between i.c.e. and dhs with civil-rights and civil liberties indicate statistical monitoring would be used to identify possible anomalies and risk patterns under secure communities with reports at least once a quarter. and statistical monitoring to date. >> one of the major reforms we undertook to improve concern that somehow secure communities are used to promote racial profiling for statistical analysis. , and we were knowledgeable and expert in this area. and held them to hire a

statistician. in direct response we started these statistical analyses and we are looking at the first couple instances in which these statistics appear to be anomalous and doing a couple things. we are trying to work with the department of justice and civil rights division -- to understand the statistics. there could be lots of reasons why a particular county has statistical spikes. some of them not necessarily related to civil-rights concerns. we are working with the civil-rights division to come up with a cross department approach because the civil rights division would investigate and prosecute any thing we would refer to them. we at i.c.e. did not have

civil-rights investigative authority. the second thing we are doing is were we to identify any particular jurisdiction that did have a concern we would work with the civil-rights division to engage in a direct investigation in the form of interviews, on the ground inspections. we are not doing our own auditing of the program which isn't a criminal investigation but we go around to various jurisdictions and audit the results ourselves. i am happy to say to date we have not had instance to refer something to direct investigation to the civil rights division but we have had the first set of results and suggested some counties we need to do a little bigger beating -- deeper digging and we're doing that. >> at some point when you move

along with the program some of us would be interested in seeing some of those reports for our review. >> we would be happy to give the committee or you in particular a briefing on our results and share what we found. >> on a local matter adams county, mississippi, where there is some i.c.e. retain these -- >> reporter: --retaine --retai violence led to the death of one guard and several injuries. explain to me as well as committee members what kind of oversight do you give private

contractors who have contracts with i.c.e. kind of describe what you expect of those companies like cc a in this particular instance? >> several things. we have detention standards that were into our contract with them and must abide by in many larger facilities dedicated or primarily focused on our use. we have our employees there in addition to the contractors and even in those where we don't have a full-time presence we routinely visit them. with regard to gang violence, what we do in the criminal justice system for those incarcerated, we screen for gang affiliations so we classify people based on their criminal convictions first and foremost the we're looking at gang

affiliations as well and do what we can to separate gang members so we don't create an undue concentration in a particular facility. as you know not everybody volunteers they are a member of the gang and the use of tattoos is less widespread than it was in the past but we do our best. >> i see my time has expired but i would like to get with you to further this discussion about this particular facility. i yield back. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from south carolina. >> thank you, secretary morton, for being here today. it is interesting constitutional debate raging across the country in the wake of the supreme court ruling on the arizona law.

they passed a similar law and i think it would be future supreme court rulings on this but i want to point to justice scalia's dissenting opinion. he talks about the rights of sovereign states. we are a nation of individual sovereign states and what rights the states have in the enforcement of federal law and in protecting and securing their own state workers. i would point the chairwoman and members of the committee to read that opinion if you happen. it is interesting going forward. director morton, i was reading a memorandum of march 2nd, 2011, where you point out some priorities for i.c.e.. thank you for what you do and what the agency does and i also want to mentioned the following officer that mr. cuellar mentioned earlier.

condolences to his family. tragic. going back to the priorities in 2011, interesting that you have recent illegal entrants. that means somebody just entered the country and is apprehended then they get priority for being taken back to their home country. then i read on june 17th memorandum it goes on to talk about wang's of presence in the united states. some one that broke the same wall across our border just because they have been in this country longer than someone else they are given priority. can you explain the reasoning behind that? >> sure. we start out at the beginning equations, what can we do with the resources congress has provided us? on average we can remove 1,000

people year with the resources that we have. obviously our statutory direction is broader than that. to me the question is who are those 400,000 people going to be that what in the front door? i don't think that can be the approach. in a world of limited resources you have to say it is the 400,000 people that make the first -- the most sense for public safety. >> i don't mean to interrupt, but you utilize the resources and apprehension is apprehension whether the person has been here ten years or just crossed the border you still have contact with that person. in your priority if you have been here a lot you let them go but if they cross the border you send them back. >> not quite. what we are talking about is it is not a question of apprehension but the tension and removal. we have to get a removal order before we can remove somebody

from the united states and in most instances that is accomplished through detaining them. we had a limited number of detention beds. do we focus our resources on somebody who just came across the border two years ago as opposed to somebody who came across ten years and has two united states citizen children and three cars in the driveway? in those circumstances we say we will focus on the person who violated the law most recently and focus resources on the people who committed a crime. if i have to pick between putting a criminal in detention space or somebody who has been here a long time are will pick a criminal every time because there is much greater effect on public safety and immigration enforcement when i do that. >> in the prioritization where do these come in that hierarchy?

>> the chairman noted, very difficult situation, recent border and friends if they were here recently. it is a real challenge for us. i don't want to minimize it. roughly 40% of people in the country unlawfully originally came on a visa. the short answer to your question is they fall in the second prioritization and the question would be have they been here relatively recent period of time or have they been here a long period of time. do they have other equities meaning they should be lower priority for removal. did have united states citizen children or married to a united states citizen? stock -- the the the real world decisions we have to make when you see resources congress gives us. we have 34,000 detention beds on a given day by statute and more people than we can put. >> do you have access to the entry level data if somebody

came in on a visa? i was reading the sharing of information on fingerprint data and access to an illegal entry data? >> we do. as the chairman noted after 9/11 congress mandated information sharing. not only do we use it for purposes of overstating the secure communities. a little bit challenging with these overstated in that typically he address on the i 94 somebody is going to disneyland for vacation. they put that down and list their hotel or the address and that is the last record that we have to go from. then we do database searches. it is a challenging enforcement regime. the short answer is we have access. >> my time is up. >> the chair recognizes mr. cuellar. >> thank you.

good to see you again. july 10, 2009, you stated two eighty-seven g program is part of the enforcement strategy. the you agree with that? >> for the jail model where it has proven to be a good use of our resourcess and could use of taxpayer dollars. i don't feel that way with regard to many task force agreements that largely for economic reasons in the jurisdictions where they found has become unproductive and resulted in no removals'. >> on the i.c.e. web site at your statement there's a lot of very positive statements regarding the 287(g) agreements and, is great to have federal leaders will state and local

law-enforcement agencies working together and right now in the present system, i find it a little concerning that you have recently gotten rid of the 287(g) agreement with arizona, state and local want force the agencies. what is the reasoning behind it? why pick arizona as the sole one to remove a program that you said was an essential component of dhs's comprehensive enforcement strategy? >> a couple things. the agreements we terminated in arizona were taskforce agreement. we did not terminate the jail model agreements. they continued in place. why did we terminate those models? they were leading to no removals.

they were unproductive and not a good use of taxpayer resources. >> the timing of this. it was within a couple of hours after the supreme court ruled the main portion of arizona state law unconstitutional when secretary of peloton no --nap --napolitano made this statement. did they talk to you why it would be in such close proximity to the supreme court ruling and if they would remove the 287(g) taskforce achievement if the supreme court ruled differently? what was the conversation? the timing is extraordinarily curious. if the task force were not operating in a manner that you would have liked for dhs would have liked wouldn't it depend sooner or later with an hours after the supreme court ruling, that is a very interesting

timeline. i would love to hear what they spoke to you about and what is going forward. >> we have had discussions underway with the department for quite some time on the unproductive task forces and the president's budget request for this year, the department seeking fewer dollars for the 287(g) program because the task force model has proved to be unproductive. we were not going to renew the 287(g) agreements that were rescinded in arizona for the next fiscal year. we were going to terminate them in a few months and in discussions with the department we decided it made sense on the supreme court's ruling to allay the future not to have a series of truncated efforts.

they were producing zero removals for two years running in six of seven cases and we decided to do it all at once. >> there was a concerted effort and a conscious decision that because of the decision by the supreme court we wanted to it quickly after that? i don't understand why it was necessary to do it at that point and lester was for various political reasons by the administration? >> we just thought it made the most sense to do it at the same time. we knew it would terminate those agreements. they were producing -- we knew there would be questions about how things would operate and we wanted to set the record very clear how we were moving forward. you call the law enforcement support 24 hours a day for assistance and we will respond to law enforcement query's in arizona pursuant to our priority but we are not going to continue

or suggest that we would continue with taskforces from our perspective were not a good use of taxpayer resources and the record is very clear on that. anything we are spending money on is zero removals for two years in a row doesn't make sense. >> another thing i want to talk about is you look at the crux of that law and try to cooperate and work with law-enforcement officials to actually adhere to federal law and then you have -- the chairwoman was missing in earlier. cook county not being cooperative with secure communities. have you heard of anything the administration takes against cook county? are they going to sue cook county or have the doj get involved?

they are contrary far as to what federal law is rather than trying to aid federal law-enforcement officials. >> it is outside the doj but have you heard about that? >> the short answer to your question is i have personally met with the department of justice to raise my concerns and those concerns are shared by the secretary and she testified to that herself. we are in discussions with the department of justice to see what we can do on many fronts to come to a better resolution in secure communities in cook county because we all agree the present approach is not a good one. i don't know if you heard my answer before, but both the question of can we work with the department of justice to look at legal options to get to a better place with the county but also

to look at the county's and you will request for reimbursement under the federal c.a.p. program for individuals that are there unlawfully, cook county received several million dollars each year to reimburse it. for the cost of detaining people who are here unlawfully and we have positioned to be inconsistent with not allowing -- >> you have not heard anything -- pretty swift when arizona passed their own law and the d o j came in quickly and operated in that fashion but cook county has serious issues, there has been no talk about a lawsuit or is there a lawsuit pending? >> i have not heard back from the department of justice. in fairness to them we have only been meeting for the last couple months and they wanted to see how certain pieces of court

decisions came out. i expect to hear from the shortly and i expected to your resolving the issue in cook county is important for me. it is one of the largest systems in the country and right now it is not a question of cook county releasing some individuals to us. they are releasing no individuals including very violent offenders. >> thank you. my time is expired. >> the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from texas. >> thank you to the ranking member and welcome, director morton, at thank you for your service and let me offer my concern for the officers who were involved in an incident of violence to their families. who were impacted to their

families and your organization. always look to thanking those on the frontlines and make sure i do so. i believe the work you have been doing is very important but i never come to an immigration hearing whether it is judiciary that i serve for however long and in homeland security and i called both assignments a privilege that this country needs comprehensive immigration reform because we are not confusing and juxtaposing benefits and the right opportunity for those who want to immigrate to this country and particularly enforcement against those who want to do harm. communities certainly have failures and it is important that we try to determine what

lessons we have learned and how we can be more effective. i happen to applaud the president's decision on the dream act. living in a statesmanlike texas we have seen 90% good as opposed to harm. many of us have met these students who will be impacted up close and personal and i appreciate there have been a number of utilization of powers under the law that your agency has been effective in utilizing but this executive order will be helpful to all of us but better on the comprehensive immigration form. the two issues, of 14-year-old texas girl was missing from 2010 until 2012 deported by immigration agents. she gave i.c.e. agents a fake name which belong to at illegal immigrants from columbia with

warrant for her arrest. she was held in a harris county jail. agents took her fingerprints but did not confirm identity before deporting her. another incident and in india adopted by american family in new jersey and naturalized as a u.s. citizen at age 1 was flagged as an illegal immigrant after drug-related arrest because the federal government never updated his immigration status. two months in maximum-security prison before i.c.e. officials canceled the detention order. both cases are very troubling and we have engaged i.c.e. on one of these troubling stories. what failures in the community database and program procedures allow a citizen to be detained? what is i.c.e. doing? and please share before the subcommittee of reach effort i.c.e. initiated through secure communities and lessons learned

on both of those cases. thank you. >> with regard -- let me start with the database issues. one of the lessons that has become clear is when you have an information sharing system that depends on information in databases the sharing and results from a are only as good as the information in the system. so we have to have accurate records in place. the chicago case is under litigation. got to be careful about what i will say in that case but i do think it highlights the need to have accurate records from all of the pieces of the puzzle. part of secure communities is congress mandated sharing of

information all across the department of homeland security and the federal government. we need to make sure the information is correct. with regard to the 14-year-old, i view that case as a very sad case. as you know the young ladies history was somewhat troubled and there were many steps along the way. all the way from the moment she was arrested by the local police. she managed to full the judge and the prosecutor and her own defense attorney in that particular case and ultimately i.c.e. and colombia authorities. she got a residency approval upon her -- in her time there. we did meet with you and other members of the caucus and we took a hard look and what it told us was particularly with

