey suggested 80% of the companies will say i can't fill certain jobs, i don't have the talent. that, of course, was one of the things that steve jobs said in that famous last interview with president obama when he said that jobs were not coming back, he also said one of the reasons that jobs were not here is

because we didn't have an adequate supply of kind of intermediate, i would say process, some where we tween a community college degree and a very, very good technical training program. we have left that language in the message. we need to go back. but what i want to say about international policy is this group also said, remember, this is a group the first sector, business leaders. the u.s. really has to have a serious alternative energy policy. we have to have it. we look at the future. now, they also said we have to have a long-term investment strategy because we know we're going to have to modernize and place our entirely, our utility infrastructure. so they talked about broad areas but they've also talked about things like the importance of broadband or the importance of alternative energy. so those are the kinds of industrial policy.

it's not picking winners and losers in a narrow sense. but it is sort of in broad spectral term saying there certain things that need to be done. >> i would like to invite people to come up to the microphone. i will post one more question and then we'll take questions for you. laura, i know you've also been worried and concerned about income inequality and it's become such a topic issue, dried i think a lot of the anger. frankly, anger on the right and anger on the left, that i have seen. and i'm interested, is their way to get at that? other than the tax issues. i mean, we tend to sort of look at the questions of rolling back taxes or charging tax on one side or the other. are there other ways to sort of more structurally remedy income inequality in the u.s. through job provisions, for education, through other portals? >> well, i think, i have a number things about income inequality today, so let me first say a couple of reactions

to get to what you say. first of all, yes, it is true that other societies, developed countries have seen similar trends. and i think we do have to accept the notion that some of the inequality is due to globalization and technological change. but actually not nearly as much as you think. because the income inequality between, say, a college educated worker and an unskilled worker, that premium has been growing over time and it is significant, but he really can't explain the top 1%. and it really can't explain the top 0.1% which is really the pulled away part of the income distribution in the united states. that is a phenomena which is pretty much unique to the united states. but i think we just need to accept that, and there are, and i would also say that the evidence is not that it is moving sports heroes. if you look at the numbers, it's

primarily as lawyers, doctors, and primarily chief executive officers and people in the financial services industry. that's who it is. so we could, need to identify and then sort of decide what, if anything, are the factors behind. i just sort of put those facts out there. one of the fact i will put up ago are actually a reference because i think it's a very good piece of work, is a book called winner take all politics by paul pearson and jacob hacker. >> one of our guys. >> basically, this lays out pretty clearly the argument for why the u.s. ends up having the biggest inequality problem, and lays at the doorstep of money and politics in the united states. we haven't talked at all about money in politics here, but we do know that we, and in this election we'll see it even more clear than we've seen in any other election, that those

interests that could be well represented i money can become very powerful advocates of their position. and as you have increasing income inequality, think about what that means about the representation of the middle and the bottom. if you of a political system where money plays such a significant role. so the argument of the hacker-pearson book laid out very clearly is that we've lost the ability to represent the middle-class interest in policy making because of the role of money and policymaking elite that you that you just is something to look at. >> i'm in the new america foundation sends more has been a board member of the new america foundation where i was also involved. jacob is a professor at yale, they're involved with the issue of the so-called public option and health care debate, and he's this kind of kennedyesque inspired progressive. but when i listen to jacob, and i'm often inspired listening to him, the world that he describes

on the kind of commitment to education, the commitment to pension, the commitment to keeping -- it's as if everyone wants to keep all of the social safety net and all of the piece is not there but build it bigger in terms of redefining a next social contract. but we are looking at budget and are having to make our choices, i sometimes wonder, i guess i would like to ask, i will call on richard, but i would like to ask, what would you counsel those on the progressive left who want that return of the great society? what are they getting wrong? what our choices are they unwilling to make? >> well, another thing i heard today is related to this, is this issue of instead of focusing so much on what you can give people, what you need to get people when they are in stressed situation, is how you can help them make investments

in themselves and their children so that they in the future will have less stress situations. so i do actually believe that, and it's a tragedy, i do believe in the importance of focusing on education above all else, i guess, and the tragic part of this is simply go by, if i go back, my first involved in the debate about competitiveness was actually working on a commission set up by president reagan, and john young, then the ceo of hewlett-packard, republican, was involved. and that's how actually brie got started. the two issues of the competitive list, number one and number two, number one was we needed a stable macro environment. well, you've heard today, most of the day, how we really haven't had a stable medical in private, although the last several years we've had a crisis

and a recovery and a fragile recovery. and the second one was dealing with our educational challenges. we haven't made anywhere near the progress we should have made. if you look today, the rate of educational attainment of young men have basically stabilized. the high school dropout rates have increased. the employment level, the share of working age men who are working declined significantly. in part because the median wage has declined but the point is, in part because the scale development, the career trajectory, a lot of what people are learning now about what works because there's a lot of experiments now going on about this, what works to get someone who might be a high school graduate or a dropout to stay in school. it may frequently be linking to a career path that is not

through a four-year college career path, but it may be through a technical training career path into a one your specialized program at a community college, which is designed very much in the interest of a sector, and in the interest of a business and money. one of the ways the jobs council talk about industrial policy was the importance of having community colleges focus on skills in areas where you could say over the next 10 years, on advanced manufacture skills what are we missing, on health care workforce skills, what are we missing? and then setting up a very specialized program with the help of the community and the health of the businesses that will employ these workers, and even with the business of providing things like apprenticeship, that is an investor policy. you're taking the industrial base and you're trying to help people invest in those skills which will give them jobs in the basics i was to education.

>> richard, and this gentleman. >> i mentioned richard because richard helped instigate the idea of this conference. he also is, i was a is responsible for a lot of debt in the country, but -- >> jobs. >> part of infinity of 30 participants all of you with airline miles and all that, this is the guy who built his fortune out of all of you guys being addicted to point. [laughter] [applause] >> thanks so much for your comment. i do want to note before i talk about jobs, allen earlier talk about a recent study of seven countries, with totally different tax policies. that more or less demonstrate the tax policy is the lesser factor in the difference between the 1% in the 99%. and he said, and i think it's

germane, that it's the entry of 600 million indians and chinese into the job markets better candidate pleading or decimating the wage structure of the bottom 99%. i think there's a lot of validity to that. which would lead to my thought that it's really the invention of the future that creates jobs. when you think about when the economy is going to go, not just for the united states, for the world over the next generation or two, it's genetics, robotics, nanotechnology. james pinkerton within our session earlier today talked about 80% over health care costs are tied up in heart disease, cancer, diabetes and alzheimer's. if we had an industrial policy that laser focused resources on those seven areas, all of which represent profound change, profound in our society, we would be a jobs mission. so is that type of industrial policy possible in the united

states? >> so, a couple of things. first of all i just want to say on the tax policy point, i don't mean to imply, and i wasn't implying to go don't agree with the position that our inequality problem is a result of our tax policy. i don't want anybody to take away that impression. the 6 million are however many, i've heard more, okay, so the additional workers of india and china have indeed been one of the reasons why middle income jobs have eroded. what i said is the other developed societies face exactly the same problem. so why is it a case that the income inequality between the u.s. at the very top and at the very bottom is so great? that is a fairly, the only other country that comes close to us is the uk. and i think we have to ask ourselves the question that everybody else is subject to globalization.

it manifests itself in the united states in a much more extreme inequality. now, on the point about these new technologies, i have always been a huge supporter of things like putting additional funding into, into additional funding into the garbage, putting additional funding into darpa. there are many ways in which, as you know, u.s. government, if you go into the history of the abolition of our major new sector, over the past 50 years, you will see that the government has played a major role as a supplier of basic research funding, as a supplier of supporting the training of the scientists and doctors and engineers who actually do the research with the research funding. the government has been a major source of support in terms of procuring, procurement, just buying the stuff as a big buyer

as it comes out the door. so actually if you look at the office of science and technology policy a look at the innovation budget, i think you will see to the extent that they have been able to do it, again within political strength, they would want. the idea of supporting particular attention on research and energy, on nanotechnology, on continued support for innovation and research and health, i think i would agree with you completely, the government of the united states has been a major source of that and should continue to be. and this administration, every time the president has talked about budgetary priorities, including his most recent state of the union address, and his budget proposal, he has said very clearly, i am going to have to cut significantly the u.s. is going to have to cut significantly spending a but while we do that there are three areas that we should absolutely

increase our spending income and science and technology, those kind of initiatives, has once been one of those areas. >> i will mention one thing before i go to this gentleman. i spoke with the president of xerox in an rv crowd, about 3000 attendees. bill clinton spoke right after. we were on stage. and former president clinton came out and laid out how you do. and it was pretty fascinating as he always is. but with some laser specificity on how you would focus on these issues. the problem is that when you talk about it to a certain degree you're talking to the political environment, i mention again i don't know if i said earlier in the day, we had a dinner last night and so did steve, you better organize a very erudite, very smart, diverse economically fascinating discussion. boy, look at the gap between a discussion and was going on industry and how politics is

really happening but i understand. one of the reasons we're having this conference is to try to raise the level of input into the conversation and debate. but there is a sense that those smart and strategic investments somehow undermine real people out there trying to work real jobs. and i know it's long but i do, i have family in oklahoma and texas and kansas, not to knock oklahoma, texas and kansas but there's a lot of folks who just don't get that kind of policy as being in the interest. >> i think it's very, very difficult industry to time, because as a number of speakers have said, the way people feel about the economy, the way they feel about government, we are in a very painful, very slow process of recovery from an awful, for most americans, a truly awful period. and i think it's important to recognize again and again that

it wasn't that great before 2007, at 2002-2007 has the dubious distinction of being a recovered period where median real families income fell, where median real earnings for male workers fell. so, you're not talking about a period of people that were feeling they were indeed borrowing a lot, they were indeed trying to break through their budget constraints by borrowing, which was part of the problem. talk about the liquidity which allows us to do it and all the things you've heard about today, which in that very nasty storm of things coming together created a mess. that people are not feeling very good. so if you say hey, how about let's invest in, while we are cutting your medicare, let's invest in a robotics program, somebody said how passionate why they have so much trouble getting the message out.