regard to juvenile offenders when we have some sense that something is awry even though on the surface everybody was saying that it is proper, we have got to go the extra mile with juveniles to make sure we are not making a mistake because mistakes can be made. it is why i am a big believer in improved transparency of the secured communities program. you are right that as an agency we were not as transparent as we should have been. we should have had bet ues operates onhad bet

a large scale homeland get out and explain to people why we are doing things the way we're doing them and what the reasons are and do that in a dispassionate and professional way. >> let me thank you for your indulgence. there was one element where the fingerprints were not checked. in your review and working with juveniles this is under the young lady of 14 persistent in looking at those elements to be able to ascertain juvenile or not or what conditions this person is in. >> one of the tricks in her case

was she had never been encountered before in a way that led to her fingerprinting so there was no other fingerprint to compare against. the fingerprint was taken at harris county was the first time she had been fingerprinted in a way that i.c.e. could have checked. we need to figure out a way particularly with young juveniles to have extra procedures in place. i will tell you i have never seen a case like hers in my entire time in the federal government. i know she was able to adopt an identity that many parts of the system believed. that was not a perfect answer and the result is the system needs to deal with that even when the troubled person adopts an identity like that but it is

a relatively rare case. >> i thank the chairman. before you close, at one to make an inquiry. i don't know if we are closing. >> we're going to be closing. >> this has been a very helpful hearing. i appreciate the director's comments. technology and everything with young people being more mature than they are. we need to be focused on how to make sure we are attentive to those cases and also ask if the chair and the ranking member will consider incidents that are according at the border and losses going on with respect to very fine leadership at the border but troubling incidentss read papers are being taken away and they are being forced to sign papers that they are not u.s. citizens. we want to make sure we don't have illegal entry but those of

us in texas are concerned that u.s. citizens who may decide to live temporarily in mexico are having their documents voided out of pressure and intimidation. i believe it is a very viable hearing and i will write a letter to that extent and asked for further opportunity to look into that. i yield back and hope the chairman -- >> that event from yesterday. the senate will continue debate on a bill to give businesses attacks credit for hiring workers are giving a increases. the measure that companies deduct all equipment purchases during 2012. for senate leaders are negotiating over which amendments will be considered. the top republican on the senate finance committee has proposed an amendment to extend all the bush era tax cuts and the finance committee to review the tax code. the senate underway. we go to the floor of the senate on c-span2.

this quiet moment when we can lift our hearts to you. today, may the highest incentive of our senators be not to win over one another, but to win with one another by doing your will for all. make them faithful agents who are determined to bring your purposes to pass. correct their mistakes, redeem their failures, confirm their right actions, and crown their day with the blessing of your approval. we pray in your loving 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., july 11, 2012. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable kirsten e. gillibrand, a senator from the state of new york, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: daniel k. inouye, president pro tempore. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: what is the matter now before the senate? the presiding officer: motion to proceed to s. 2237.

mr. reid: thank you, madam president. the next hour will be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees. republicans will control the first half, the majority will control the final half. we're hopeful that we will be able to adopt the motion to proceed and begin consideration of s. 2237, the small business jobs and tax relief act today. i'm told that s. 3369 is at the desk and due for a second reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 3369, a bill to amend the federal election campaign act of 1971, and so forth and for other purposes. mr. reid: madam president, i would object to any further proceedings with respect to this bill at this time. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the bill will be.eid: thank youm president. over the last few years, americans that are very, very wealthy have taken home the greatest share of the nation's income since the 1920's.

that's 90 years, madam president. a larger percentage of what's out there, the rich are getting it. the rich are getting richer and the poor are being squeezed, the middle class is being squeezed, but the rich are doing really well. while the bank accounts of a few fortunate americans have grown, their tax bills have not. the wealthiest americans now pay the lowest tax rates in more than 50 years. while this generous tax code has been good for their bottom lines, it hasn't been good for americans' bottom lines. hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, some say more than a trillion dollars, have been handed out disproportionately to the rich by the previous administration, and this has fueled skyrocketing deficits and a growing national debt. democrats and republicans alike agree we have to reduce the deficit and rein in the debt. unfortunately, the same republicans say we have to get our fiscal house in order -- who

say we have to get our fiscal house in order also claim millionaires and billionaires can't afford to contribute even a tiny bit more to share the effort that's before this country. these same republicans say multimillionaires like mitt romney need lower taxes, even lower than the only tax return we have been able to see of governor romney, which showed his rate at 16%. we don't know what's in the other tax returns that he should make public. the same tax returns that were made public by his father who started the -- everyone who has run for president since then followed it. george romney set an example that his son should follow. we'd like to know what's in those tax returns that he refuses to show to the american public. did he pay any taxes? well, i suggest to everyone that

mitt romney doesn't need another tax break. in fact, he's got so much money that he doesn't even know where it's all located. switzerland, cayman islands, bermuda. no wonder he doesn't want america to see his tax returns. so mitt romney is doing just fine, and so are the other millionaires and billionaires. it's the middle class, not the very wealthy. we all know times have been tough the last few years for ordinary people to put food on the table. the last thing middle-class families can afford now is a tax increase. that's why democrats want to keep taxes low for 98% of americans, including almost 98% of small businesses. everyone making less than $250,000 a year. while democrats are focused on how we can help 98% of americans, republicans are focused on how they can help

mitt romney and the rest of the top 2%. and they're willing to hold tax cuts for everyone hostage just to protect tax breaks for the top 2%. now, democrats don't agree the top 2% of wage earners can afford to pay the same tax rate they paid when bill clinton was president. remember, madam president, that was when the budget was balanced and we were actually paying down the debt and some complained we were paying down the debt too quickly. well, eight years of the bush administration took care of that. $7 trillion surplus over ten years was wiped out. still, we're willing to have that debate with our republican colleagues. we're willing to discuss it reasonably, but we don't believe middle-class families should wait and wonder and watch and worry whether their taxes are about to go up while congress has that conversation. we shouldn't wait until the last second act. here's what one major newspaper wrote yesterday about the need to act, and i quote -- "the

majority of americans and the broader economy should not be held hostage again to another debate over the merits of tax cuts for the wealthy. there will never be consensus for solving our nation's budget problems without first ending the lavish tax breaks at the top." end of quote. so i call on my republican colleagues to help us give 98% of american families the certainty and the security they need and to do it now, right away. i call on them to help us pass a tax cut that will benefit the middle class without bankrupting our nation, because it's time we faced facts. we're serious about reducing the deficit, we can't keep handing out more tax breaks to the richest of the rich. we'll have to make difficult decisions about where to cut and where to invest to keep our nation strong. whether we keep taxes low for middle-class families shouldn't be one of the difficult decisions we make. i haven't heard anyone, democrat, republican, independent say we should raise taxes on middle-class families.

i have not heard anyone say that. this is an area where we can easily find common ground. so what's stopping us from doing the right thing and doing it now? i hope it won't be more republican hostage taking on behalf of the top 2%. mr. mcconnell: madam president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: earlier this week, the president reiterated his long-standing desire to raise taxes on small businesses earning over $250,000 a year. i and all of my republican colleagues oppose this tax hike for the same reason the president himself opposed it just two years ago, because raising taxes would only make a bad economy worse. but here it comes again, sort of like a bad penny. the liberal crusade for more government, regardless of the circumstances, the impact it would have on working americans or the broader economy.

on monday, the president issued the following reckless ultimatum. let me raise taxes on about one million businesses, the president said, let me raise taxes on about one million business owners, and i promise i won't raise taxes on anybody else. in the face of 41 straight months of unemployment above 8%, the president is begging congress to let him raise taxes on the very businesses the american people are counting on to create jobs. it was the exact opposite, of course, of what is needed. for some reason, he thinks a tax hike is his ticket to re-election. he says it's fair. i don't think most americans think it's particularly fair for a government that doesn't do a thing to live within its means to take even more money away from those who have worked and

sacrificed to earn it. only to waste it on some solar company or on one more government program we can't afford. we have seen this movie too many times in the past. and frankly, we don't have the luxury to waste any more time arguing about a question that's already settled for most people. the problem here isn't that the government taxes too little but that it spends too much. what the american people need right now isn't a lecture on fairness. they don't need a lecture on fairness. they would like to have some certainty. that's why today i am going to call on the senate to provide just that. i have already called for a one-year extension of all the current income tax rates. today, i will go further by asking consent that we set up two votes here in the senate, two votes. one on the president's proposal to raise taxes on nearly one

million business owners in the middle of the worst economic recovery in modern times, and one -- and another that would extend current income tax rates for one year and ask the finance committee to produce a bill that would enact fundamental pro-growth tax reform. extend the current tax rates for one year and charge the finance committee with coming up with a proposal within that year for pro-growth tax reform. it's been over a quarter of a century since we last did comprehensive tax reform. we all agree on a bipartisan basis. we need to do it again. the senate should make itself clear which policy it supports, and this is our chance to do it. on monday, the president said if the senate passes this tax hike on small businesses, he would sign it right away. that's what he said monday, two

days ago. i can't see why our friends on the other side wouldn't want to give him the chance. so with that, madam president, i ask unanimous consent that at 2:00 p.m. today, the motion to proceed to s. 2237 be adopted and that the first two amendments in order to the bill be the hatch-mcconnell amendment number 2491, which would provide for the extension of current rates while we work on tax reform, and a reid or designee amendment to enact the president's proposal which as i have said would impose job-killing taxes on nearly one million business owners. the presiding officer: is there an objection? mr. reid: reserving the right to object. we have been here before, madam president. we try to legislate here the program of the republicans in the senate has been to divert

and deny and obstruct. we have before this body. i asked the presiding officer when we started what are we doing here today? we're on a small business jobs bill. a pretty simple piece of legislation but extremely important. it would give businesses across america that are small businesses 500 employees. it would give them -- and that's where most jobs are created. it would give them a 10% tax credit for hiring more people. it would also give them the ability this year to purchase equipment and write that off. it would be great for the economy. we're told by outside experts it would create about a million jobs. well, what we have before us is something that the republicans in the house have sent us their version of this. it's the help paris hilton legislation. it would give people like her a

tax break for doing nothing, nothing. $46 billion of the american people's money to help paris hilton and others. it would give people a tax break for doing nothing, nothing. for my friend, the republican leader public works to talk about small businesses being hurt with the proposal of the president's is not true. as i said in my opening statement, madam president, 98% of the american people would have the benefit of that tax benefit. 97.5% of small businesses would benefit. so, madam president, we're in a situation where my friend talks about the fact that we haven't had enough job creation and i acknowledge that and i certainly that's true and the president acknowledges that. but you see, we have quite a

hole to pull ourselves out of. during the prior eight years, eight million jobs plus were lost. and we have filled that hole, more than halfway, 4.5 million new jobs have been created. we've had 28 months of private-sector job growth, 28 months in a row. so we're doing -- making progress. we have a long ways to go. but, madam president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. mcconnell: madam president,? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: let me simplify this for everybody. the president on monday asked that we have the vote that i've just offered to the majority. we have a clear contrast here, 41 straight months of unemployment over 8%. if this is a recovery, the most tepid recovery in modern times. the president's solution to that

is to raise taxes on about a million small business owners representing about 53% of small business income and up to 25% of the work force. we're on a different bill that my friend the majority leader is talking about that i understand would be blue slipped by the house in any event, so clearly what we're doing this week is having a political discussion, not seriously legislating. and so my recommendation is we give the president what he asked for. he wants to have a vote on raising taxes, on individuals making over $250,000 a year which, of course, includes almost a million small businesses that pay taxes as individuals, not as corporations, either s corporations or llc's. the most successful small businesses in america, in fact. that's a vote we welcome. it's a vote the president's asking for. it's a vote i just asked for.

and senator hatch, our leader on the fan committee here on the floor right behind me today has advocated that we extend the current tax rates for a year, the same thing the president, i would say to my friend from utah, wanted to do two years ago. at that time arguing that it would be bad for the economy not to do that and the growth then was actually better than it is now. and we think we ought to vote on that. and it would give senator hatch and senator baucus and the people on the finance committee a year to work us through comprehensive tax reform again, it's been a quarter of a century since we've been that. why not have those votes today? and that's what my consent agreement was about. i'm a little surprised that we're not willing to give the president what he asked for. which is a vote on a clear distinction for the american people.

so they can understand how the two sides look at this important issue. could not be more clear. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. reid: madam president, the american people should see this. again, again, and again and again, scores of times during the last 18 months, we're engaged in a filibuster, a way as i said earlier, to divert attention from what we're doing today, to obstruct as indicated in the oxford english dictionary, a filibuster is to obstruct progress on legislative assembly, to practice obstruction and that's what's going on today. madam president, why shouldn't we pass this bill that's before the body today? help a million businesses. i mean create a million jobs, i'm sorry, a million jobs. give small business, not paris hilton, but small businesses across america today a tax

credit for hiring new people. and to allow them to write off things that they purchase which would create more jobs. so, madam president, we have here in big las vegas neon flashing on and off signs that says grover norquist has won again to the people out there watching, who is grover norquist? remember, eez he's this guy that goes to the republicans and said would you be kind enough to sign a pledge for me? and that pledge says i want you to do what the american people don't want, and that is we will not tax the rich at all. not even a tiny bit. sign this pledge, will you? of course. and they all signed. the american people, madam president, democrats, independents, and republicans agree that the rich -- richest

of the rich should pay a little bit more. but we're now involved in a filibuster to divert attention from an important piece of legislation. let's pass this legislation and we'll have this tax debate. fine, we'll be happy to do that but let's get this done piers. -- first. and so, madam president, i as most people know i appreciate my friend, the republican leader, i know he has a job to do, but let's get away from this pledge. let's start legislating and not have to break filibusters on virtually everything we do. the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: we just witnessed the new definition of a filibuster. my good friend, the majority leader, i gather is accusing me of filibustering when i'm trying to get a vote, not one but two, 0 a vote on what he says he's for, what the president says he's for, and a vote on what republicans are for. so we have here a brand-new

definition of a filibuster. even when you're trying to get votes and they're objected to by the other side, somehow that's a filibuster. now, my good friend talks about what would help small businesses. i think we ought to ask them would they prefer the underlying bill which the majority leader has called up and we have voted to proceed to, or would they prefer not to have their taxes go up at the end of the year? talk about a no-brainer. i don't think there's any question what small businesses what rather have. but we're certainly not filibustering. we enjoy discussing our differences of opinion on the tax issue. there couldn't be anything more important to the american people. if we're going to get this economy going again. and certainly trying to set up two votes number one on what the president is scwg asking for and number two on what republicans think is a better alternative could not in my view meet the

definition of filibuster. so senator hatch is here, and obviously the majority leader can speak again if he wishes but senator hatch is going to address the matter as well. and i want to thank him again for his conspicuous qus leadership on the finance committee and we're looking to him to work us through this comprehensive tax reform matter again next year, it's going to be an extremely important thing for the country and i thank him for his good work. mr. reid: when i came here this morning, i repeat for the third time, i asked what business was before this body. small business jobs bill. and of course there has been a direct attack on that legislation by saying let's do something else. let's not do this right now, we'll do something else. i understand the definition of filibuster. i understand it very clearly.

from dutch, free booter, one of a class of pirate adventurers who pillaged the west indies in the 17th centuries, one who engages in unauthorized warfare against foreign states. they go on to say in the united states to practice obstructionism. they are trying to -- as the free booters here to steal legislation and move to something else. they will do anything they can as my friend the republican leader has said at the beginning of this congress, to divert attention from the fact that president obama should be reelected and they are not concerned about someone -- madam president, i'll end this debate soon, there will be other times to do this. if governor romney came before this body to be a cabinet officer, he couldn't get

approved. he wouldn't show anybody his income tax returns so he doesn't qualify to be a cabinet officer. how can he qualify to be president? let's debate the issues before us. we'll get to the tax issues. we'll be able to talk more in deal about governor romney's taxes but right now before this body is a small business jobs bill. the presiding officer: the senator from utah. under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the following hour will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees with the republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half. the senator from utah. mr. hatch: madam president, this is really an amazing moment as far as i can see. for those watching on c-span, the senate with its unique rules can seem like a pretty arcane place. the impact of unanimous consent requests are not something that ordinary folks talk about. so let me put this in plain english. the senate's republican leader

has just made a remarkable offer to our friends on the other side, the democrats. we hear all the time from the left that the republicans refuse to do anything in the senate. which certainly is mind-boggling. remember this episode the next time you hear that. my friend and colleague, the senator from kentucky and republican leader, mitch mcconnell, presented this body with an opportunity to take a stand, to take a vote, two votes, as a matter of fact, and to show the american people our cards on the most important issue facing this country, the coming fiscal cliff. in exchange for a vote on the amendment i introduced to extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief for one year, the republican leader agreed to a vote on at the present time's counterofficer that would increase taxes on families and small businesses. you heard that right. the republican leader offered a

vote on president obama's plan to raise taxes. and the democratic leader rejected this offer. it's mind-boggling to me. senate democratic leadership turned down an opportunity to vote on president obama's tax increase bill, the bill that he insists is the only acceptable way to address the fiscal cliff. after today, all of the president's surrogates if they are honest will have to rewrite their talking points about the do-nothing republicans in the united states senate. senate democratic leadership has effectively filibustering -- that's the real use of the term -- the president, president obama's tax increase bill. did everyone out there hear that? they are filibustering their own bill. by not agreeing to equivalent votes here. so what does that tell us? here's what it tells us. it tells us that the president's

tax increase plan is not just an economic disaster, it's a political loser. and they know it. it tells us in spite of the big talking from the president's chicago reelection campaign about evil republicans who want to extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, vulnerable members of the senate's democratic conference do not want to be anywhere near the president's tax increase alternative. to borrow from the film "top gun" the president's campaign is writing checks that senate democrats can't cash. or as we westerners like to say the president is all hat and no cattle. he's tipping his tax increase stetson that he does not have enough of a herd in the senate to follow him. he and keep in find the in mind the democratic leadership is not just filibustering the tax increase proposing, it is also filibustering my tax relief

proposal as well and i suspect they are filibustering this amendment because they are afraid it would pass. 40 democrats in this chamber supported the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief in 2010. 40 democrats. and they would probably do so again if they had a chance. so the democratic leadership has decided to deny them that chance. the president is asking for compromise. well, he's looking at it. as the ranking member on the senate finance committee, i have deep reservations about temporary tax policies. temporary tax policy does not provide the certainty to small businesses and families that are necessary for long-term planning and investment. if a small business does not know what its tax bill is going to be next year, they are not going to be doing any hiring. we all understand that. so it's not surprising to me with next year's tax rates up in the air that we just saw the worst quarter of hiring in over two years. but in the interest of

preventing a tax increase that would further hamper the economy, i am willing to set aside the virtue of permanency for the time being. my amendment would just extend the 2001 and 2003 tax relief for one year. and dur -- during that year, we would work on doing what's right with regard to tax reform. the finance committee is prepared, willing and able to do that. the amendment that i have filed with my friend, the republican leader, is in itself a compromise because we have offered a further compromise. fair is fair. we have our proposal, we want to keep taxes low for all americans, particularly with our economy on the ropes, and the president has his proposal. he wants to raise taxes on small businesses even as his prospects for economic growth and job creation look increasingly bleak. so let's have these votes. let's get on the record. our constituents sent us here to

make hard choices. it's time to put our money where our mouths are. if the president and his party really think that it is morally reprehensible to extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, then they should vote against it. if they really think that raising taxes is the way to go, then vote for the president's plan. madam president, i wish i could say that i was shocked, but this is just par for the course. we have been watching this now for a couple of years. i know that the hand-wringing washington pundits like to blame republicans for the lack of progress on the fiscal cliff, but this episode should show once and for all what a fiction that is. republicans are ready to act. they are ready to vote. we can vote on my amendment to extend tax relief to all americans, and on the president's proposal to deny that tax relief to small businesses. we can do what our constituents sent us here to do. we can vote and let the better

plan win. the democratic leadership, fearful of the embarrassing reality that their own conference has serious reservations about the president's tax-hiking agenda is now filibustering their own bill and they are now filibustering president obama's signature tax policy. those who continue to talk about the president's re-election prospects in glowing terms need to re-evaluate that narrative. president obama thinks that his -- that the ticket to his re-election runs through tax hike valley. he is going to succeed where walter mondale failed. president obama's signature economic policy is a promise to raise taxes on job creators when we are facing the 40th straight month of unemployment in excess of 8%. you don't need to do a sophisticated poll to figure out how popular this policy is in swing states or with independents. just look at what happened here

this morning. republicans offered a vote on the president's plan, and democrats balked at the opportunity. democrats are filibustering president obama's signature domestic policy, a bill to increase taxes, and they are doing so because many members of their own conference know that a vote for these tax increases would sink them back home. they know that. madam president, this is a pathetic spectacle made even more so by the fact that time is running short. the fiscal cliff is approaching, and families and businesses need to know what their tax rates will be next year. to date, the senate's democratic leadership has done absolutely nothing to provide that certainty. it really is disgraceful what we are witnessing this morning. we need to put politics aside and have these votes. madam president, i renew the republican leader's unanimous consent request -- i don't see

any democrats here so i will not make that without them here -- but i would renew it and ask that we immediately proceed to debate to votes on my amendment to extend tax relief to all americans and on the president's tax increase plan. president obama seems to think that he has a winning issue here. it might be good for him, but delaying resolution of these tax rates is putting partisan goals ahead of the common good, and the american people deserve better than this. what really is mind-boggling to me is for our leader to tie up the parliament tree so no real amendments can be voted on, and we offer him a vote on the president's proposal and he accuses us of filibustering when he refuses to allow that vote. now, before that, we would like to have a vote on our proposal for the 2001 and 2003 tax relief that we know needs to be

effectuated. and then what really boggled my mind is when the leader talked in terms of the republicans are filibustering. give me a break. we have asked for two major votes, one on the president's own proposal and the other on my proposal to extend those tax cuts for one more year, during which both sides should come together and work together, compromise together and come up with a new reformed tax code that doesn't continue to eat us alive. madam president, i'm absolutely amazed at what happened here this morning. with that, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from indiana. mr. coats: madam president, i came down to the floor early, lining up in the queue here to

talk about taxes and the proposal that has just been discussed. i have sat here in amazement as the senator from utah has just expressed and as the minority leader expressed, the redefinition of filibuster, i -- it was a tortured effort on the part of the majority leader to try to redefine it in a way that had just the opposite effect of what a filibuster really is. i wish the majority leader had been in our caucus luncheon yesterday when we debated whether or not we would vote against the cloture motion to proceed on this bill, and the consent of our caulk was no, we welcome a debate on taxes. we welcome the opportunity to move forward and discuss our two visions of how we need to revive

this economy. and so let's not use the -- a parliament trick or a parliament procedure to avoid that debate and to avoid a vote on the president's proposal. we realize that there was the opportunity for the majority leader to use parliament tricks and procedures in order to deny us the opportunity to offer our own version of what we thought we should do with our tax code and provisions particularly as it reflects this particular tax on small business, but we welcomed the opportunity to come and debate that and work through and hopefully make an offer that was acceptable. and so the majority leader comes down here this morning -- or the minority leader, excuse me, comes down here this morning and turns to the majority leader and says we're going to give you

your vote. we're not going to use parliament procedures to prevent you from having your opportunity to vote on your proposal, the president's proposal. and by some tortured way of opposing this, the majority leader essentially said there you go again, republicans are filibustering. and i think we all just sat here with our mouths agap saying have we missed something? we're offering to give you your vote. now, it's clear that this center aisle divides -- not completely but divides us in terms of how we think we should go forward in dealing with this very sick,

anemic economy. there is probably pretty close to a consensus that tax reform needs to be an essential part of what we need to do. in a bipartisan way, congressman ron wyden, a democrat from oregon, and dan coats, a republican from indiana, have been working for a year and a half now on something that was started with former congressman -- senator -- i said congressman. senator wyden. we both were in the house together so we still sometimes throw that word congressman in. maybe we're hearkening back to our house days. senator gregg, who is now retired from service, distinguished service here in the senate, worked with senator wyden for two years in putting a package together, a comprehensive tax reform package. it's the only plan out there that has been written, that has been scored, that is available for debate and available for -- to the tax-writing committees to

use as a basis or a foundation or parts of it or all of it or whatever in forming their own version to bring forward, but there is a bipartisan consensus that we ought to move forward on comprehensive tax reform. senator catch, our republican leader of the finance committee, which is the committee responsible for writing that bill, has said that piecemeal is not the way to go. anybody who has analyzed our current situation understands that. comprehensive is. but even he agreed that in this instance, given the situation that we now face, he would accept going forward with a -- with a short-term proposal that would allow us and give us a year to put together a comprehensive tax reform. the last one occurred in 1986, so it's more than time. with all the credits and subsidies and additions and

addendums to the current tax code, it's complex beyond anybody's ability to fully understand, and it favors some -- it isn't fair. it favors some at the expense of the many. in many ways where these special credits and so forth go to a single company or a single industry, so we need much more fairness across the board, and that's what senator wyden and i attempt to do in our proposal. now, i don't know -- the word fairness is thrown around here as condemnation on the republican party's ability to a chief some kind of bipartisan consent, but if we want to talk about fairness, let's talk about what just happened here. it was imminently fair for the minority leader to offer the democrats a vote on the president's proposal. all we asked in return was an