that's a very difficult message to deliver. >> larry summers dashed as i make you three times to get a quick question and you will get a quick answer. >> i was just trees, you talk about industrial policy and we hear a lot about t. boone pickens talking about americans lack of energy post but what are some countries that you might have in mind that you have your successful industrial policies? germany, they are resilient manufacturing centric give us some insight on that. >> do any in -- to any countries get industrial policy right, or better? >> so, i honestly think that we should focus on the things that we can do better that will affect a number of industries. i actually at this point think that the right thing to focus on

is the education gap, the skills gap. the continued need to increase our spending on research and innovation. that kids do things like robotics, but without saying that robotics should be the focus, because i think that will happen. the scientific community is moving in that direction. and on infrastructure. if i think about energy, i'm afraid what i would say to that is the most fundamental thing society can do to generate energy conservation policy, or a change in the use of energy policy towards less carbon intensive fuel, the most fundamental thing to do is to change the price of energy. and to change the price of carbon energy in particular, to both encourage conservation and encourage alternative energy forces. those issues came up in the debate about the energy bill,

and you can see that this is another area where we are extremely closely divided. but a thing for society that have done it better have started with a higher, significantly higher, price of energy as a way to prod people to use less energy and use alternative energy. conservation is the low-hanging fruit. it's absolutely the low-hanging fruit. one of the ring nice things, the presence jobs council, i thought was very effective and i would urge all of you to go to the website and read the report. there's a lot of reports with a lot of lifting of what the administration can do and what the administration did here, which is not emphasize enough today i think, is where they could take action which did require more resources and didn't require congress, they did it. they did it. so one of the things that was on commercial energy efficiency and buildings, sort of a 20% improvement, and i think bill clinton picked us up very much as an initiative, and

governments around the country are working on this with the financial services industry and the owners of commercial buildings. and this is an initiative called the better builders initiative, and it's a commercial initiative to try to encourage energy conservation which is a very important part of the industrial policy and energy. >> ladies and gentlemen, doctor laura tyson. laura, thank you so much. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs, weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events. every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on book tv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our website. you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> top military commanders in afghanistan go before the house armed services committee this morning. marine corps general john allen will explain recent developments in that country. you can see live coverage beginning right now on our

companion network c-span3. today is primary day in illinois. the 54 republican presidential delegates at stake. we will have live coverage tonight as the result in speeches. poll said mr. romney and rival rick santorum at a statistical tie a week ago and now that romney's popularity in illinois has surged in some polls. the u.s. senate is about to gavel in. senators will begin the day with the general speeches. at about 11 eastern they will resume work on a small business bill letting them raise funds from small investors over the internet. and changing regulations on small businesses going public. senators plan a number of votes starting shortly after 11:30 a.m. to move the bill forward and limit debate on a couple of amendments, one by jack reed would limit small business abilities to delay rule complained to another by washington state democrat maria cantwell we continue the export-import bank's charter for another four years. its current charter runs out

may 31. and now to live coverage of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. 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 almighty, the psalmist tells us,you have been our dwelling place throughout all

generations. before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting to everlasting, you are god. on this first day of spring, we applaud your creative genius and relish the beauty of this land. we are so thankful for your love and grace. lord we depend on you to make known to our nation's leaders your plan to prosper us, to give us a future and a hope. move in your mighty power and restore

in our senators a faith in the wisdom of your word. inspire and equip them to seek your wisdom and to pray for your favor as we align ourselves with your perfect will. restore faith to the fearful, joy to the brokenhearted, and comfort to the afflicted. we pray in your great 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., march , 20, 2012 tothe 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. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: every morning i go out to take my -- do my exercise. this morning i started out the door and a crash of thunder and lightning, so i decided to do my exercise inside. when i got into the gym, i could watch tv and i could see these storms in another part of the country, really violent storms. and when i got back to my house, my wife indicated senator schumer called. he was stuck on a tarmac in new

york. so i knew at the time that we were going to have some problems here with scheduling. so, mr. president, following leader remarks this morning, we're going to be in a period of morning business for an hour. republicans will control the first half. the majority will control the final half. following that morning business, the senate will begin consideration of h.r. 3606, the capital formation bill. the filing deadline for all second-degree amendments to the reid substitute is, and the cantwell amendment is 11:00 today. the reason i mentioned those storm situations is the votes we had scheduled for 11:30 today, we're going to have to move those to this afternoon, because we have a number of people who can't be here, through no fault of their own. so i ask unanimous consent that cloture votes be -- that are currently scheduled to occur at 11:30 now begin at 4:00 p.m. this afternoon. the presiding officer: without

objection. mr. reid: if cloture is invoked on the amendment or the bill, it will be counted as if cloture were invoked at 12:00 noon. that the recess at 12:30 be until 2:15 to accommodate the weekly caucus meetings. the official photograph was expected to be today. we'll try to do it later this afternoon. we'll put everybody on notice on that. i'll consult with the republican leader about the votes and about other things that we're going to have to reschedule. mr. president, i ask that there be a second reading of 2204. , s. 2204. the presiding officer: the clerk will read for the second time. the clerk: s. 2204, a bill to eliminate unnecessary tax subsidies and promote renewable energy and energy conservation. mr. reid: mr. president, i would object to any further proceedings to this bill at this time. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. it will be placed on the

calendar. mr. reid: mr. president, for many, many years now the ex-im bank, referred to as export-import bank has helped american companies grow and sell their products overseas. and for those same years the ex-im bank has enjoyed broad bipartisan support. it was a good idea when it started. it's still a good idea. when it was last authorized in particulars, the ex-im bank passed the house by voice vote and the senate by unanimous consent. the consent was offered by a republican senator. so when senate democrats brought a reauthorization to the ex-im bank to the floor last week, we hoped the legislation would receive bipartisan, bicameral support as it did in 2006. after all, the measure will support about 300 jobs annually and help american exports continue to compete in the global economy. it passed the banking committee here in the senate unanimously. it has three republican

cosponsors, backed by the national association of manufacturers, business round table, united states chamber of commerce and various labor unions, including machinists. it will actually reduce the deficit by $1 billion. ex-im bank is one of the proposals we shouldn't have to fight over. this isn't something that deserves a fight. we should do so and move on quickly. but i'm sorry to say true to form the republican leader -- i will direct it to the house republican leadership this morning are once again sporting for a fight where there shouldn't be a fight. yesterday the house majority leader cantor called this bill that we're dealing with here to reauthorize the ex-im bank a partisan amendment.

this is coauthored by senator shelby. senator shelby has been chairman that have committee, now the ranking member. it is real tough to call anything shelby put his name on as partisan. leader cantor should check with his senate colleagues. many of them understand american exporters need access to financial to stay in a level playing field with global competitors. just yesterday the senior senator from south carolina, lindsey graham, said without the ex-im bank -- quote -- "our ability to grow in south carolina is nonexistent." end of quote. in 2011, south carolina comporters saved more than $130 million of goods abroad thanks to the ex-im bank financing. south carolina is not the only

state relying on the bank to keep businesses thriving. nevada comported $-- exported $3 million of their products last year. in 2011, delaware made it possible for the ex-im bank to send many products overseas. it supported jobs across 49 states. china sends more products than the united states, canada and great britain combined as senator graham said during his call yesterday. he had a conference call with the people concerned about this legislation. so, mr. president, we can't allow the gulf to widen. the chamber of commerce says -- quote -- "failure to reauthorize ex-im bank would amount to america's unilateral disarmament in the face of other nations' aggressive trade finance program."

so i don't know if air canada has looked at this legislation -- if mr. cantor has looked at this legislation. why does he want to fight about this? can't we do anything without the republican-dominated house of representatives working together? the chamber of commerce said we do have a choice, though. we can compete or we can cooperate. we can engage in yet another unnecessary, unproductive battle as cantor is picking a fight. we're not -- he's challenged a fight. we're not going to fight, mr. president, because this is bipartisan legislation. we can work together to help american businesses grow and hire. that's what we're going to do. the choice should not be difficult. we have do not want to fight. -- we do not want to fight. the senate will vote on this reasonable proposal today. almost 300,000 americans have

jobs last year, i preet, because of this important legislation. i hope those workers come first as colleagues cast their votes this morning. mr. president, would the chair announce are the business? the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business for one hour with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the second half.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. mr. johanns: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my colleague, senator portman, and senator coburn. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. johanns: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, we rise today to engage in a colloquy on an issue that is certainly front and center and has been for a long time in our great nation, and that is the issue of the health care bill. this bill is hurting working americans and small businesses, and they are the lifeblood of our economy. let me, if i might, talk about a company from nebraska, toba,

inc. toba is located in grand island, nebraska. they are a food distributor in central nebraska. they employ about 200 to 300 people, depending upon a given time of the year. it is companies like this that really are the heart and soul of the nebraska economy. tony wall is the chief executive officer of toba, and he shared with me recently that their health care premiums recently increased by 26%. tony's insurance agent talked to him. of course tony wanted to know what's going on here. what's wrong? the insurance agent said to tony that there were several provisions in the health care law that were the reason for the increase. well, let me put this in perspective. that 26% increase is an extra