opportunity to debate and present and have a vote on our proposal. now, what's amazing is that the democrat party controls this senate. they have the votes to pass the president's proposal. and so in the end, if they voted in unison with the president, their proposal wins. winner takes all. we vote, we come up short, we lose. obviously, there must be a reason why they don't want that vote. they don't want an alternative presented to them because they must fear that they would lose votes on their side of the aisle for the president's proposal, and we would gain votes from them on our side. it's happened in the past and apparently that's the decision they made, but this forrurous -- torturous explanation of how this could be a filibuster, if they can spin this through the

press, they're not listening or understanding what's actually going on here. what's going on here is a decided attempt by the majority leader to protect his party from having to take a vote for or against. and if the american people want anything out of this body and if they're disgusted with anything that comes out of this body, because people go home and say we didn't have a real vote on this, there was a procedural this or that, and it got stopped here or modified there or the others tied up the legislative tree. what in the world does that mean to most people outside of this body? they used some procedural way to avoid a real vote. they want our yes to be yes and our no to be no, and we are offering to the democrat leader, we are offering that opportunity, let your yes be yes and your no be no on the specific bill before us, and then go home and explain to your people why you voted yes and why you voted -- or why you voted no, and then they decide in this

democratic process whether they want to send you back or send somebody else back for you. and the american people aren't getting that kind of clarity right now. it's no wonder they are disgusted with a whole bunch of us. if they were watching this morning -- they probably weren't. it's 10:00 in the morning when we're talking about this. but if they get a fair treatment in the press over what happened here this morning, they will fully easily grasp and understand that what was proposed by the republicans was nothing but fairness and what was opposed by the other party was nothing but unfairness. what could be more fair than giving each side in a divided vision of how we should go forward their opportunity to debate what they believe in and to call a vote for it and winner takes all. and particularly from the party that has the votes to win and the party that has the votes not to win, why not have the vote? what have you got to lose unless

you think you're going to lose your own people or not want to put them on the line for having a yes or a no, clear for the american people to understand. i have totally diverted from what he i was going to say this morning --, well, not totally but i was so amazed by would what took place this morning i could not help but comment on it. we'll see how this gets spun out by the white house. we'll see what next diversionary tactic they can use to stop us from talking about the number one, no two, and number three issue facing this country and that is this anemic economy. 80,000 jobs. people say we're on the right track. that doesn't even replace the number of people that are retiring, let alone add new jobs. how many college graduates this fall -- this spring are living in the basement of their parents' home? and that's happened now for more than three years.

there are millions of people, millions, tens of millions of people that woke up this morning with no job to go to. there are ten more million people or more woke up with a job far below their abilities or their training. so 80,000 jobs, lets put this in perspective, it's far below what we need just to break even, just to give anybody a new shot and a new chance. we have had three and a half years of policies of this administration which have not improved the situation and, in fact, some have said is making it worse. we all know we've come through a tough time. we all know that sticking the blame against one side or the other really isn't the solution. the solution is how do we put sensible policies in place that will get this economy moving again? and one of those policies is comprehensive tax reform. once again, i bring up the wyden-coats bill, it's been out there, it's written, it's

scored, it's available to take up right now if that was the case, but because the tax writing committees have jurisdictional right to have a say and because it is a complex process, they would like some time to put it together so senator hatch's proposal, eminently fair, is to basically say let's not band-aid, let's not band-aid the tax code now with something that's not going to make much difference at all and, in fact, negatively impact we believe on small businesses around the country. he i just had a small business group in my office yesterday basically saying the president talks about the middle class. that's who i hire, they say. that's who's working in our business. they put a tax on me, the owner of the business, actually it's a tax on the business. the pass-throughs, the noncorporations, the millions and millions of noncorporations

that exist here where from a tax basis everything flows through to that individual taxpayer. they say i'm the guy who owns the business. i'm the guy that makes the decision on hiring. i'm the guy that has to put the health care plan together. i'm the guy that hires the people and pays the people. you tax me more, i don't have the same flexibility to hire or expand or buy equipment or expand my factory or hire more people. you can go out and amend it like i'm a rich guy, but because because i've chosen a certain way in order to form my business, not as a corporation, i'm taxed at an entirely different way than corporations. but if you go out and say we're giving the middle class a break and you're hiring the people who employ the middle class and you're raising their taxes, you're hurting the middle-class

people, the very people that the president says he's trying to protect, he's hurting by raising this tax. and the president himself said in his campaign and throughout his presidency the worst thing you can do is raise any taxes during a time of economic distress. i don't care if you're paul krugman or other if you're the most conservative economic analyst out there, there is a widespread consensus that the last thing you do is raise taxes at a time of stagnant economy, nongrowing economy, recessionary economy. it's the last thing you do. dan coats just said that, respected economists on the left and the right said that, but the president of the united states said that. as a candidate and throughout his presidency and in 2010 said the last thing we should do is raise any taxes. and now he's turned around and said let's tax up to a million

small businesses because obviously they can spin that and play that in what sounds like a politically opportune way. so it's a direct contradiction. a direct contradiction coming out of the president's mouth, coming out of the mouths of others, simply a -- an election-year political class division ploy to divert from the miserable record, the miserable record under this administration in terms of dealing with this economy. they frankly, if they know -- well, you can hardly conclude anything but the fact that they just don't know what they're doing but if even if they know what they're doing, their policies have not worked. so whether it's republicans or democrats, if you've done something for three and a half years and it hasn't worked, isn't it time to look at a different set of policies? and that's what we wanted to debate here. but the majority leader is not

allowing us to debate here, and in some ex criewtion -- ex crews yaitingly twisted way is trying to say republicans are preventing us from going forward. it boggles the mind and i guess i'll stop at that and yield the floor. thank you, madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. brown: thank you, madam president. i've enjoyed the previous speaker's very interesting -- i want to shift gears and talk about senate 1728 which is the stolen valor act of 2012. as many of you know the supreme court recently struck down the stolen valor act saying lying about military awards, services is protected by our first amendment rights. the court has ruled but let's be clear, it's wrong and cowardly for people to make fraudulent statements in order to receive distinctions they have not earned. let me say that again. it's wrong and cowardly for people to make fraudulent

statements in order to receive distinctions they have not earned. as a 32-year member of the army national guard still serving, i feel very strongly about this issue and believe we need a federal law to punish those who seek to benefit from making false claims and steal the true valor of our heroic men and women in uniform. my bipartisan, bicameral stolen valor act of 2012 reminds me of the bill we worked on, the insider trading bill. we have an opportunity once again to send a very powerful message to the american people that, in fact, in the middle of the gridlock we can work together on something that makes complete sense it. it addresses the supreme court's concerns by making a key change to protect first amendment rights. it would bun punish individuals who deliberately lie about their military service, their records, or honors with the intention of obtaining anything of value. and the key term is of value. you actually get something of

value as a result of the misrepresentations. so, again, the new stolen valor act makes it a federal crime to lie about military service in order to profit or benefit. that's the key distinction. yesterday congressman joe heck of nevada and i, the lead sponsor in the house of the bill, i in the senate had a press conference to start a fresh campaign to pass the stolen valor act. within a few hours of that press conference we gained 27 new cosponsors in the senate, making a total of 29. i would encourage you, madam president, and others on your side of the aisle to get involved in this very real effort to help our heroes who have served legitimately. congressman heck also has 67 bipartisan cosponsors in the house. also yesterday the pentagon announced that they will take a major step to deter con artists by establishing a searchable data base of military awards and medals to confirm in fact if the

person you're dealing with or speaking with is in fact deserving of the medals and honors they've received. madam president, it's clear this cause has momentum and the supreme court decision has given many a sense of urgency and clarity. in fact, today i wrote the president, president obama, to ask for his public endorsement of the bill, very similar to the day that he was walking up the aisle after his state of the union and i said, mr. president, i have a bill on harry reid's desk on insider trading, let's get it out. he says i will get it out. -- he can give his public endorsement of this bill and i'm hopeful the commander in chief will lend his voice to this cause to show leadership on this issue and to give his blessings so we can actually get to work on something that will truly pass. i would venture 99-0 in this chamber. his voice would join several military organizations that have endorsed the stolen valor act of 2011, the military officers association of america, the

association of the u.s. army military order of the purple heart and the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america, as bipartisan support of this effort grows, i ask my senate colleagues who have not cosponsored the stolen valor act of 2011 to get on board. it's time. it's time to send a very powerful message to the men and women that have served with dignity and honor that we respect that service and we're tired of the -- of the frauds that are out there perpetuating fraud and wearing medals and receiving honors that they're not entitled to. if we choose to come together and pass this legislation, we can respond immediately to the supreme court's ruling with the urgency this issue deserves. very similar to how senator mccaskill and i in the middle of gridlock a couple of years ago passed the arlington cemetery bill. we can send a message to the american people we can do things together and that unified message will protect the valor of our heroic veterans and

service members who defend our freedom and serve our country with the greatest of honor. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mrs. hutchison: madam president, i ask unanimous consent i be allowed to speak for up to ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. hutchison: i applaud the senator from massachusetts for introducing the bill. he is trying to make a constitutional way that those who have done the service for our country and earned the medals are assured that those medals mean something and cannot be in any way misrepresented without a consequence. so i thank the senator from massachusetts. i'm going to rise today to talk about this week's issue, which is taxes on our nation's small businesses. small businesses, madam president, are the economic engine of america. it's not big business.

jobs are created by small businesses that grow and become medium sized businesses. they are responsible for driving most of the job he growth -- job growth in this country. 55% of private-sector jobs are created by small business. punishing them with new taxes in a time of economic stagnation is incomprehensible, really. it's incomprehensible. this tax that is suggested by the president on those who make $250,000 or more will affect small business. make no mistake about it. i've been a small business person and i know that if you're paying all the expenses that you're paying, you're not going to be able, if you're taxed as an individual in your small business, to hire new people. not with what is looming next

year in increased taxes and even the talk of it is part of the reason that we have the stagnation that we do. 75% of the small businesses in our country pay taxes at an individual rate. they are organized as flow-through businesses, partnerships, s corporations, l.l.c.'s and sole proprietorships. 53% of all flow-through business income will be subject to the top two individual income tax rates scheduled to take expect in 2013. even talking about tax increases is on our minds of our small business people. it makes them very nervous. we have an already uncertain environment, hiring is stalled, we have a strangling growth in our country, and the hope of recovery is just not

there. the first round of taxes in the health care law that the president's party and the president passed will kick in in 2013. i don't want to have to go back to the small business owners that i have just visited with last week all over my state and say yes, it's true, you're going to have the taxes involved in the health care plan that will take effect in 2013 and your taxes are going up because you're going into a bigger bracket and yet -- if the president has his way, it's going to be even bigger. that is not the message anybody in this body should want to take back to their home states. nor do i want to go back to the hard-working employees and customers and tell them the same thing. because it won't be just small business owners caught in the net of higher taxes. every american is going to see their taxes increase if they're

paying taxes today. we have a cliff. everyone around here is talking about the fiscal cliff. it happens on december 31 of this year. because taxes will automatically go up on january 1. everybody will go into a higher bracket. we will lose the marriage penalty -- relief that we have had, and it will go back in. we won't have a doubling of a standard deduction for two police officers that get married again. we are going to see tax increases on the middle class, and it is going to be steep. 31 million americans will be hit for the first time with the alternative minimum tax. now, most people know that the alternative minimum tax was passed in 1969 to target a few hundred millionaires in america.

just trying to make sure that those millionaires paid a tax if all of their income was unearned and gotten through coupon clipping. well, guess who will be qualified next year if we don't do something. a single person making $33,750. a married couple earning $45,000. that's who is going to be considered not paying their fair share of taxes. that is outrageous for this congress to let that happen. we must work with the president to assure that those steep tax increases do not take effect. the tax increases, the astronomical debt that we face and the persistent high

unemployment rate have come together in a perfect storm, but it's a perfect recovery-killing storm, madam president. and if this weren't enough to send our economy into permanent hiding, we now have the dubious honor of having the highest corporate tax rate in the world. 35%. we used to be second, but japan had the good sense to lower their rate, so now it is america that holds that dubious honor. this is not a recipe for growth, madam president. is it any wonder why we have a recurring over 8% unemployment rate in this country? if we don't do something before the end of this year, if you're employed, you're going to pay more taxes next year, and if you're not employed, it's going to be harder to find a job. so what is the answer? well, the answer, of course, we all know is for this congress and the president to do

something before the election. now, senator reid has introduced a tax bill. it is a bill that will provide two temporary tax credits, but a one-year temporary tax credit, madam president, is really not enough. we all -- or many of us voted to go to this bill because we would like something to start with, and i hope that the majority leader is going to allow amendments, because there are many amendments for us to try to cobble together a bill that will really make a difference in our economy. so it's a start, and i'm going to give the leader credit for that, but a real long-term solution is what business is looking for. if you have a one-year tax credit, you're going to get a one-year plan, and a one-year plan is not going to encourage

people to be hired. it's not going to encourage employers when they are seeing one year and knowing that congress is going to do what it has done so often, and that is get to the last of the year and then cobble something together and maybe it will last a year and maybe it will be the same and maybe it won't. that is not the way business works. they have to plan, they have to know what they're going to have in the next five years in expenses so they know what they can produce and what they can charge for it. that's the private sector. madam president, we should be focusing on the underlying issue. it should be tax relief and tax reform. we can alleviate the employers' conundrum and get them to start hire federal government they know what to expect, and a one-year fix will not do it.

we need long-term tax reform. we need to increase the looming debt, and we all know it. we know what the fiscal cliff is. so, madam president, i just want to read a letter that i received in answer to a congratulatory note that i wrote to the former football coach at texas a&m. r.v. slocum who is one of the finest men i have ever met. he is exactly what america is. he was just inducted into the college football hall of fame. i congratulated him sincerely because he is the kind of person you want coaching your young men in football. well, he wrote me back and i'm just going to read an excerpt from his letter. he does the niceties of thanking me for writing him, and then he

says -- "i'm really concerned that the america that you and i grew up in is being attacked from within. although i grew up in a poor family, i was taught that i was privileged because i was born in america and the land of opportunity. we did not begrudge the rich but was encouraged that through hard work and education, someday we might be one of them. thankfully, i was taught that it was not someone else's fault that we were poor or that government would or should come bail us out. we worked our way out and felt the great feeling of accomplishment that goes with it. in my career as a coach, i encouraged my players to try the formula that i was given. it still works, and i'm so proud of the young men that i have changed their lives and with it the course of their families' lives." madam president, that's what america is and that's what we ought to be working to achieve. thank you, madam president, and

i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. udall: madam president, i'm here on the floor of our united states senate this morning to once again highlight our nation's clean energy future and the importance of extending -- mrs. boxer: would you just yield for just a moment? the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: i ask unanimous consent that senator udall proceed for six minutes, that i proceed for 12 minutes and senator manchin proceed for 12 minutes. the presiding officer: is there? without objection. mr. udall: madam president, again, i'm here on the floor this morning as i have been for a succession of morning speeches to talk about the importance of extending the production tax credit for wind power. if you look at our great country, in every corner, the production tax credit has resulted in good-paying jobs for americans and jobs that i might

add that can't be exported overseas. and i have taken a tour of the country and this morning i want to highlight the great state, the beautiful state of south carolina. south carolina is one of the few states that does not have installed onshore wind power, but that hasn't stopped south carolina from attracting literally dozens of manufacturers that support 1,000 good-paying wind energy jobs across the state. as you look at this chart of the state of south carolina, you can see the green circles acknowledge the manufacturing facilities that build components for wind turbines. nearly every component in a wind turbine is built in south carolina. i want to highlight in greenville, up here in the northwestern part of south carolina, g.e. has a facility there, and they design the 1.5-megawatt wind turbine that's a hallmark of g.e., and that facility supports more than a dozen suppliers and hundreds of

jobs across the state. madam president, one of the most exciting things, outside of the manufacturing that's going on in south carolina, is the massive investment that's been made in innovation. in 2009, clemson university won a $45 million grant from the american recovery and reinvestment act, and the department of energy for the construction of a brand-new facility that will be the largest wind turbine testing facility in the world. in that facility, they will test cutting-edge drive chain technologies for the next generation of wind turbines. now, south carolina then doubled down on that support of wind innovation. university donors and other partners have joined clemson, and they have come up with another $53 million to supplement that $45 million that came through the recovery act. so that's $98 million that will be an investment in south carolina's economy and in our wind energy future. so not only will there be

good-paying jobs created at this wind turbine drive chain testing facility, but this facility will be a global leader in developing wind turbines capable of creating three and ten times as much power as wind turbines do today. madam president, i was under the impression that wind turbine technology has matured and that we have been able to wring out every electron possible, but no, i'm told that we can increase the yields by three to ten times through this kind of research. this facility will focus on onshore and offshore wind turbines. so this is crucial research. we know in colorado the presence of top-notch research and development institutions that attract really talented individuals, and then that results in the creation of new companies that then commercialize the new and innovative technologies that are developed in these r&d facilities. i know in the presiding officer's home state, that's a formula for success as well.

when you make these investments like south carolina is making, like colorado is making, i know new york is making, you draw top-notch human resources that then are able to exexploit in a responsible way natural resources. so the grant that i mentioned combined with the research dollars that come out of the private sector represent an enormous opportunity for south carolina and then for our country in turn. you see already millions of dollars have been attracted into south carolina from global investors because they see the potential of what's going to happen at clemson. but, madam president, this is the point i want to make. if we don't extend the wind tax credit, the p.t.c., then these wind manufacturers may not have the wherewithal, frankly, to team up with clemson to commercialize the new technologies that will be developed in south carolina and then the jobs that follow won't be created. that just doesn't make sense.

south carolina and clemson are going to be global leaders in the development of these new technologies, and the question is where will these new turbines be built. i know for one that the chinese would be really happy to step in and take away our manufacturing jobs. but if we get our act together, if we extend the p.t.c., then these wind turbines will be built here in america, they will be built in south carolina, they will be built in colorado, they will be built in pennsylvania, they're going to be built all over our country, in every corner, literally. but if we let the p.t.c. expire, we risk shipping this industry and our good-paying jobs overseas. coloradans keep telling me -- i know in your home state, there is no reason to outsource these jobs, there is no reason to outsource energy production and there is no reason to handicap a growing industry that's helped make us and our country more energy independent. let's pass an extension of the

p.t.c. today. let's create jobs today. let's build this clean energy economy. let's pursue an all of the above strategy. let's do it here in the united states and let's do it now. madam president, thank you for your attention. thank you for your interest. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: madam president, was there any time remaining on senator udall's? the presiding officer: he used six minutes. mrs. boxer: all right. madam president, i rise today to talk a little bit about health care and what it would mean if the republicans get their way and take away so many benefits for millions of people, but before i do, i want to respond to senator hutchison's remarks on taxes. president obama has called on us to pass a tax cut for 98% of the american people. that would be the

millionaires -- not the millionaires, but the middle class. not the billionaires, but the middle class. 98%. he said anyone earning up to $250,000 gets a tax break. as a matter of fact, he said all income over $250,000 will get a tax cut. only income $250,000 will go back to the tax rates of bill clinton. now, let me remind everyone that in those years, we had 23 million new jobs created and a balanced budget, and we never had more millionaires created in one period of time as we did then because it was a fair tax system. president obama has asked us to give a tax break to everyone on the first $250,000 of their income, and after that to go back to the rates under bill clinton. that includes 97% of small business owners. madam president, when you hear

the republicans get up and say democrats want to hurt small businesses, democrats want to hurt the job creators, our position is that 97% of small business owners, we agree with the president, should get a tax break, but if you earn over that $250,000, which is a few percent pay the fair share that we paid during the fabulous economic growth period when bill clinton was the president. why do we feel it's important that we say 98% and not 100% of taxpayers? because we have a deficit issue. we have a debt problem. and we want to get back to the days of balanced budgets and we will get there if everyone pays their fair share. so all of those tears being shed on the other side, let's be clear, they're being shed for people like donald trump. isn't it unfortunate that a man like donald trump, who is able

to catch the dream to the ultimate and all right, we want that for everyone, has to pay just a little bit more. and, you know, i have to say at a time we're looking at people who take their money out of this country and put it in swiss bank accounts and bermuda accounts and the cayman islands, you know, what, it's time for everyone to have a little patriotism here. we have to have the greatest country in the world, that means the strongest military in the world, that means the best roads and bridges in the world, that means a strong education system. we want to wipe out cancer, aids, alzheimer's, that means a strong medical research system. and we need everyone in america to do their part. my dad was a c.p.a. we were very middle class, lower middle class i would say and i started working little jobs when i was 16, 17 and i got mad. i hate to aim myself, but the minimum wage was quite low then.

it was in the cents. like 75 cents an hour or something. and i remember saying why do i have to pay anything to the government? i don't want to pay anything. and my father would say to me, you kiss the ground you walk on because you live in america. and we have to have things in this country to make us great. and don't you ever forget that and don't you complain about it. he also said you make sure it's spent right and you make sure you have a voice in it, but this country needs to be strong. so to have millionaires and billionaires take their money out of the america -- out of america and hide it in other accounts, that's not something i would be proud of. we should invest our funds here and everyone should pay their fair share. now, here's the deal. the republicans have said if they take over all of the branches of government, which is their goal, on day one they're going to repeal

obamacare. they're going to repeal our health care law. and you know what to me that reminds me of this: if i were to say to you, madam president, meet me on the corner at 6:00 tonight and i'm going to punch you in the nose, hit you over the head and leave you there. you might rethink meeting me. you might say you know, barbara, that's not something to look forward to. well, let me say this to millions of americans who are already receiving the benefits of obamacare, and i'll lay those out, you are about to be hit over the head and punched in the nose and if you get the republicans taking over this whole washington, d.c. which is their goal, take over the senate, take over the presidency, and keep the house. now, let me tell you why i say this. here are the benefits that are

in jeopardy. not in jeopardy from repeal. they'll be repealed. free preventive services have already begun, cancer screenings, immunizations for those people who have private insurance. 54 million people are going to be punched in the nose and hit in the head if the republicans take over and they repeal health care. on day one. they're trying to do it today over in the house for the 31st time. prescription drug discounts for seniors who are in the doughnut hole, 5.2 million seniors have already saved $3.7 billion. they're going to be hit in the head and punched in the nose on day one, not even day two of a republican takeover. free preventive services for seniors, 32 million medicare patients get these free screenings now. 32.5 million. that's almost as many people as live in california. will be hit in the head and

punched in the nose on day one. not on day two or three. right away. protection against lifetime dollar limits. right now you think you have a good health care insurance plan, you get, god forbid something like cancer, and you check it out and you find out it's a half a million, maybe a million, maybe even two million limit, you don't know how fast that limit comes and you're out of insurance. 32 -- 105 million americans, 105 million americans who had limits on their policies no longer have it. well, the republicans take over, punch in the nose, hit in the head, they're finished. they're out. young adults who are staying now on their parents' plan up to age 26, 6.6 million young adults, they're out of luck. first day of a republican takeover. let's go to the next chart.

limits on the amount of premiums health insurance companies can spend on administrative costs. right now, 12 million americans plus are going to receive back a total of a billion dollars in rebates because under our law, obamacare, the insurance companies have to spend the money on you, 80%. not on their own perks, not on their bonuses and they're going to get checks in the mail. 12.7 million americans. i hope you're listening because on day one, no more rebates. tax credits to help small businesses purchase health insurance. we hear about how the democrats don't care about small business. how about this, about 60,000 small businesses who insure two million workers have gon gotten tax credits right now, right now, so you hear the crocodile tears over there, yet they want to repeal a tax break that is

helping 360,000 small businesses. if your child is born with a preexisting condition, let's say some heart defect and they can't get insurance, today they can. and guess what, 17 million children benefit from this protection right now. 17 million of the most vulnerable people now have protection because of obamacare. but if the republicans take over, these little babies are out. out of luck, and their parents will probably have to go on welfare. great. meet you on the corner, be there. vote for me, and i'll punch you in the nose and hit you in the head. that's what's going on. funding for new community health care centers and expansions, already three million patients have been helped by this. the fact is we have seen funds go to these community health

care centers in our communities so whether you have insurance or not, you can drop into a health care center, it's a particularly important in rural areas where they have very little access. so i just talked about what happens already. now, in 2014 we set up the health care exchanges, so there is competition and you can get cheaper insurance. we have preexisting condition will now apply to everybody so if you have a preexisting condition and you're an adult, you can still get health care. women will get protection. do you know women have had to pay twice as much as a man for insurance. there is discrimination. that will be banned starting in 2014. there will be protection against arbitrary annual limits on the health care benefits people can get, sometimes they say, well, you have a big -- you have the ability to get your health care coverage but it's capped every year. no more artificial caps.