$188,000 increase that ultimately falls in the laps of the employees of toba. hundreds of working americans will see their premiums go up as a result of this health care law. now, let me point out something that is very obvious here. that is a broken promise. then-candidate obama promised that americans would see their premiums decrease -- decrease -- by $2,500 by the end of his first term in office. well, that has not been the experience. this health care law drives up premiums, and toba is a perfect example of that. but i need not stop there. let me talk about yellow van

cleaning and restoration services in carney, nebraska, just down the road a bit from grand island. this small business employs 48 employees. the owner is a fine gentleman by the name of dave kitener. and he believes he's positioned his company correctly to grow it. in fact, some recent market research that was done shows his company is poised for growth. they have done all of the right things to take this small business and lay the right foundation so they could grow. well, dave was faced with a tough choice, a choice not caused by his competitors, a choice not caused by a bad

economy. he was faced with a tough choice caused by president barack obama and his administration and democrats in the house and senate that passed the health care bill. what is his tough choice? well, he had to choose not to expand because it's obvious where he is at. he will run smack dab into the employer mandate if he grows his business. you see, this law requires that employers with at least 50 full-time employees offer government-approved health insurance to their employees or pay a fine of $2,000 per employee. well, dave did the calculation on this. small business, tight profit

margins, doing everything they can to make the right decisions, but dave's calculation indicates that he will be penalized more than $50,000 a year if he grows beyond his current 48-member staff. there is no doubt about it. this law is stifling job creation. let me talk about american enterprise group. they point out that not only is this law preventing jobs from being created, it's forcing businesses to actually eliminate jobs. an iowa-based insurance company recently decided to entirely exit the individual insurance market, abandoning sales directly to individuals and families. so what happens?

35,000 policyholders lose that insurance through that company, but it doesn't stop there. 110 employees will lose their jobs. 70 in nebraska. a driving factor is the medical loss ratio provision in the law which micromanages how insurance companies spend their revenues. the c.e.o. of the insurance company said that job loss was -- quote -- "a fairly predictable consequence of the regulation." unquote. now, mr. president, these aren't hypothetical situations. before the law was passed, i came to the floor many times with my colleagues and pointed out the flaws in this ill-conceived legislation. well, now we're not pointing out

the flaws anymore in terms of it being a hypothetical situation. these are real stories, real-life stories and real people who have lost their jobs and are being impacted by this ill-advised law. well, there is more but i can directly point out that 70 nebraska as -- nebraskans lose their jobs. the law will mean 800,000 people lose their jobs in the next decade. like yellow van cleaning in nebraska, other businesses are holding off hiring. in a recent gallup survey, 48% of small businesses are not hiring because of the potential cost of health insurance under the health care law. the financial sector analysts at

u.b.s. have stated that the law is -- quote -- "arguably the biggest impediment to hiring, especially the hiring of less-skilled workers." unquote. those are the people that need the job most. the congressional budget office estimates average premiums increase by 27% to 30% under this law because the new health care law's coverage mandates force premiums up. it's no wonder that toba in grand island, nebraska, have seen its health care costs go up a staggering $818,000 per year. the medicare actuary says this law will increase health care spending by $311 billion over the next ten years. i think that's enormously conservative. well, two years have passed, and things are only getting worse. this law is suffocating job

growth around the country. let me, if i might, now turn to my colleagues. i have a question, if i might start with senator portman. you join me on the floor today, senator portman, and i appreciate that. i know that you have a unique perspective because you served as the director of office -- the director of the office of management and budget. do you see this law increasing costs in your home state? is it straining job creators like we're seeing in nebraska? mr. portman: to my colleague from nebraska, i'm afraid the answer is yes, it is increasing costs and therefore making us less competitive. when you increase the costs of doing business, of course it impacts the economy. and you have laid this out very well, and i appreciate your comments this morning. you talk about the 800,000 jobs that are projected to be lost.

that's probably a conservative figure, given the information that i'm getting from back home and that you just talked about. you talked about the fact that premiums are going to increase dramatically, 27% to 30%. since you mentioned the office of management and budget, i will also say this is about our businesses and their ability to create jobs and get this economy moving. it's about all of us as families and consumers having hire costs. it's also about our federal budget deficit. we have an expert on that in dr. coburn who will speak in a moment. but the point is that this is increasing costs to all of us in various ways, and the budget deficit is already at record levels, a $15 trillion debt. our company is obviously awash in red ink. one of the reasons is, of course, higher health care costs. so this is impacting us in a lot of different ways. let me address your question more directly, though, and that's in terms of the impact on businesses. i will tell you, i visited over 100 factories in ohio in the

last few years. every one i ask this question what's going on with taxes and regulations and energy and health care. i have not been to a business yet that hasn't told me that their health care cost increases over the past couple of years have added to the uncertainty, the unpredictability and therefore the lack of investment into jobs and growth. i went to a factory in cleveland, ohio, one day. this is a relatively small business. it's actually seeing its sales increase a little bit. the owner said rob, you know, i'd like to hire people, but i want to offer health care. everybody here has got health care, which is great. and those costs embedded in adding a new employee are too high, they are prohibitive. so what i'm doing instead is i'm going overtime, i'm going part time to avoid hiring a full-time worker. luckily, i was there with some members of the media and they were able to hear this directly from this individual who was making a decision about whether or not to hire somebody in ohio

during this weak recovery and the health care law and the health care cost increases are directly impacting that. so it's for real. the u.s. chamber of commerce did a study recently, as you know. this was just a couple of months ago. they asked small businesses, 500 employees or less all around america, how does this impact you. 74% of them say the health care law makes it harder for their businesses to hire employees. 52% of them say economic uncertainty is one of the top reasons they are not hiring. 36% say uncertainty about what washington will do next is one of their two top reasons for not hiring. 32% say they are not hiring because of requirements in the health care bill. so this is not just anecdotal evidence we're picking up in our states as we go around and talk to employers. this is information that's out there for the public to see. i hope that all the activity that is surrounding this two-year anniversary of the passage of this law, from the democrat side and from our side,

will rekindle this debate because clearly we didn't get it right. we didn't affect the fundamental problem, which is the costs of health care rising to the point that it is affecting us as consumers, families, is affecting our ability to get this economy moving and is affecting our budget deficit in such dramatic ways. doug holtz-eakin testified last year. the health care reform law says if you're an employer with more than 50 employees, you have got to offer full-time employees with coverage or you pay a $2,000 penalty per worker. he made an interesting point. i see this around ohio with these small businesses that are maybe 30, 40 workers and they are hoping to be able to add more. he said -- and i think he's right -- this creates a tremendous impediment to expansion. his for example, let's say the company doesn't offer health care benefits because they are under 50. they want to add another employee. they take it up to 51 employees.

$2,000 worker penalty. the fine to hire an additional worker would be $42,000 for that one worker to be added marginally to its work force. so businesses have to offset that lost revenue, and the burden will be borne, as doug holtz-eakin said, by who? the workers. lower wages, fewer jobs, fewer hours to be worked, less job growth. there is one specific tax. you talked about the many taxes in this legislation and the overall burden of the taxation on the economy is one of the problems with it, but there is also a very specific tax on medical device companies, and this is one that i know affects both of your states. it certainly affects ohio. we have got a lot of very innovative medical device companies in ohio. they tell me that they are going to have to cut back on their work force because of this new tax that's in the health care bill. so think about this. at a time when we're all proposing that we do more on science and technology, math and engineering, the stem programs, we're trying to encourage more

innovation in this country to be able to compete globally, medical device business in ohio and around our country has been strong, we're able to compete globally, we should be doing all we can do to encourage them and help them. instead, we're doing just the opposite. there is a 2.3% medical device excise tax in this legislation, and it's going to hit next year, and they are already planning for it. it's not a 2.3% tax on profits. that's what you would expect, right? it's a tax on revenues. so you could have a young start-up entrepreneur who says i'm starting this company even though it's a loss leader the first couple of years, i'm not making any money, but i know that i have got a great idea here and i am going to continue to stretch this out to be able to create something of great value for our health care, for the quality of health care, to be able to save lives, and yet i've got no profit so i probably won't be taxed, right? guess what? you are going to be taxed. you are going to be taxed on your revenue. established companies that do have some profit, they're

looking at big taxes on their revenues, particularly if they are doing well. there are a couple of companies in ohio and around the country who have already told us what they're going to do. let me give you an example. last year i visited mound laser center outside of dayton, ohio. they provide services to the medical device industry, fabrication. they do very technical work. they have machinists there who are specializing in medical device manufacturing. they have provided machining services to the device industry. the c.e.o. is a friend of mine, dr. larry dosser. he told me when i was there, look, this could be devastating to our business, this 2.3% excise tax because these are our customers. well, unfortunately, he has just told me that he is going to have to start laying people off. january 1, 2012, a couple months ago, they laid off people for the first time in their history. a 16-year-old company. it's an up and coming company. they have been adding people every year. because of this medical device

tax, they're having to plan for higher taxes. therefore, a hit to their revenues. they are starting to lay people off already. there are other examples. meridian diagnostics in cincinnati. i have visited there, talked to the workers, talked to the management. they tell me flat out this is going to cost us, you know, tens of millions of dollars and this is going to result in us laying off workers. we're not sure if it's 40 workers or 80 workers, but it's an up and coming company in our area that's doing the right things, creating jobs and opportunity and creating devices that will help. in this case, by the way, also improve quality and lower costs of health care. that's what they specialize in. diagnostic services that you as a doctor understand, dr. coburn, can be incredibly helpful in getting health care costs down. and there are others. stryker corporation just announced its intention to lay off 5% of its work force in anticipation of implementation of this tax at the beginning of next year. so this is what's really happening. there is a better way. there is a way to reduce costs,

to increase competition in health care, to make it more patient centered. you all have been leaders in that. we have laid out alternatives. we're not saying the health care system was perfect before this legislation was drafted. not at all. of course, it needs to be improved and reformed, and it can be, and it can be done in a way that most improves quality and improves the ability for people to have access in ways that by adding transparency and adding competition and adding the value of quality in outcomes rather than just input and volume to reduce costs in our system. we've got to do that. if we don't, this law will continue to affect our economy negatively. one reason we have the weakest recovery since the great depression is because of the impact of health care, and this law made it worse, not better. i thank you for letting me to talk a little bit about this aeupbd look forward -- and i look forward to the continuing dialogue. mr. johanns: senator portman, thank you. you make so many excellent

points here. i really feel if you look at the people who have spoken about this legislation before and after its passage, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who speaks with greater authority an dr. tom coburn, who is a member of the united states senate. dr. coburn, i would ask you to weigh in on this health care bill. you've talked through the years so often about what this health care bill is doing to medicine, the impact it's going to have on patients, the impact on the economy, the impact on jobs. i'd like to you talk to us today about what you're seeing as we are literally on the time of the second anniversary, and tell us how's this panning out. it's been the law now for a couple of years. what's the reality of this legislation?