and finally, we'll say that health insurance plans have to cover essential benefits such as maternity care. many plans will not cover maternity care. that is over. so then people say, well, how is this reform paid for? and the republicans say taxes will go up, deficits will go up. the c.b.o. has told us actually this is a ruser of -- riewferrer of the deficit by tens of billions of dollars. as a matter of fact, reduces the deficit by $127 billion over the next ten years. now, why is it, why is it that this obamacare saves money? it's because we invest in prevention, and everyone within the sound of my voice knows if you get an annual mammogram and it sites a very tiny start of a breast tumor and you take that tumor out at an early stage, you have avoided the worst

consequences and it's way cheerp than waiting to the end when you need radiation, chemotherapy, all of the tough, tough medicine that's also expensive. i'd ask for one more minute. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: how else do we for this? cut out waste and fraud from medicare. we say to the health care industry you're going to make loot more than, you're going to pay more, and they are. and the free riders. we say to those people who say i'll dpefer never get sick and if i do, i'll get free health care at the emergency room. we finally say to them like they did in massachusetts, we finally say to them those days are over. if you can afford it you need to get a basic policy. by the way, it's a tiny percent of the people. it's 1.4 million people. i think it's less than 1% of the people will have to get insurance because the rest of us are paying a thousand dollars a

year to cover these people. so no more free rides. we all work together. madam president, i'll close with this: watch out in this election who you vote for. if somebody tells you they're going to repeal health care, they have no -- all these benefits go out the window. all this deficit cutting goes out the window. the supreme court said it was constitutional. and it is. and i just want to make the point, don't vote for people who will punch you in the nose, hit you in the head and walk away from you. and i think the choice is between those who will lift you up and make life better for you and your family and those who would go back to a system that was so harmful for our families. thank you very much, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. manchin: madam president,? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia. mr. manchin: thank you. i rise this morning to address a situation that is very hard for me to believe and i'm sure many of my colleagues and maybe

yourself also. makes no sense to the people of the great state of west virginia and for nearly two weeks hundreds of thousands of west virginians have been deprived of basic necessities like water and electricity because of massive stoamples, not just west virginia up up and down the east coast. at the peak of the outage, fema estimates 688,000 west virginians didn't have power. that's a third of our state. one third of our state was completely knocked out. and hundreds of thousands of people had to throw away all their food and refridge -- in their refrigerators and freezers because of lack of electricity. our national guard and first responders did a superb job keeping people safe but this country learned how vulnerable and inadequate our infrastructure is and how much we have come to depend on it. up and down the east coast our electrical grid was crippled because there is no backup plan, none whatsoever that would keep the vital necessities of life running during these her

risk storms. the fact is we have to invest in our nation's infrastructure. little is being done. power outages cost this country between $79 billion and $164 billion a year. that's because on top of powering our hospitals and nursing homes and our schools, reliable energy underpartnerships our economy and keeps americans at work. i know there are other needs around the world but seeing firsthand how vulnerable our system is, i was so surprised and you might be also, madam president. it was disappointed too to hear yesterday that the u.s. army corps of engineers is making a massive investment in power infrastructure in another country by awarding a $94 million contract to provide -- listen -- provide reliable power in afghanistan. so i thought how could i explain this back home? we're providing reliable power to the afghans when nearly 2

hoonlt west virginians spent an entire week without electricity. we lost all of our food, suffered through 100-degree heat during this period of time when our country is losing tens and hundreds of billions of dollars because of power outages all over the east coast. as of 6:00 p.m. yesterday, this is more than 12 days after the storm, we still have over 30,000 people without electricity. madam president, i cannot count the number of times i've come to the floor in the senate chamber to say it is time to start rebuilding america. and not afghanistan. but in all my time in the senate i have not seen a starker example of misplaced priorities. it is wrong to invest in reliable power for the afghan people when tens of thousands of not just west virginians but americans all over this country have been without power for nearly two weeks because our infrastructure is so vulnerable. in fact, our state -- in our state too many people still don't have reliable water. when power goes out the water

systems can't purify the water. in mcdowell county fema expects it will be another two to three weeks before the water service is restored to the customers. let me repeat that. another two to three weeks without water, the basic necessity of life. that will be a full month after the storm without one of life's basic necessities. something is truly out of balance. it's been almost two weeks since the storm of unprecedented strength hit our state. how can i look to the people in my great state of west virginia in the eye when our infrastructure is so poor they don't have reliable power or water but still tell them we're investing in transmission lines to provide reliable power to afghanistan? it just doesn't make sense. according to the congressional research service, the american taxpayers have already spent more than $89 billion -- $89 billion -- on infrastructure

projects in afghanistan. including the cost of reconstruction assistance, diplomatic security, and activities by nondepartment of defense agencies. this is in addition to the $551 billion that we have spent on military operations. and that doesn't even begin to address iraq. where we've spent at least $5 billion on electrical systems and $61 billion on infrastructure projects according to the inspector general for iraq reconstruction. and still when you take a closer look at the project announced yesterday, the facts are even more disturbing. the army times reported that the corps' awarding of 9 $.6 million to improve electrical transmission from a power space station throughout the hell helmand bearing transmission lines, which we don't do in america and

providing backup generators which we don't have which is why we lost our water systems and our food. but bel but -- but believe it or not, the people of united states, we already paid to bill the kajockey powerhouse in the 1970's. and i'm going to quote from this article in the "army times." "because the entire electrical system has largely been neglected due to decades of war, afghan and u.s. agencies are partnering to increase power generation and distribution to solve the severe lack of electricity in the region." trust me, in west virginia, we can understand the severe lack of power. this facility wasn't maintained in the 1970's, it wasn't maintained in the 1980's, it wasn't maintained in the 1990's and it's still not being maintained. and what makes us think it will be maintained now that we're spending millions and millions of dollars? and this is only one small piece of an even costly contract to bring electricity to southern afghanistan. the $93.6 million contract is the first of six integrated

components collectively called the kandahar-helmanpower project. a usaid project to expand the electrical distribution system of two provinces of southern afghanistan with a combined estimated population of 1.7 million. now, that's short of the population of my home state of west virginia. we're about 1.8 million. it's one thing to help another country with loans. which i'm all for. that will help them get back on their feet so that they can repay their debts. but it's another thing entirely to pour billions of taxpayers' dollars into another country for a decade with no chance of any repayment to this country and to the taxpayers of the united states of america. something is wrong with that. i can't say it enough. if you build a bridge in west virginia, we won't blow it up. if you help us build a school, we won't burn it down. we're very appreciative. we appreciate the help of all the american taxpayers because we're part of this great country. and if you help us invest in

more reliable electricity syst system, we will use that power to make this country stronger. to power this nation's economy and to provide good-paying jobs all over this country. not only that, the scope of the problem of electricity infrastructure in west virginia is tremendous. according to the national energy technology laboratory, power outages in west virginia take four times longer to fix than the national average. we've been blessed with so much beauty but we have a kind of a challenging topography, if you will, and it makes it much more difficult. if we modernize our grid to make it more flexible and reliable, we can make a return on investment of up to $6 for every $1 that we invest. according to the studies from both the electric power research institute and the national energy technology laboratory, instead of investing that money in afghanistan, doesn't it just make sense to invest it here at home? and we'll start right in west virginia, if you like. madam president, i would feel the same if this was in your

state, if it was in any other state in the country. this might have been a once-in-a-lifetime storm, one where millions of people lost power no matter how well we prepared, but the fact that tens of thousands of west virginians are still without power and water is a sign that we must do better as a country. this could have happened to any state, whether it's a storm, an earthquake, tornadoes, fires, floods, or a hurricane. and i would hope that my colleagues in the senate would share my feelings. we can't help others if we don't make ourself strong and don't keep ourself strong. and we're beginning to neglect our very real needs here at home. as west virginians, i'm proud to say that we're strong people. we're able to pick ourselves up faster than most, and we go to the aid of our friends and neighbors who need it most, even though they're in need themselves. but when you go to -- to a filling station and the sign says, "cash only" then you find out that the banks are closed because all the power's down,

the a.t.m.'s out. we're changing and transforming our whole monetary system. but there's no backup plan. what do you do? we have a problem. we truly have a problem. but i know we can fix it because we're americans. that's why it's time to rebuild america and our infrastructure, not afghanistan or other places of the world. let's make ourselves strong again so that we really can help people. i want to thank you, madam president. i note -- i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. mr. begich: thank you very much. and first before i make my comments, i wanted to talk about the small business jobs relief act, but i wanted to -- my friend from west virginia, i know they're struggling under incredible issues. not even -- even before the storm that occurred and the efforts that he's doing to build infrastructure, and his statements are right on the mark. you know, we have communities in

alaska, in western alaska, where 40% of the communities don't even have water and sewer. not the question of building it, they don't have it -- of rebuilding it, they don't have it. so i recognize the senator and his great work for what he's doing in west virginia, making it a better place, but his points are well-thought today and right to the mark about what we need to do to rebuild this country. and the good part of all that is, it's about american jobs and american workers building those water and sewer lines and putting those transmission lines back up, may they be above or below the ground. so again, i just want to commend the senator for his work in west virginia. madam president, i come down to talk about the small business jobs and tax relief act. and i come from the small business world. i know people come down on the floor here and -- on the other side and they talk about being from the small business world. and i always like to look and see what that really means. and it's always amazing to me, you know, when you're from the small business world, here's what it really is about. it's not working for some

corporation, having a nice title and not really worrying about if you can make it from day to day or worrying about a payroll or at the end of the day if the business isn't good, you don't -- you don't get a check. that's how it works in the small business world. and so when i hear people come down and talk about small business, it surprises me, to be very frank with you, the lack of understanding, the lack of knowledge that they have about the small business world. i -- i have been in it from the age of 14. my wife has grown a business from serving and selling smoked salmon on the street corner to now a couple retail stores and doing very well. but has struggled just like everyone else, had to deal with the bureaucracy, had to figure out how to raise the capital, put retirement money on the table, maximize her credit car cards, do everything possible to take her dream and make it a reality, just as i've done for all my years in the small business world. so i come here not just as a u.s. senator from alaska,

representing alaskans and small businesses, but also someone who has lived it, worked it, understands it. and we have a chance -- and i appreciate the 80-14 vote to let us proceed to this bill, which is the small business jobs and tax relief act. this is an important bill, has two components that seems simple in a lot of ways but have great impact. and, first, i want to mention the idea that you can get a tax credit for hiring people. now, some say, well, small won't use the tax rate just to hire people. and i agree maybe to a certain extent on that but why is this important. if you're a small business person and you're going to increase your payroll, maybe you're giving raises or bonuses and so forth, or you're going to hire a part-time or full-time people. if you hire those people -- and just a clear example is if your payroll is $200,000 ask your payroll goes up by $20,000 to

$220,000, you'll get a tax credit of 10%, which is $2,000. now, what will that small business person do with that $2,000? a big business, that just gets lost in some pile, maybe goes to some corporate salary. but here's what a small business will do to it. they'll get that $2,000. they might now go recarpet their leasehold improvement or their rental space that they have that they're usin using for their sml business. what does that mean? that $2,000 now goes to the carpet layer and the carpet seller. what do they do with it? they put it into the next part of the economy. it just keeps moving much quicker and faster in the economy. as a matter of fact, every dollar that you see out there has a multiplier effect that's pretty significant for small business. so the one piece is giving tax credits for small businesses to increase their payrolls -- payroll. maybe for increased salaries or for increased employment. either way, you're putting more money into the working people in this economy and, therefore,

they're putting back into the economy. the second piece of the act is the depreciation. and, you know, if you're not a small business person, this i is -- you don't really pay a lot of attention to this. but the way the i.r.s. codes work is if you invest in things, like new equipment, carpet, sheet rock, lighting, whatever, the i.r.s. has these schedules to depreciate this over many, many, many years. here's how it works. so we have first the tax credit for payroll. now we have a second piece of this bill which is accelerated or bonus depreciation. which means if you're thinking of an idea -- and i will tell you, a small business that i just visited in alaska called lime solar by chet dyson and jesse mote. these are two young men who are starting a small business to sell solar products for home and businesses. but they've got a leasehole space. they rented a space. it had no sheet rock, no lighting. they're responsible for paying

for all of that. so they invested. they cleaned it up, sheet rocked it, fixed it all up, put equipment in. all that expense now if this bill passes can be written off in the first year instead of depreciating it over multiple years y. is that important? -- years. why is that important? because let's assume they spend a hundred thousand dollars renovating their facility and they're in a 25% tax bracket. they will save in the first year $25,000. like that. instead of spreading that over the next 10 or ayears. why is that important? that $25,000 they save in taxes or depreciation, they'll be able to reinvest, reinvest into their ris bis as they struggle to figure out how -- their business as they struggle to figure out how to build their markets. or my friend jack lewis, who struggled to open his second restaurant firetap. i've been in the restaurants -- restaurant business. it's a tough business. margins are thin.