mr. coburn: thank you. the reality is we're committing malpractice. let me describe what i mean by that. in medicine, when a patient comes in, listening is a very important aspect. as a matter of fact, there's the axiom in medicine that if you listen to your patient, they'll tell you what's wrong with them completely. the more time you spend, the more effective you are at gaining that. the reason that's the axiom in medicine is because you don't want to treat symptoms of a disease. you want to treat the real disease. and all of america recognized we had some difficulties in being competitive and also with access in terms of health care. when we know our health care is good but it's too expensive. as a matter of fact, it's the most expensive of anywhere in the world. but we do know some things about

that. we know that one out of three dollars we spend in health care in this country doesn't help anybody. doesn't help them get well. doesn't keep them from getting sick. the problem with the affordable care act is it it almost always treats the symptoms rather than the underlying disease. let me give some examples. i practice medicine -- i've been a physician for almost 30 years. when i have a contract with a private insurer, they're going to renew that contract in the next year on whether or not i'm efficient and effective in taking care of people who insure through them. there's no motivation at all. when the underlying problem with our $2.6 trillion is that we all think somebody else is paying for our health care, so i'm a practicing physician, i have no motivation not to spend medicare

dollars and avoid the axiom of listening to the patient because maybe the short-term remuneration for my services is low, so i need to see more people. so we have addressed symptoms of the disease but not the real disease. the real disease is that we on both the purchasing and providing side are not responsible with the available dollars in our economy. and when we always assume someone else is paying for it, we can't get there. we'll never -- we don't have the right incentive. so consequently, when we treat symptoms, we actually make it worse. how is that -- what are we seeing? you know, what we're going to see is the government jump between the doctor and the patient to make the symptom

worse. we're going to have an ipab board which isn't coming yet but it's coming. we're going to have an innovation board. not physicians, not doctors, not patients making these decisions, but somebody here in washington making decisions. so the very capability of utilizing that one axiom of medicine -- have the freedom to listen to the patient and then act on what you heard rather than act on the basis of rules and regulations coming out of an autonomous, nonpersonal body in washington that's going to tell you what you're going to do. let me give you a great example. in the affordable care act is the money and the incentives to put everything online. by itself, that sounds smart. what do the first studies show on the basis of that? the first studies show that when a doctor has online available

diagnostic tests versus the doctors who don't, they order 18% more tests than the doctors that don't. in other words, if something is easy to do, you do more of it. and so here's the first -- this just came out two weeks ago. in the first set, when people were looking at radio graphic tests like c. it's, m.r.i.'s, c.a.t. scans, chest x-rays, ultra sounds, they get the results, they get the results faster without the patient being there, without reading, they automatically order 18% more tests. our problem in our country was we're ordering too many tests and we have all the incentives to order tests rather than listen to the patient. and now we're going to set up a system where we're going to order more tests. that's what the first study shows. we're going to give hundreds of millions of dollars ting doctors to have an i.t. system put in their office so we can have an

electronic medical record. what are we seeing from the first exams of that other than isolated cases where it is a very refined product like mayo clinic or cleveland clinic or even at the v.a. what do we find? is people fill out the paperwork, check the boxes but don't check it in relationship to the patient. so when the next person looks at the electronic medical record, they don't look at all the garbage that's there that doesn't mean anything. but oh it might, because there's too much information now in terms of the computer screen, so what's happening? we're doing duplicate things that weren't done before. so the impact of the health care just in terms of taxes, does anybody think that health insurance premiums aren't going to rise enough to offset whatever the increased cost is for the thresh stphoeld if

threshold? they're going to live within that but the premiums are going to go up so they can do what they need to do. blue cross-blue shield oklahoma knows my practice parameters. they know what i'm good at, what i'm efficient at and what i'm not. they're not going to give up that knowledge on whether or not i should be doing a test or not by simply saying the federal government put a medical loss ratio. they're going to raise premium prices, which we're already seeing, in oklahoma. when we continue to treat symptoms stphefd underlying -- instead of the underlying disease. we don't solve the problem. we actually make the problem worse. that's why you get sued as a physician, when you've missed a diagnosis of a disease. and what i would tell you is that americans are at dis-ease about health care in our country. but we have committed malpractice in our approach to it because we are treating the symptoms and not the underlying

dis-ease. mr. johanns: let me express my appreciation. but let me also follow up with a question because i think this is important. you mentioned ipab. this was a little-discussed provision, although you kept pointing it out. talk about the powers of this group and where you think it's leading to. mr. coburn: the ipab stands for the independent payment advisory board. they're a group of individuals that will decide what we pay for and what we don't pay for in terms of health care. they'll also decide how much we pay for. once those 15 people are in place, if they're wrong, you have no ability to challenge it in court. you have no ability to see their product and why they decided on what they did. you have no ability to cut off their funding. in other words, they're an

autonomous, non-democratic function whose whole goal will be to control costs. well, there's lots of ways to control costs. i call it the deficitization of american -- the sovietization of american medical industry. we know how that works. we've seen it. it's called nice in england. you're seeing a revolt. in england today they're talking about reforming their health care system and going an opposite direction of what we're going because what they know is the rationing of care based on a value of one ear -- year of life per individual is the way they make that decision. if senator johanns is 78 kwraoerlsd and has a broken -- years old and has a broken hip and bad diabetes and bad heart disease, they look at what your

life expectancy is with respect to that and the cost of fixing your hip and say you're not worth it. so in england, they don't fix your hip. that's called rationing. the fact is it's not bad by the word. it's a loss of liberty. it means you no longer have the ability to decide for yourself what will happen to you, and somebody autonomously very distant from you made the decision for you. ipab's not the worst. the innovation council. what won't happen that the innovation council won't allow to happen? i had a story of a patient. i'll give you an example. not ipab, not innovation. but we're also going to have the task force for preventive task force that's going to make recommendations on screening. i want to give you an example. this is a true story. i won't use her name. but a young lady came to me with a breast lump, and i did the

standard protocol, best practices on her. it showed to be a simple cyst. and the point i'm making is about the afrt medicine, not the science of medicine because everybody gets hung up in the science but nobody ever talks about the heart. i had an uncomfortable feeling about this christ, so i aspirated it. it was -- about this cyst so i aspirated. it was carcinoma of the breast. had i followed protocol, by ipab, and the best practices, i would have never apraise pra*euted. -- aspirated. this patient is now dead. because i didn't follow what the standard protocol was but

followed my history and my knowledge of the patient and my feeling, i diagnosed her early. she got to see her kids get married. she got to see her grandchild. it never would have happened. what's common with ipab and the preventive services task force is people making decisions that aren't in the room with the doctor and the patient. and that's the biggest danger of the affordable care act, is we're going to take the ability of patients and doctors to make choices and give that choice to a government bureaucrat. mr. johanns: thank you, mr. president. we yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from washington. mrs. murray: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. murray: thank you, mr. president.

mr. president, two years ago, health insurance companies could deny women care due to so-called preexisting conditions, like pregnancy or being a victim of domestic violence. two years ago, women were permitted to be legally discriminated against when it came to insurance premiums and were often paying more for coverage than men. two years ago, women did not have access to the full range of recommended preventative care like mammograms or contraception and more. two years ago, the insurance companies had all the leverage, and too often it was women who were paying the price. mr. president, that's why i am proud to come to the floor today, two years after we passed the affordable care act, to highlight just how far we have come when it comes to making sure women across america get the care they need at a cost that they can afford. because of that law, women will be treated fairly when it comes

to health care costs, deductibles and other -- costs. deductibles and other expenses will be capped so a health care crisis doesn't cause a family to lose their home or their life savings. and preventative care will be free so women never have to delay care because they can't afford to see a doctor. because of this law, women will have more options. they can use health care exchanges to pick quality plans that work for them and for their families, and if they change jobs or they move, they will be able to keep their coverage. because of that law, maternity care is now covered and women won't have to skip prenatal care because they can't afford it. mr. president, because of this law, women are now in charge of their health care, not their insurance companies. that's why i feel very strongly that we cannot go back to the way things were. while we can never stop working to make improvements, we owe it to the women of america to make

progress and not allow the clock to be rolled back on their health care needs. now, i know some of my republican colleagues are furiously working to undo all of the gains that we have made in the health care reform law for women and for their families. i'm disappointed but i'm hardly surprised. republicans have been waging a war on women's health since the moment they came into power. after they campaigned across the country on a platform of jobs and the economy, the first three bills that they introduced in the house were each direct attacks on women's health care in america. the very first bill they introduced, h.r. 1, would have totally eliminated title 10 funding for family planning and teenaged pregnancy prevention, and it included an amendment that would have completely defunded planned parenthood and cut off support for the millions of women in this country who count on it. another one of their opening round of bills would have permanently codified the hyde amendment and the d.c. abortion