but again, he invested it, he believe built it, built it all out, out of scratch, now he can under this boney he is bonus den schedule write it off in the first year. that's a huge benefit for these small businesses. when you look at another small company called steamdot coffee. it's a small coffee company. jonathan white owns it. you know, they brew their own coffee, have their own coffee and they also package it, manufacture it for resale. well, that takes a lot of equipment. now they get to write that off in the first year. so all this bill does -- and it's simple but yet it has huge impact. as a matter of fact, under the depreciation, it's estimated that for every dollar we give in the tax benefit, there's a $9 billion to the g.d.p. 1-9 ratio. any business person would love that deal. that's a great deal. so this bill i hope our colleagues -- they've shown by 80-14, this thi is a great

bipartisan effort. i hope we'll move to the next stage and have some amendments and work through it. but let's do it for the small business community of this country, for the state that i live in, for every state. the state of new york is piled with small businesses. when you go through new york city, every inch of the street is a small business person. that's what drives this economy. that would -- that's what makes this economy happen. and that's where we need to put our investment. and i know -- i'll end on this note. i know we'll have, you know, some pro forma votes, as i call them, show-and-tell. we'll have a vote on this 20% deduction -- or tax rate deduction that is being proposed by the house. it sounds good but there's no guarantee that's going to go back into the economy. as a matter of fact, it's going to be for -- you know, if you're a hedge funder, you'll get that break. if you're an attorney, you'll get that break. if you're a small business person, you'll get that break. but there's no guarantee that that money goes back into the economy. so if we're going to give these tax incentives, let's make sure

it's working in the economy and building jobs and building a future for us. so, madam president, i just wanted to come down, speak on this bill and encourage my colleagues to support the small business jobs and tax relief a act. not only through the pro forma vote that we had yesterday getting it to move but also to really pass it. we've done a great job the last few months passing a lot of legislation out of this body. let's continue that effort and help our economy grow. madam president, i -- i think i have some announcement. madam president, i have four unanimous consent requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. i ask unanimous consent that these requests be agreed to and that these requests be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. begich: madam president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. white house madam president, may i ask for unanimous consent that the pending quorum be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: may i ask unanimous consent that senator blumenthal and i be recognized for the next 20 or so minutes to speak on the issue of cybersecurity. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you. as i said, i rise to speak about cybersecurity, madam president, but specifically about the cyber threat to our nation's critical infrastructure. and by "critical infrastructure," i mean the power grid that supplies electricity to our homes, keep us home in the winter, cool in the summer. i mean the financial services' processing systems that connect our a.t.m.'s to our accounts and move money around in our complex financial system. and i mean the communications networks by which we talk and e-mail and txt and message one another. madam president, the men and women whom we have charged with our nation's defense and who we

have confirmed in these roles in the united states senate have repeatedly and consistently warned us about the danger of cyber attacks on this critical infrastructure that provides power and light and heat, that tracks and records financial transactions, that allows communication and data transfer, that keeps airplanes safe in the air, that controls our dams, that enables our commerce. the consequences of failure in these areas could be catastrophic. we must pay heed to these warnings about america's critical infrastructure as we consider cybersecurity legislation. the administration has described this cyber threat in no uncertain terms. director of national intelligence james clapper has stated that, "it's clear from all that we've said that we all recognize we need to do

something. we all recognize this as a profound threat to this country, to its future, to its economy, to its very being." end quote. secretary of defense leon panetta has warned that the next pearl harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack. secretary of homeland security, janet napolitano has compared this threat to the september 11 attacks. prior to 9/11, she said, "there were all kinds of information all there that a catastrophic attack was loomin looming. the information on a cyber attack is on that same frequency and intensity and is bubbling at the same level, and we should not wait for an attack in order to do something." end quote. attorney general holder stressed the urgency of responding to this threat in a recent senate judiciary committee hearing.

he said, "this is a problem that we must address. our nation is otherwise at risk, and to ignore this problem, to think it is going to go away, runs headlong into all the intelligence we have gathered, the facts we have been able to accrue, which show that the problem is getting worse instead of getting better. there are more countries that are becoming more adept at the use of these tools. there are groups that are become more adept at the use of these tools and the harm that they want to do to the united states and to our infrastructure through these means is extremely real." end quote. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff martin dempsey has warned that, "a cyber attack could stop society in its tracks." n.s.a. director and u.s. cyber commander general keith adetection ander states that "we see this as something absolutely

rightal to the security of the country, cybersecurity is key to the security of this nation." a recent report from the department of homeland security found that companies that operate critical infrastructure have reported a sharp rise in cybersecurity incidents over the past few years. companies reported 198 cyber incidents in 20111. this may reflect that the private sector is just now beginning to catch on. the private sector cannot be counted on to respond to to this growing challenge on its own. as ashton carter has explained, "there is a market failure at the work here. companies just aren't willing to admit vulnerability to themselves or publicly to shareholders in such a way as to

support the necessary investments or lead their peers down a certain path of investment and all that would follow." these were administration warnings but the concerns are bipartisan. a wide range of national security experts from previous republican administrations have echoed this alarm. former director of national intelligence and n.s.a. director admiral mike mcconnell has said, "the united states is fighting a cyber war today and we are losing. it is that simple." he explained,'s a "as the most wired nation on earth, we offer the most targets of significance, yet our cyber defenses are woefully lacking. the stakes are enormous. to the extent that the sprawling u.s. economy inhabits a common physical space, it is in our communications networks. if an enemy disrupt our financial and accounting transactions or created confusion about the legitimacy

of those transactions, chaos would result. our power grids, air, and ground transportation, telecommunications, and water filtration systems are in jeopardy as well." that ends the quote from admiral mcconnell. admiral mcconnell also made a comparison to threats from the past. "the cyber war mirrors the nuclear challenge in terms of the potential economic and psychological effects. we prevailed in the cold war through solid alliances and clear policies. we backed all this up with robust investments investments. security never comes cheap. it worked because we had to make it work. let's do the same with cybersecurity. the time to start was yesterday." former deputy director of defense paul wolfowitz has also echoed the administration' admis

warning that a siberia tack has the potential of causing -- that a cyber attack has the potential of causing devastation on the level of 9/11. "i hope we don't have to wait for something like 9/11 before people realize harass vulnerable." stewart baker has compared the threat to the catastrophic effects of hurricane katrina. "we must begin now to protect our critical infrastructure from attack and so far we have done little," baker said. "we are all living in a digital new orleans. no one really wants to spend the money reinforcing the levees, but the alternative is works and it is bearing down on us at speed." former n.s. adirector and c.i.a. director michael haydn has said, "we have entered into a new phase of conflict where we use a cyber weapon to create physical destruction and in this case physical destruction in someone else's critical infrastructure."

former republican officials have also noted the cybersecurity gap in the private sector due to this market failure. the marketplace, former secretary of homeland security chertoff has said, is likely to fail in allocating the correct amount of investment to manage risk across the breadth of the networks on which our society relies. the following examples are emblematic of the market failure that both democratic and republican national security officials have identified in this cybersecurity area for critical infrastructure. when the f.b.i.-led cybersecurity national task force informed a quarks that it has been hacked, nine times offer utah ten, that american corporation had no idea. kevin mannedia has said, "and i quote him here, "in over 90% of the cases we have responded to, government notification was required to alert the company

that a security breach was under way. in our last 50 incidents," he said, "48 of the victim companies learned they were breached from the federal bureau of investigation, the department of defense, or some other third party." in operation aurora, the cyber attack that affected many companies, most notably google, only three of the approximately 300 companies attacked were aware that they had been attacked before they were contacted by the government. we cannot count on the private sector to defend itself against a threat about which it is so unaware. an advanced persistent intrusion of the u.s. chamber of commerce systems also went undetected until the chamber received help from the government. "the wall street journal" reported that a group of it ahackers in china breached the computer defenses of the u.s. chamber, gained access to

everything storied in its systems, including information about its three million members, on remained on the network for at least six mondes and possibly more than a year. the chamber only learned of the break-in according to the article when the f.b.i. told the group that servers in china were stealing its information. the special expertise of our national security agencies has a consistent theme through these examples. as former assistant attorney general, o.l.c. director and harvard professor jack goldstein explains, the government is the only one to ensure that the critical infrastructure on which we all depend is security and we must find a way for it to meet its responsibilities." by the way, that was goldminimum wage at -- goldsmith at department of justice during the bushadministration. this is a republican appointee spiking. these warningsings have

repeatedly communicated to us in the senate. a letter to senate majority leader reid and republican leader mcconnell dated january 2012, which i ask to be included in the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. white house hoines action is not an acceptable option. this letter was signed by former secretary of homeland security michael chertoff, paul wolfowitz; former n.s.a. director mike mcconnell. former vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general james cartwright; dr. william perry, jamie gorelick, former deputy secretary of defense jamie j. lynn and richard clark. writing again to majority leader reid and minority leader mcconnell in a letter dated june 6, 2012, which i also ask

unanimous consent be added at the end of my remarks. the presiding officer: without objection. whitehouse general hayden and general cart wrao*eut urged us to, and i quote, bring cybersecurity legislation to the floor as soon as possible. given the time left in this legislative session and the upcoming election this fall, we are concerned that the window of opportunity to pass legislation that is in our view, critically necessary to protect our national and economic security is quickly disappearing. they specifically focused on the threat to critical infrastructure. stating that protection of our critical infrastructure is essential in order to effectively protect our national and economic security from the growing cyberthreat. we must not ignore this chorus of warnings issued by those who are the most informed and the most alert about the danger to our critical infrastructure. we must pass cybersecurity legislation and we must ensure that the cybersecurity

legislation that we pass addresses critical infrastructure. no bill that fails to address critical infrastructure can be said to have done the job of protecting our country. our nation will be vulnerable if critical infrastructure companies fail to meet basic security standards as they do right now. legislation must include a mechanism to end this continuing vulnerability. if operators object to a particular approach to cybersecurity for our critical infrastructure on the basis it is too burdensome or too unwieldy they will find many members of the senators on both sides of the aisle, myself included and senator blumenthal included, who are ready and eager to work with them. but if the purpose of the exercise is to come to an end point in which the operators of our critical infrastructure do

not have to reach adequate levels of cybersecurity, then we need to move on and we need to vote and we need to go beyond that. the question of how we get to cybersecurity is one that we should engage on in this senate. the question of whether we protect our privately held critical infrastructure in a responsible way is one that we should not allow to deter us from getting this job done to protect both our national and economic security. whatever the ultimate solution is, we simply must find a way to improve the cybersecurity of our critical infrastructure. and i thank the presiding officer for these remarks. i will yield the floor now to senator blumenthal who has been engaged in efforts with me to try to find a path through to a bipartisan bill that will protect our critical infrastructure. his expertise in this area as a superbly trained lawyer as a former marine dedicated to our

national security and as a person who brings the highest level of legal talent to this discussion having argued, i think, five separate cases before the united states supreme court, he has been an enormous asset. and i appreciate his participation in this. i yield the floor. mr. blumenthal: thank you. madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: thank you very much, madam president. thank you to the senator from rhode island, my distinguished colleague, for those very generous remarks about my, as it happens, four arguments in the supreme court. and the rest of it i think similarly exaggerated as to my qualifications. mr. whitehouse: the arguments were so good, they counted as five. mr. blumenthal: i thank the senator from rhode island most importantly for his extraordinary work on this issue, his leadership and vision as well as his courage. and i want to emphasize a number of the points that he made so powerfully in his remarks earlier. the first is, most

significantly, the united states today is under attack. we are under cyber attack. the question is how we respond. it is our national interests that are at stake. and every day this nation suffers attempted intrusions, attempted interference, attempted theft of our intellectual property as a result of the ongoing attack that we need to stop and deter and answer. national security is indistinguishable from cybersecurity. in fact, cybersecurity is a matter of national security. not only insofar as our defense capabilities, our actual weapons systems are potentially under attack and interference. but also, as my colleague from rhode island said so well,

because our critical infrastructure, are every day at risk. our facilities in transportation, our financial system, our utilities that power our great cities and our rural areas, and our intellectual property, which is so valuable and which every day is at risk. in fact, is taken from us wrongfully at great cost to our nation. the number and physician indication of cyber attacks -- the number and sophistication of cyberattacks has increased dramatically over the years and there are warnings that say those attacks will continue and will be mounting with increasing intensity. in fact, experts say that with enough time, enough motivation, enough funding a determined adversary can penetrate nearly any system that is accessible directly from the internet. the united states today is