ban, and the original version of their bill didn't even include an exception for the health of the mother. and finally, they introduced a bill right away that would have rolled back every single one of the gains that i just talked about in the affordable care act. mr. president, this law is a winner for women, it's a winner for men and for children and for our health care system overall. so i'm proud to stand here today with so many of my colleagues who are committed to making sure the benefits of this law do not get taken away from the women of america. we will keep fighting attempts to take them away, and i'm confident that we will win. mr. president, while i'm on the floor today, i also want to rise to express my strong support for an amendment that will be considered today that will grow american jobs, help small businesses, generate revenue for taxpayers and has strong backing. mr. president, it's no secret foreign countries are aggressively trying to seize the

global market, and america needs to keep fighting back with a program that works for businesses and taxpayers and does create thousands of jobs. the export-import bank is one of the most important resources america has to keep up this fight. for over 75 years, the ex-im bank has supported job-creating u.s. exports by helping american businesses sell to the world, and no one knows this better than businesses in my home state of washington, the largest exporter in the nation per capita and where one in three jobs in my state is tied to international trade. reauthorizing the ex-im bank means more than 150 washington state businesses who rely on this financing to sell their products overseas can keep their jobs here at home. at a time when our competitors in the global marketplace provide far more aggressive export credit financing to companies within their borders, the ex-im bank simply levels the playing field for u.s. companies

that sells goods overseas, and the ex-im bank helps create u.s. jobs and does not add to our deficit. u.s. exports have been a bright spot in america's road to recovery, increasing by about 20% over the last two years and driving about half of all of our economic growth. given the obvious need for exports to power economic growth, it would be negligent to pull the plug on the ex-im bank. if we do not pass this bill by the end of this month, thousands of jobs will be at risk, not just from our exporters but from businesses large and small across the country. we authorizing the -- reauthorizing the export-import bank would not only be a short-term victory for our exporters, it would also tell our trading partners that the united states is a stable place to do business and that we stand behind our products and our companies. so i urge a yes vote on that amendment when it comes to the floor later today. thank you, 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:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: mr. president, inquiry, is there a quorum in place? the presiding officer: we're in a quorum call, sir. mr. reed: i would ask unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: mr. president, i rise again today to discuss h.r. 3606, the so-called jobs act. as chair of the subcommittee on securities, insurance and investment, i want all of my colleagues to know that this legislation as it is currently drafted is fundamentally flawed. we need to stop, slow down, carefully amend this legislation

and send something to the president that will not only encourage capital formation but also protect investors. and i'm not alone in my analysis. some of the most sophisticateed security analysts, experts and commentators in the country are telling the senate to slow down and work to improve it. we have received letters with testimony or comments from the s.e.c. chairman mary shapiro, s.e.c. commissioner luis aguilar, the north american securities administrators association, former s.e.c. chairman arthur levitt, aarp, americans for financial reform, the consumer federation of america, the council of institutional investors, the national association of consumer advocates, public citizen, u.s. perg, the afl-cio, afscme, the national education association, the american institute of c.p.a.'s, the c.f.a. institute

and the main street alliance, just to name a few. a broad spectrum of experts who feel that this bill is, as they say, not ready for prime time. in an op-ed in "the washington post" on march 14, two harvard securities professors, john coats and robert posen state in their words -- "this bill does more than trim regulatory fat. parts of it cut into muscle. small businesses will have a harder time raising capital if investors do not receive sufficient disclosure or other legal protections." in his "motley fool" column on march 19, mr. moscowitz says there are four problematic things about the jobs act. motley fool is one of the most per executive of the securities markets from many different perspectives. they point out significant faults.

the bill as currently written would exempt 90% of current i.p.o. from accounting requirements. it defines small companies as anything valued below $700 million and earning less than $1 billion in revenues. those aren't exactly small companies, and those companies can in fact and should in fact be following the procedures that we've laid out. our amendments recognizes the need to provide more streamlined processes, but we restrict these streamline procedures to companies with less than $350 million in annual revenues, much closer to the notion of a small company beginning its process as a publicly held entity. there's also a problem in this legislation with accounting. and when investors lose faith in accounting standards, they're less willing to buy stocks. in fact, one of the great brand of our security markets is the

sense, the feeling that your money's well protected, it's scrutinized, there's accountants, there's audits. if we lose that, the investing public worldwide would say the united states is not the place to put our money. our amendment does not interfere with independent accounting standards and limits the number of companies that get exempted from accounting rules. and there's another issue here too in the house bill. it contains a provision that would increase the number of investors who can own shares of private companies and excludes employees from account. that has some merit. but by counting shareholders of record instead of the beneficial shareholders, there's a legal owner on the books of the company but that legal owner may represent thousands of actual owners, the ones who get the dividends, the ones who gets the right to vote on the shares. if the house bill preserves this loophole going forward, if we preserve it, this could

potentially create a situation where an unlimited number of investors could be involved in a company, and that company still would be private. last year, for example, goldman sachs planned to create a special purpose vehicle, basically a fund that could pool money from its clients so it would count as only one record shareholder. and you could see how this could clearly circumvent the notion of how necessary it is to provide reporting requirements for large companies, companies with large shareholder bases. our bill eliminates this loophole by clarifying record holders must be beneficial owners and the bill raises the shareholder capital from 500 to 750 to make it more contemporaneous. we exempt employees from this record holder trigger for public registration and that will allow private companies who want to remain private, want to reward their employees with the ability

to do so without triggering the public reporting requirements. now, finally, the house bill sets up a new mechanism for crowd funding. this is a very interesting concept. my colleagues, senator merkley, senator tpwh*epbt, senator brown -- senator bennet and senator brown of massachusetts worked very hard at developing a crowd funding bill much superior to what is included in the house version. in fact, the house version has been described by a noted securities expert as -- quote -- "the boiler room legalization act of 2012" for their very lax approach to crowd funding. our amendment requires crowd funding to be conducted through regulated intermediaries and provides a basic disclosure aggregate caps and protection to ensure market integrity and prevent abuse. the house bill goes on and also attempts to remove prohibitions against general solicitation and advertising in regards to

private placements that have been on the books for decades. recognizing that a world of internet and twitter, even private communications with respect to sales to investors could be inadvertently broadly disseminated, our bill takes a much more targeted approach to the new media. in our amendment we allow for limited public solicitation and advertising but done in ways and through methods approud of by the s.e.c. so they have a chance to provide for appropriate mechanisms in this age of twitter, internet and other new media. we believe that this amendment gives the s.e.c. the tools it needs to formulate a limited exemption to the general solicitation and advertising rules allowing private offerings to still remain private. there is another aspect of the house bill, and that deals with rega. it has been on the books of the securities and exchange commission for decades. it allows exemptions for many

offerings, $5 million or less. the house bill proposes to raise the ceiling to $50 million. but they do so in a way that could open it up to a much, much broader expansive use this have proposition. we limit -- expansive use of this proposition. we limit companies to raising no more than that $50 million every three years. this aims to the small companies trying to raise capital without triggering all of the requirements of a publicly held company. we also require that a basic set of audited financial statements be filed with the offering statement and require periodic disclosures and material information to investors. let me stress what the house bill has proposed. they are proposing to legalize the solicitation of $50 million a year. in fact, it could be $50 million every year without requiring

audited financial statements in the disclosure. i don't know who's making up these statements. in fact, they probably might be very creative. but i think at a minimum, you have to have audited financial statements if you're soliciting $50 million a year from the public and in fact that $50 million could be for a succession of years. finally, this whole discussion about the house bill has been cast in the terms of jobs. it's not a lot in this bill, the house bill that talks really about jobs, particularly jobs in america. there is no requirement that any of these relaxations of the securities laws are correlated with job increases. there is no requirement in the house bill that these jobs be in the united states. we've just come through a series in which the s.e.c. had to crack down on the reverse mergers by chinese companies who were taking american shell companies, putting their money in, and then going ahead and using the benefits of access to our stock markets.

most of those companies, their labor forces were not here, nor the intention was to create those labor forces here. those are the types of risks that we run in the house bill. now, our bill includes reauthorization of the export-import bank, which is something that has already demonstrated its ability to support american jobs. and we've also included provisions that senator snowe and senator landrieu have included from the small business committee that will increase the s.b.a.'s ability to assist american companies, small american businesses. they've done this successfully. these resources they can do more. our bill actually does speak about jobs, actually jobs here in the united states. now, one of the premises behind this house legislation is we just deregulate, the jobs will come right back. where have we heard that before? all through the 2000's.

just deregulate. those investment banks like lehman, they don't need regulations. give them a lot of leverage and they'll run. and they ran, right off the cliff. we don't want to repeat that again. we don't want to repeat what we found, to our shag grin, in the 1990's and 2000 where we allowed analysts of securities to sell the securities on behalf of their fellow investment bankers, shield in effect, those provisions are included in the house bill. that is going to undermine confidence in the markets. we should learn in the past, and i urge all of my colleagues to support the reid-landrieu-levin amendment as a basic text. we can make improvements on that. we can send a bill, we hope, very quickly in collaboration with the house and the president that not only stimulates capital formation but also protects investors. we can send a bill that takes the lessons of the last 20 years

where in the guise of deregulation, in the hope for job creation, we saw the greatest financial crisis in the country perpetrated upon main street. we don't want to see it again. and with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor. mr. graham: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. graham: thank you. could you let me know when ten minutes passes. the presiding officer: without objection. the republican time has expired, sir. mr. graham: could i ask for ten minutes to speak in morning business? the presiding officer: without objection. a senator: reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: was there a consent entered into on speaking order earlier? mr. graham: senator, all i know is they told me to come down at 11:10. mr. harkin: all i can say is i was told to come at 11:00.

mr. graham: could i have five minutes? mr. harkin: yes. i think it's fair to go back and forth. but i would just ask consent that the senator from iowa be recognized to speak after the senator from south carolina. the presiding officer: without objection. the senator from south carolina for five minutes. mr. graham: if i go a little bit over, just bear with me. this is a defining moment for the senate in a couple ways. the democratic senators have an alternative to the house-passed jobs bill that will get a vote on their alternative. that's good. i believe the house-passed jobs bill had an overwhelming bipartisan support. it's a good document. i will support that version of it over my senate democrat colleagues. let me tell you what our senate democratic colleagues have done that i think is very constructive. ex-im bank is trying to be made of the parts bill in the senate. it's export-import bank, what does that mean? this is a financing ability by american companies who are

selling overseas in volatile or emerging markets. it's a financing system that's been available since 1934, if you're going to try to sell a product made in america to a place in the world where traditional bank something hard to obtain, you can go to the ex-im bank, and they will give a letter of credit. they will sometimes give a direct loan to people who want to buy american products. the bank itself made $3.5 billion for it want, i think, since 2005 and 2006. and here's the reality. every country we compete with has their version of ex-im bank. in canada, one-tenth our size, we finance $32 billion of american-made products sold overseas through our ex-im system last year. canada financed $100 billion. france has three ex-im banks. china has more ex-im activity than the united states, france,

and germany combined. everybody that american manufacturing competes with, every country that produces products has their version of the ex-im bank. at the end of may, our ex-im banks' authorization runs out. our loan limits run out a few weeks earlier. this would be devastating. small companies throughout this country depend on ex-im banks to sell american-made products overseas. let me give you one good example that's been the topic of conversation. boeing aircraft makes airplanes in america, the 787 dream liner. it was voted the best new airplane in a long time here recently, something that boeing is proud of. they make it in washington, now in south carolina. the first airplane to be made in south carolina or roll out here in about a month or less, about a month from now. the facility is under budget, ahead of schedule, and we're proud of that airplane. eight out of the ten airplanes being made in south carolina in the first year were

ex-im-financed. there was a deal between boeing and india where a letter of credit was issued by ex-im bank to allow traditional financing to occur, and boeing was able to sell a big order of american-made jets to air india. and that's just one example. g.e. makes turbines, gas turbines to generate power for emerging areas like afghanistan, iraq, the mideast, africa, all these distressed areas are going to grow and they're going to need power. one-third of the sales coming out of greenville, south carolina, for the gas turbines made in america creating american jobs goes through ex-im financing. so here's the issue: if america allows our ex-im financing system to go away in may, if that's the will of the congress, then you've destroyed the ability of many companies in this country to grow their business. as the economy has been weak and

stagnant here at home, here's the good news. in terms of exports, we've increased our export sales 20%. imagine an america that could not continue to increase export sales. imagine a boeing manufacturer that could not ever sell an american-made airplane in a volatile or emerging market. *f, because -- because china is now making airplanes, airbus has access to three or four ex-im banks. it would be an ill-conceived idea. this program has been around a long time. it's helped create thousands of jobs in the united states. and everybody that we compete with, they have a more aggressive form of ex-im financing than we do. so to my colleagues who want to eliminate this, i just don't understand how american business could ever successfully compete in these emerging markets if ee unilaterally disarm. to my democratic colleagues, thank you for bringing up ex-im bank. to our majority leader, senator reid, this is a good idea.

what's a bad idea is to not let anybody on the republican side offer one amendment to this bill. some of the ideas to reform ex-im bank i would agree to. i think any organization, any entity can be made better. i just want to be able to get back to being in a body called the united states senate where people with different ideas on important topics can actually vote. so to my colleagues on this side, i -- i may vigorously oppose some of you who decide that ex-im bank should go away because i think that would be the worst thing you could do for the american economy, particularly export jobs being created in this country, and it would just be unilaterally surrendering in the world marketplace, and whether you like it or not, other countries are ex-im banking on steroids, and if we just get out of this business, people like boeing will cease to be able to sell airplanes and you will shut down facilities like south carolina. not a very good idea. now, at the end of the day, you do have a right to have your say and we'll have the debate that i'm looking forward to about

what we should or shouldn't do. but under the process now, mr. president, that we have, not one amendment can be offered on our side, and we have just got to do better than that. we have a transportation bill that had a lot of amendments passed with 74 votes. we have had a good exchange here lately with judges. i'm very proud of what our minority and majority leader worked out on judges. i want to get the senate back to being the senate. i think ex-im reauthorization should be an integral part of any jobs bill. i want to put it in the senate bill. i would gladly vote for it. there are a bunch of republicans over here that will support extension of ex-im financing with reforms, but none of us want to be put in a situation where our colleagues can't have a say that disagree with us or that we can't reform the bill. so that's just not the way to go. so i hope between now and 4:00 that the minority leader and the majority leader can find a way to bring up the jobs bill, allowing it to be amended in an appropriate way and taking votes some of us don't like but it's broader democracy and have a

robust debate on a jobs package that couldn't come at a better time and include in that debate ex-im reauthorization at a time when america needs more jobs here at home, the economy at home is weak. the one good thing about what's happening here at home is that our export sales have gone up, and the way that you create export jobs in america is you allow american businesses to compete on a level playing field throughout the world. i wish the world were different. i wish we had completely free markets. every american business could do fine in that world, but that's not the way it is and ex-im bank doesn't cost the taxpayer one dime. it makes money for the treasury and it allows american businesses to be competitive. so i'm urging the two leaders of the senate to allow a jobs bill to come forward, have our say, have our differences. let's debate, let's vote, let's amend and let's create jobs in america. with that, i will yield. the presiding officer: morning business is closed. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of h.r. 3606, which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 334,

h.r. 3606, an act to increase american job creation and economic growth by improving access to the public capital markets for emerging growth companies. the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. harkin: first i ask unanimous consent that chena nizimov and matt shepherd be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. harkin: i come to the floor to express my strong disappointment with the so-called small business legislation passed by the house of representatives which is now coming before the senate this afternoon for a cloture vote and to express my support for the substitute amendment offered by senators reed of rhode island, levin, landrieu, others of which i am a cosponsor. quite simply, there is a right way and a wrong way to address some of the legitimate concerns about the ability of small businesses to access capital. unfortunately, the house bill is

completely the wrong approach. in the name of helping small business, the bill takes a meat ax to the very investor protection laws that have allowed our capital markets to flourish. on sunday, march 11, "the new york times" published an editorial about the house bill titled -- "they have very short memories." end quote. this title could not be any more appropriate because in the wake of the dot-com bubble, the enron corporate accounting scandal and the 2008 financial crisis, advocates of this bill must have very short memories indeed. the idea that this is the right time to further weaken regulations on wall street is simply unconscionable. as we are continuing to dig out of the worst financial crisis since the great depression which has brought so much pain to hard-working middle-class families, the idea that the solution to what ails our economy is to further deregulate

the financial sector and to open the door for fraud and abuse simply makes no sense. in fact, according to a recent report from the center on retirement security at boston college, financial scams against seniors enabled by the internet are already on the rise. for this reason, au pair wrote that their primary concern is that these bills can adequately protect against the potential harmful impact on investor protections and market integrity. even more, the north american securities administrators association -- this is the organization of state securities regulators -- said of the house-passed bill -- quote -- "by placing unnecessary limits on the ability of state security

regulators to protect retail investors from the risks associated with smaller speculative investments, congress is poised to enact policies intended to strengthen the economy that will likely have precisely the opposite effect." precisely the opposite effect. that's from the north american securities administrators association. who are we listening to around here anyway? supporting that view, the afl-cio wrote to congress that -- quote -- "while the proponents of the capital formation bills claim they would promote jobs, they would actually have the perverse effect of raising the cost of capital for all companies by increasing the risk of fraud." mr. president, passing the house bill would be a terrible miss

take. -- mistake. i remember well the last time we rushed to deregulate the financial sector in the name of creating jobs. i was here in the senate then. it was in the late 1990's when we passed a bill to repeal the glass-stiegel act that was enacted during the great depression. that allowed -- see, what happened the grass-stiegel said if you're an investment bank, you can be an investment bank. if you're a commercial bank, you're a commercial bank. if you're an insurance company, you're an insurance company. but if you're an investment bank, you can't insurance. if you're in insurance, you can't be an investment bank and you can't be in commercial banking. that worked well for over half a century in our country. during the boom years of the 1950's, the 1960's, the 1970's into the 1980's, this worked well for our country. then all of a sudden, wall street got together and said wouldn't it be great if we could

break down these walls and we could just put this all together? and they came to congress in the 1990's with a bill to get rid of this glass-stiegel protection. well, then what happened? the huge financial companies like citigroup and a.i.g. sort of sprung up because now they have insurance, a.i.g. a.i.g. now becomes a commercial bank and it becomes an investment bank. they get larger and larger and they get reckless. they take irresponsible risk taking because while they might have known about insurance, they really didn't know about investment banking. investment banking may have known about investment banking, but they didn't know a heck of a lot about insurance and commerce banking. so we got into this huge financial, irresponsible structure, and it plunged the global economy into the worst

financial crisis in generations. i'm proud of the fact that i was one of only eight senators to vote against deregulation of glass-steagall. this bill, i will tell you, mr. president, reminds me so much of that. it was follow the crowd. everybody was for it. president clinton was for it, secretary rubben was for -- ruben was for deregulating glass-steagall. larry summers was for it. republicans were for it. it just went through here like greased lightning. wall street was for it. glass-steagall was old, don't you see, that was old stuff back in the depression. we needed something new, a new regime out there. well, as i said, i was one of eight that voted against it. i spoke against it here on the floor at the time. i said we're going to regret this. boy, did we ever learn to regret