vulnerable. and to take the pearl harbor analogy that our secretary of defense has drawn so well, we have our ships sitting unprotected today as they were at the time of pearl harbor. our ships today are not just our vessels in the seas, but our institutions sitting in this country and around the world. our critical infrastructure that is equally vulnerable to sophisticated and unsophisticated hackers. in fact, the threat ranges from the hackers in developing countries, unsophisticated hackers, to foreign agents who want to steal our nation's secrets through terrorists who seek ways to disrupt that critical infrastructure. and it is not a matter simply of convenience. we're not talking here about temporary dislocations like the

loss of electricity that the capital area suffered recently or that our states of new england suffered as a result of the recent storms last fall. we're talking about permanent, severe, lasting disruptions and dislocation of our financial and our power systems that may be caused by this interference. one international group, for example, access to financial companies internal computer network and stole millions of dollars in just 24 hours. another such criminal group accessed online commercial banking accounts and spread malicious computer viruses that cost our financial institutions nearly $70 million. one company that was recently the victim of an intrusion determined that it lost ten years' worth of research and

development valued at $1 billion. that is billion with a "b." virtually overnight. these losses are not just to the shareholders of these companies. they are to all of us who live in the united states, because the losses in many instances are losses of information to defense companies that produce our weapons systems, losses of property that has been developed at great cost to them and to our taxpayer. so we should all be concerned about such losses, as sean henry, executive director of the f.b.i., has said -- and i'm quoting -- "the cyber threat is an existential one" meaning a major cyber attack could potentially wipe out whole companies. end of quote. those threats to our critical

infrastructure, as you have heard so powerfully from my colleague from rhode island, are widespread and spreading. industrial control systems that help control our pipelines, railroads, water treatment facilities, power plants are at an elevated risk today. not at some point in the future. today. the f.b.i. warns that successful cyber attack against an electrical grid could cause serious damage to parts of our cities and ultimately even kill people. the department of homeland security said last year that it has received nearly 200 reports of suspected cyberincidents, more than four times of number of incidence reported in 2010. in one incident more than 100 computers at a nuclear energy firm were infected with a virus that could have been used to take complete control of that company's system.

these reports, these warnings go on. but in summary, the director of the f.b.i. said it best -- quote -- "we are losing data. we are losing money. we are losing ideas. and we are losing innovation." those threats are existential to our nation, and we must address them now. not simply as a luxury, not as a possibility, but as a need now. and i want to thank the senator from rhode island as well as my distinguished fellow senator from connecticut, joseph lieberman, and others on the other side of the aisle, such as senators mccain, collins, graham, chambliss, as well as our colleagues on this side, for their leadership in this area.

they have started this effort with great dedication. there has been substantial work done already. no one here has ignored this threat. and we must move forward for the sake of our nation's security, our cyber security must be addressed as soon as possible. cyber security is not an issue that can be -- that we can wait to address. until we see the results of failure. the consequences of a debilitating attack would be catastrophic to our nation. and i hope that we can continue to build a consensus that the senator from rhode island has been working to do, and others of our colleagues equally so, so that we can come together, as he said, not whether but how, and do it in a bipartisan way that

this issue has elicited very commendably, very impressively. colleagues from both sides of the aisle have been working on this issue with dedication and diligence. and i hope that the body as a whole will match the vigor that is appropriate. and i want to again thank the senator from rhode island. part of our challenge will be to elicit better agency coordination. and if the senator from rhode island wishes to comment further, i hope that perhaps he can respond to the question of how soon we should come together and work on this issue. is it a problem we can delay until the next session or should we try to address it during the coming months of this session before we close? mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island.

mr. whitehouse: i'd be delighted to respond to the senator from connecticut in two ways. the first is that as the senator so well pointed out, this is not a future threat or a prospective threat we need to prepare ourselves against. this is an ongoing current threat. there is a campaign of attacks into our national security infrastructure, into our intellectual property, and into our critical infrastructure like the power grids and the communications networks that we count on in our daily lives for what we consider the american standard of living here at home. so time is not our friend. as one of the individuals i quoted said -- i think it was admiral mcconnell -- the day to get this done was yesterday. so the sooner, the better. but we do need to form a

consensus in this body enough to move through the parliamentary obstacles that exist in this body, that allows us to go forward and that allows us to go forward in a way that does something serious about forcing the operators of our critical infrastructure to put in adequate cybersecurity protections. if they have to do it because they have incentives to do it, that's one way of getting there. if they have to do it because they have regulations that demand it, that's another way of getting there. there are different ways to get there. as you and i have discussed, as we're working actually on together, we're open to different ways to get there. but it should be nonnegotiable amongst us in the senate that getting there, getting to the point where america's critical infrastructure is protected from cyber attack as reasonably well we can, that should be a

nonnegotiable goal. anything short of that should be seen as failure. the other thing i wanted to add, you were very generous in your remarks and in your credentialing of a great number of senators who've been working very hard on this. i would also like to single out senator coons, who's been very helpful in our efforts. and i'll stay on our side of the aisle at this point, particularly senator mikulski. barbara mikulski serves on the intelligence committee. she is keenly aware of the cyber threat. she has taken deep dives into this issue in her role as a cardinal on the appropriation committees. she does the appropriations for many of the national security agency and law enforcement agencies that are deeply involved in this. so when she speaks, she speaks with real authority and she speaks with real impact. and her participation in this

effort i think is extraordinarily helpful, in addition to the effort of the many senators who you singled out as well. so with that, i will yield the floor. i see the senator from louisiana is here and i thank the senator from connecticut. mr. vitter: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. vitter: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i come to the senate floor to talk about a priority of mine that's been the case since i first came to the u.s. senate and that is reimportation, changing federal law appropriately to allow americans to buy safe, cheaper prescription drugs from canada and other countries. mr. president, we all know prescription drug prices are sky-high in the united states. they're sky-high by any metric, by any measure. certainly in this down economy, certainly for folks like seniors on a fixed income. and they're particularly

sky-high when you compare those drug prices to the prices of exactly the same drugs in other countries, including other western industrialized countries like canada immediately to our north. for this reason, from the very beginning of my work in the senate, i've laid out a number of solutions that i think would make the situation a lot better, including generics reform, which i'm working on in a bipartisan way with other members of the senate. but one of those proposed solutions has been reimportati reimportation, again, changing federal law, as i think we absolutely need to do, to allow american seniors, all americans to buy safe, cheaper prescription drugs from other countries like canada. and let me emphasize, we're talking about exactly the same prescription drugs as we can buy here at much higher prices.

we're only talking about f.d.a.-approved drugs. we're talking about drugs coming from the same sources, manufacturing sites either in this country and those drugs go to canada and other countries, or sometimes from third-party countries and the drugs come to both canada and the united states. now, mr. president, when i first came to the senate, we were on the verge of passing that legislation. i worked in a bipartisan way with a large group of senators, including senator byron dorgan of north dakota, who was one of the leaders of the issue at the time. john mccain on our republican side, many others, olympia sno snowe, were involved in this issue. and one of those strong, vocal supporters of reimportation was then-senator barack obama. he took a very clear position as

a u.s. senator, being strongly in support of reimportation. he voted for the full-fledged reimportation bill in 2007. as he became a presidential candidate, that strong, clear support continued during the presidential campaign. then-candidate obama clearly stated again his strong, crystal-clear support for reimportation. in fact, he used very feisty language about it. he claimed he would fight big pharma, the big pharmaceutical companies, stating -- quote -- "we'll take them on, hold them accountable for the prices they charge." and -- quote -- "drug companies are exploiting americans by dramatically overcharging u.s. consumers." well, unfortunately, mr. president, after

then-candidate obama was elected president, some things changed and the biggest thing that changed was the obama-care proposal and all of the backroom deals, bartering and deal making that led to its passage through congress. i had those concerns at the ti time. in fact, i spoke very clearly about them here on the senate floor, that there were some back-room deals going on, essentially trading reimportation, the white house pledging to oppose reimportati reimportation -- clearly against what the president ran on, how he served in the united states senate -- if big pharma would join the effort to pass obama-care into law. and, mr. president, more recently, in the last few months, e-mails and other evidence has surfaced that clearly confirm that that's exactly what went on. in fact, the house energy and commerce committee has had an

investigation into this issue and it has revealed and made very clear closed-door negotiations about obama-care that essentially struck a deal between big pharma and the white house, the white house saying, you support obama-care, you help us pass it, you produce advertising dollars to do that, and we'll deep-six, kill forever reimportation. as i said, this house investigation has laid out a clear pattern of e-mails and other communications that tell the story very clearly. pharma e-mails, for instance, say -- quote -- "rom" -- meaning then-white house steve of staff rom emanuel -- -- "rahm will me it clear that pharma needs a direct line of communication separate and apart from any other coalition members." and then again on june 10 of

2009, the pharma lobbyists, meeting with white house officials, coming out of that meeting they said they had discussed the details -- quote -- "and the expected financial gain from health reform." this same house investigation has revealed meetings between administration top officials and other special interest groups, including meetings at the dsc dscc -- democratic senate campaign committee -- to coordinate political operations. pharma lobbyists attending these meetings to learn about white house messaging and -- quote -- "how our effort can be consistent with that." and then the final big deal was struck, and the big deal, as revealed clearly by this evidence and these e-mails, was very clear -- pharma, the big pharmaceutical companies, would support obama-care, not just in

word but in deed, including putting up $70 million to help fund an advertising campaign in support of the passage of obama-care. that $70 million from the biggest pharmaceutical companies went to two 501-c-4 groups, "healthy economy now," and "americans for stable, quality care." and these groups were formed specifically to advertise and promote the passage of obama-care. the former group was actually created after a meeting discussing the need for these efforts at the dscc, a democratic campaign arm. in addition, big pharma, the biggest pharmaceutical companies, offered $80 billion in payment reductions and other parts of health care financing

in order, again, to secure their top priority, killing -- killing, in their mind hopefully forever -- reimportation. in june, president obama's top white house health care advisor, nancy ann deparle, wrote to pharma that the obama administration had -- quote -- "made the decision based on how construct you have you guyive yn to oh impose reimportation." and later, after that, pharma lobbyist e-mails confirm the deal, and specifically they highlighted a conversation that a pharma lobbyist had with the white house deputy chief of staff, jim massina, writing, the pharma lobbyist writing, "confidential. the white house is working on some very explicit language on importeddation to kill it" -- to kill it -- "in health care reform." in august 2009, pharma's top

lobbyist at the time, billy tozat, made it crystal clear as well -- quote -- "we were assured you will have a rock-solid deal." well, mr. president, the tragedy of it all is they apparently did have a rock-solid deal. because if you look at u.s. senate votes after that back-room deal which helped pass obama-care, there were multiple individual u.s. senators who flipped their votes, made good on the white house rock-solid deal to kill reimportation, that opportunity for all americans, particularly seniors, to be able to buy safe, cheaper prescription drugs from canada and elsewhere. let's look at votes on the broad reimportation bill led by

then-senator byron dorgan. i was a cosponsor. so were many other senators who have been involved in this issue. john mccain, olympia snowe, many others. in 2007, the senate actually passed that measure 63-28, although it was after that essentially scuttled by a poison pill added to the bill. but the vote on the base measure was 63-28 with 47 senate democrats voting "yes" including then-star-senator barack obama. flash forward to 2009, after the obama-care back-room deal, a whole different planet, a whole different land skate. then the senat -- a whole diffet landscape. then the senate defeated the same measure 51-48. there was a 60-vote threshold. with 38 senate democrats voting

"yes" -- a smaller number -- with 23 senate democrats switching their vote from 2007. exactly the same measure, 23 senate democrats flip-flopped, switched their vote in light of the white house obama-care deal. you can see a similar flip-flop with regard to votes on my vitter amendment, a more narrowly tailored measure regarding reimportation. in 2002009 th 2009, the senate t men 59-49. a more narrowly focused and tailored amendment. but in 2011, after the deal, completely different story. the senate rejected the same amendment 45-55. only 29 senate democrats voted "yes," again, 14 senate

democrats switched their vote, did a complete flip-flop from 2009. so again, mr. president, i believe the facts are in. investigations, e-mails, other crystal-clear evidence, including those votes and those vote switches, make it very clear that it was a back-room deal worth billions of dollars to big pharma, worth a lot politically to the obama white house. and the deal, as is evidenced by these communications and quotes and e-mails, was very clear. big pharma said, we'll help you pass obama-care, we'll give you $70 million in advertising money, we'll help lower costs so that you can brag that obama-care is, through some smoke-and-mirrors accounting actually saving money when it's not,