what we did in deregulating glass-steagall. now, i bring this up because simon johnson, the former chief economist at the international monetary fund, the i.m.f., recently wrote that -- quote -- "with the so-called jobs bill, congress is about to make the same kind of mistake again as in the repeal of the glass-steagall act." i urge my colleagues to take these words seriously. unless we do this in the right way, future members of the senate will be standing right here lamenting the fact of what we did in a hurry to follow the crowd. fortunately, mr. president, there is an alternative way to make the reforms that are necessary to allow small businesses to grow without jeopardizing our financial markets and hurting consumers. as s.e.c. chairwoman mary shapiro wrote in a march 13 letter to senators johnson and

shelby -- quote -- "i believe there are provisions that should be added or modified to improve investor protections that are worthy of the senate's consideration." the substitute amendment offered by senators reed, levin, landrieu includes these important reform provisions. let me list a few of the things the substitute amendment would do. first, the house bill would allow companies to advertise risky, less regulated, unregistered private offerings to the general public using billboards, cold calls to senior living centers, other mass marketing methods. do you know what this means? this means that -- let's say an elderly living in a senior living center or maybe going there for recreation, all of a sudden they are in a room and they are giving -- a lecture is given to them about how they can take their 401-k money.

maybe they have got $100,000 in their 401-k. here you can take some of the 401-k and put it into this small business start-up, and guess what? it's going to be just like the beginning of -- of apple computers, see, or it's going to be the beginning of microsoft or something. this is a small company, and if you invest -- if you just invested a few hundred dollars, why, you can quadruple your money probably in four or five years. that's what they can do under the house bill. they can make cold calls, anything. the reed-landrieu amendment would allow firms to advertise only to investors with appropriate resources and sophistication to bear the risks. the house bill would tear down protections put in place after the late 1990's internet stock bubble burst that prevented conflicts of interest from obtaining the quality of research about companies. we know, we know that

researchers were involved with the investment bankers doing the initial public offering, and they were given all this stuff about how great this was and how much money it was going to make in a short period of time. well, what we need is a firewall, a firewall to keep the investors -- the investment bankers separate from the researchers, and that's what the reed-landrieu-levin would do, so that there is not any conflict of interest there. the house bill would allow very large companies with up to a billion dollars in revenues per year -- now, let me repeat that. the house bill would allow a company with up to $1 billion a year in revenues to offer stock to the public and yet avoid financial transparency and auditing requirements designed to ensure that they are not cooking the books. the reed-landrieu-levin amendment would ensure that essential investor protections apply to large companies by

lowering the exemptions to companies with less than $350 million in revenues. that number actually came from the s.e.c., securities and exchange commission, that is sort of a reasonable amount. not a billion, not a billion. this would allow huge companies to not have to have the auditing requirements, for example, that the s.e.c. requires or the financial transparency. think about preying on the public with that. we're a big company, we have up to a billion dollars in revenues, you don't have to worry about this. you can invest your money here and don't worry about auditing and stuff like that. we take care of that ourselves. if we -- if we were doing things bad, we wouldn't be so big, right? how many times have we heard that before? the house bill will allow unregulated web sites to peddle stocks to ordinary investors without any meaningful oversight

or liability. which would give rise to fraud, money laundering, other risks. this is what's called crowd funding. you keep hearing this word crowd funding. whenever i hear that word i get a little nervous. you know, whenever the crowd the moving one direction, you want to ask questions, what's moving the crowd? why is the crowd moving that direction? crowd funding? the reed-landrieu-levin amendment would protect the integrity of these markets by ensuring the web site intermediaries are subject to appropriate levels of oversight. think about this. unregulated web sites could peddle stocks to ordinary investors without any oversight or liability. crowd funding. the house bill would allow extremely large companies with tens of thousands of shareholders to evade the securities and exchange commission oversight.

let me repeat that. the house bill would allow extremely large companies with tens of thousands of shareholders to evade s.e.c. oversight. the reed-landrieu-levin amendment would ensure that banks and other large companies with lots of shareholders are subject to the basic transparency, integrity and accountability protections. right now under s.e.c. law if you have over 500 shareholders you have to go public. and when you go public, you have to be subject to accounting principles, oversight, transparency by the s.e.c. the bill raises that to 2,000 shareholders. 2,000 shareholders. and yet -- i don't know what fakebook has right now but i don't think they have 2,000 shareholders, i don't know, but let's say they have a thousand or 1,200. they can get by without having

any real s.e.c. oversight as long as they have less than 2,000 shareholders. should that be allowed? in this economy with all that we have known in what's gone on in the recent past? in sum, mr. president, the substitute amendment is vastly better than the how passed legislation. it protects investors, it protects consumers, it protects our capital markets, it allows small businesses to grow. so let's heed the lesson of the last decade. let's take a step back, let's pause before rushing to deregulate our economy and wall street even further. previous acts of congress to deregulate our markets in hope of spurring economic growth may have helped wall street, and a lot of people in the last ten years made a lot of money on wall street. and you know what? they still have their money and they've taken that money and

they've bought other things. and now they're sitting pretty. and yet homeowners, average, ordinary americans have lost their shirts in this economy in the last ten years. but the people that engineered these new devices, these new kinds of derivatives who worked to do away with glass-steagall, they made a lot of money on wall street. and i can tell you that if this bill passes, if the bill passes without the amendment, the reed-landrieu-levin amendment, if it passes, you're going to see a new flourish of activity on wall street and a lot of wall street bankers and a lot of people will make a lot more money, and you know what? a few years from now we're going to have all kinds of stories about elderly people or people about to retire who had 401(k)'s who got sucked into

investing someplace without any real knowledge what the business was. other people who maybe went on their web site got lured into investing, just a few dollars. a hundred dollars, $200, $500. you say, well, they lost it. well, okay they didn't lose much but you add that up to thousands and thousands and thousands of americans, it may be a small loss to each individual person, but the amount of money gained by this so-called startup company that may go under in a year or less and then the people who started the company walk away with the money. we're going to be hearing stories about that in the next five to ten years if this bill passes. so again, wall street made out like bandits the last ten years, but for the rest of america it was the worst

economic crisis in generations. so i close by saying the senate should not follow the crowd. the house rushed this through without any real due diligence, but isn't that the purpose now of the senate, to cool it down, slow it down, let's take a close look at it? i urge my colleagues to oppose the house measure and to support the substitute amendment when it comes to the floor later today for a vote. let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. ms. landrieu: thank you, mr. president. let me begin by thanking senator harkin for his excellent statement and as usual his vegdz

judgment on -- very good judgment on an issue that the senate is going to be voting on in my view, happily, at 4:00 and 5:00 today, senator harkin, as opposed to in 20 minutes because this issue needs more debate. and you raised some very important questions that need to be answered, and i want to start by thanking you for raising the issues that are so important for us as we consider this house bill that was in your words -- and i will add -- rushed over to the senate. and i wanted to ask you or let you ask -- i spoke to barney frank, very respected democratic member yesterday and do you know he assured me we were actually doing the right thing by slowing this down. mr. harkin: i want to say to my colleague from louisiana, to thank her for her leadership on this issue. you know, we're all busy around here. we got our things we look at and

i've -- i have other things in my committee that i'm so focused on now. that i hadn't really paid attention to this until the senator from louisiana brought it up last week and then i began to ask my staff what's this all about? and the more i looked into it, the more devastating this piece of legislation that came from the house -- so i want to thank the senator from louisiana for having the foresight and the courage and the determination to make sure that we are all aware of what this legislation does. and quite frankly, i commend the senator from louisiana for slowing this down. because just since last week i've talked to other senators who basically cli like me hadn't -- basically like me shouldn't focused on it, bee wee have other responsibilities and duties but the chairman of the small business committee focused on this and i thank the chair for your great leadership on this issue. i hope that we can adopt your substitute amendment to this bill later today.

ms. landrieu: thank you. i thank, through the chair, i thank the senator from iowa. and i recognize also the senator from oregon that's on the floor who also has had such an impact on helping us to focus on the details of this bill that was rammed through the house and was on a fast track to get approved over here. and as i've said now, senators, many times, i'm not opposed to the underlying concepts of this bill. which will broaden the opportunities for average people to make some excellent opportunities for investments, to help them increase wealth. we're not opposed to increasing wealth on our side of the aisle. we just want to make sure that basic investor protections are in the bill. and they are absent, absent from the house bill. and we're not talking about

mom-and-pop operations. when you're talking about companies with revenues of $1 billion. the senator from iowa is well aware and the senator from oregon of mom & pop operations, we have them in our state, mom-and-pop office supply coaz coast, shoe repair companies, even pretty substantial companies that own three and four and five restaurants. we're very familiar with that. but under no circumstance would those companies meet the $1 billion in sales so we're not talking about small business. that's why as the chair of the small business, i'm here to say there's nothing small about this bill. this is about a big business getting out from underneath regulations that we spent decades trying to put into place for good reason. did we not just have a financial

meltdown on wall street? did i miss a chapter in this saga? didn't we just pull ourselves up from the brink of international financial collapse, started not by korea, not by japan, not by china, but by the united states of america in our inability to properly regulate our financial system? didn't we just almost bring the world economy to a halt? did i miss this? and so this little, innocuous bill flies over from the house with a fancy name talking about jobs and because we're all desperate, really, to create more jobs, we understand our people need more jobs, we understand that government has a role in creating jobs, of course, with the private sector. we know that the policies that we drive here, whether it's tax

policy or regulatory policy, or whether we say this is legal and this isn't, has a real impact on job creation. so we just look at the title of the bill, it says jobs, and we just can't wait to vote for it. but if we're not careful, and we pass the house bill on this subject without amendment, it will not create jobs, mr. president, it will kill jobs. and as the chair of the small business committee, i have to say i don't think any member has stood on this floor longer or spoken more directly to the issue of getting capital into the hands of business than i have. so i hope i've developed on both sides of the aisle some credibility to say yes, we want to open up capital opportunities to business, but we must have investor protections. and if not, we will set ourselves backwards several decades as opposed to forward.

and that's not what we want to do. so i rise to urge members to consider voting for the substitute that senators reed, the ranking member on banking, senator levin, the chairman of the investigative committee, that has done extraordinary work, a long serving, well respected member of this caucus. obviously the senator from michigan, the senior senator from michigan is more concerned about jobs than any of us. he's lost more jobs almost -- well, probably per capita except potentially for the state of california. so why would he be joining us opposed to a jobs bill? because he knows what i know, what senator reed knows, what senator merkley knows, what senator harkin knows, who have

taken the time to review the bill, that on its surface it looks good, but even the chair of the s.e.c. has cautioned us not to vote for the bill as it stands. and also says it can be fixed, it can be amended. but we need to oppose cloture so that we don't end the debate but we begin the debate and then get to a position which the leadership can most certainly get us to where appropriate amendments could be offered. so i am saying please don't let the word "jobs" in the house bill which sounds so enticing fool you. in reality this is less about job creation than it is about rolling back key protections for investors. and, unfortunately, i think there's a little election-year politics at play. both, i have to say, from the white house's perspective and

the republican caucus that sort of saw this allure as a good way to kind of position themselves for the election. look, i've been guilty of doing that myself. nobody is perfect around here. but there's a time when you do something like that that it's called to your attention and you say you know i'm sorry, i'm sorry i've done it and this is the right way to do. as francis baker said, knowledge is power. and more knowledge about this bill gives us power to advocate against it. i am here again to tell my colleagues, the more you will learn about this runaway freight trairntion the more red flags are being waved. red flags are waving because of the unintended consequences of the house bill for investors, small businesses, and our economy in general. that's why senator jack reed, senator carl levin, senator merkley and others have been down here now for days encouraging you, review the bill, go back and talk with your

staff, please allow us some time to make some serious changes. now, even if you can't believe me on these issues, i most certainly hope that you can believe bloomberg report. the bloomberg comments that have been made -- bloomberg is a very widely read, very reputable wire service and newspaper now, and of course they have other interests as well. they comment daily on the financial markets of the world. one of the most respected sources, they have basically editorialized against the house bill. why would they do that? let me read you what the bloomberg editorial said last -- a few days ago.

they said, "the jobs act simply goes too far. it would gut many of the investor protections established just a decade ago in sarbanes-oxley. a wave of accounting scandals -- think enron and worldcom -- have destroyed the nest egg of millions of americans and upi understanded investor -- and upended inkvestor confidence on wall street. it would apply to more than 90% of companies going public. at a time when we're trying to build investor confidence, to build our economy, to create jobs, we're about ready to exempt 90% of companies that are going public from full disclosure? i mean, i'm the sponsor of the amendment that tried to exempt

small companies from these regulations, companies of 50 million or 100 million of sales. that would cover every mom and pop known to man. but the house bill exempts companies up to $1 billion in revenues from full public disclosure. is this what we want to do at a time when we're just regaining investor confidence? i don't think so. bloomberg says, "put the brakes on. "quote -- if he center of the package is emerging growth companies defined with as much as $1 million in annual revenues which would be exempt from a host of disclosure reporting and governance rules. these companies would be able to operate for five years without an independent test of their

internal controls. the checks and balances that help companies prevent outright fraud and costly accounting mistakes." it goes on to say, "emerging companies would also be able to promote public offerings with less than complete information by -- quote -- "'testing the waters with fancy power point slides." executives would not be held accountable for any misrepresentations. ladies and gentlemen, what are we thinking? we're not. we have to put our thinking caps on. let's take this house bill and amend it. the bill from the house did not even go through our banking committee. now, had the bill gone through banking, had it been under the watchful eye of some of our democrats and republicans on the banking committee and had the bill come out of the banking

committee with a democratic and republican vote or even with the majority of republicans and one or two or three democrats, this senator would not be standing here because, you know, this is not really my jurisdiction. aii'm not on the banking committee. i would honor the work of the small businesses committee and i would have simil simply said, it necessarily agree to with the bill. i just vote no. the bill just through right here not floor because somebody wants a bumper sticker for their next campaign. aarp doesn't think that that bunker stick certificate a -- that bumper sticker is a good one because they've come out against it because many of the people who got their bank accounts down to zero were the elderly, the people can least afford this kind of fraud and

scam on wall street. they're the ones that saw their 401(k) go down which took them their whole life to save down to $50,000. how do you think they feel? that's why the aarp has come out against the house bill. now, i'm sure that there's some people saying this is just democrats wanting to regulate everything and not allow capitalism to thrive. nothing could be further from the truth. i've spent my whole time here trying to create jobs and opportunity for small businesses in america that represent 27 million businesses. 20 million of them are independent operators. 7 million are classified --. i work with them very closely. many of them, the main street alliances against this bill, small business alliances, the

chamber of commerce has even expressed some concerns about the house bill. now, we are creating jobs. thses what the president inherited. a freefall of job loss in this nation. this is what he inherited when he became president in the early part of 2509. -- in the early part of 2009. he walked into the captain's chair and sat down after the ship had hit the ice berk icebet before. and he has battled with us mightily to move these numbers to where we can see jobs created. the last thing we need to do is to stop this. the house bill without investor protections absolutely has the possibility of doing just that. and i ask unanimous consent for four more minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. landrieu: time and time

again, i've stood right here on the senate floor fighting with my colleagues to increase access to capital for america's job creators. i support adding capital and directing it or helping it to be directed to better places. to make the process more democratic. i understand that the system has been basically set up for those that go to the high and mighty ivy league schools that join the same clubs, whose families socialized together for years and years. i understand the rules have been written for that group. i'd like to write them for everyone. and i will attempting to d -- am attempting to do that. they are not present in the house bill. i am a democrat that used to love when president clinton would say, our job is to create more millionaires in america, not less. i'm proud of the book "the

millionaire next-door" that said that most millionaires in america aren't people that inherited their money but people that worked hard for it because of our system. i'm proud of that. i spent my life helping to build it. i'm for people getting rich. for people making money. but you've got to write these rules fairly, mr. president. or it's the poor people, it's the middle class, it's the people that didn't go to the ivy league schools that don't have ththe right -- quote -- "insider information" that are going to be led down the primrose path. so let's be careful. let us not support the house bill as it ha it has come over . we scrambled last week to try to put a substitute together. and that substitute has my name on it. it has senator jack reed first, my name second, senator levin third, and a group of others that have joined us.

now, our substitute is not perfect either. i hope our substitute can get 60 votes and we can amend a few things the s.e.c. has brought to our are atensio are attention sa tight time frame. we were under a tight time frame and even our bill has to be amended. but i'm asking my colleagues, if you can't vote for our bill, which is the substitute bill, then please do not provide cloture to the house bill either and let us take a few days. we're not asking for weeks. i'm not even trying to kill the house bill. i am a simply tryini am simply t so that it works for people that can't go to harvard and can't go to stanford and can't go to some of these ivy league schools, who are going to some community colleges and to schools in their state. middle-class families who want to participate in the great american dream, who would like

to invest in these new rules and regulations on the internet, to invest in companies that have potential. but, please, mr. president, let's give them the investor protections they deserve. and on one more thing and i'll n it over. i want to say this to the community bankers. you may have some others who may support you on this floor, but i don't think you have anybody on as strong as i am. there is a provision that expa expands your shareholders from the cap of 500 shareholders that was put in 190660. in our bill, the substitut, we e move you up to 750. banks are overregulated, community banks, in my view. so manso i'm willing to extend. please don't put your political might supporting the house bill

just because had you your number in there that you want because you will, i think, in my view, really undermine investor confidence in this new way that we're trying to help people called crowdfunding on the internet. we will take care of your issue. i have it in my sights. noi know that it's important to you. if you give us time, we can try to fix that. i thank the senator through the chair, the senator from oregon, for joining me. he is truly an expert on this particular subject and he can add some more detail to what i've tried explain and we'll be happy to answer any questions that our colleagues have about his underlying issue, which is so porchlimportant. i yield the floor. mr. merkley: mr. president, i have 11 unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the pproval of the majority and minority leaders. irask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and that these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without

objection, so ordered. mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to ask my colleagues to give serious consideration to a major piece of loalings thaof legislation ta crowdfunding amendment introduced by senator ben.net and myself and with the support of senators landrieu and senator brown and a number of others. i want to thank senator landrieu for the points that she has been making in her fierce advocacy that we need to create a highway for minerfor americans to buildh without creating avenues that send people into either blind alleys or over a cliff. that's what this conversation is all about today. we want to enable aspiring entrepreneurs to access capital and to do so in ways that we have new opportunities to create but to make sure tha that invess

have the information that they need to make reasonable choices. the amendment specifically that i'm introducing is crowdfunding amendment. and you've probably heard this term a number of times. it enables aspiring entrepreneurs to access investment capital vis via the internet. this is very excitin exciting s. we've seen some similar internet models. utah one model-- one model enabs individuals across america to look at projects, projects for art and civic projects across the country and say, yes, i want to make a smaller-dollar investment, which is truly in this case a i do nation a donat. such a site is sic