Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend from Rhode Island, and I think we can move forward. I think there is good faith. As I said, we started--the four of us--beginning to get people together. That group was quickly joined by Senators Collins and Lieberman, so then six of us began to get people together. There were any number of meetings this week with about two dozen Senators, about equally divided between both parties, trying to find a way forward. I didn't think we found that in the cloture motion today. The motion said: Here is how we are going to proceed to finish the bill, and so we didn't move forward today. But I hope we can continue to work with Senator Reid and others to create the sense that Senator Whitehouse just expressed, that there is great bipartisan effort being made to find a solution that not only would pass a Senate bill but would wind up with a bill on the President's desk sometime this year. You don't have to look very far to find people who will say that the greatest threat we face at this moment is the threat of some kind of cyber attack. At the highest levels of our military structure, of our intelligence structure, they quickly come to that conclusion. And leaving here for the work period in August that Congress has had since the beginning of Congresses without having this done on the Senate side is disappointing to me. On the other hand, there wouldn't have been a bill even if we had passed a bill today because we have to work with the House to have a bill that winds up with a piece of paper on the President's desk--a relatively small stack of paper--that he can sign and that then becomes the law that allows us to either minimize or hopefully avoid the current certainty that someone will eventually begin to get to our critical infrastructure in a way that makes it hard for the country to get water, to get electricity, to communicate, or to address the financial network. You know, 3 or 4 days anywhere in the country where the electricity is out, suddenly you begin to see all of the things that are dependent on just the electrical grid alone. Hopefully we can do this. I know work is being done. I will be involved in some of it later today. As I said, I am disappointed we didn't get this done, but it has to be done. We can't leave here this year with the House saying ``we passed a bill'' and the Senate saying either ``we didn't pass a bill because one side didn't want to work with the other'' or ``we passed a bill, but the House wouldn't agree to it.'' This is not a problem that we just need to have a political answer to; this is a problem we need to have a real answer to.

Mr. BLUNT. I rise today on two topics. One, I want to say that while I don't agree with everything my good friend from Rhode Island just said about the issue he was talking about, the two of us have worked all this year to try to bring people together on the issue we failed to deal with today on cyber security. Senator Whitehouse and I, along with Senators Kyl and Mikulski, at the very first of the year began to create opportunities for Senators to sit down together and talk about the threat we face and talk about what we need to do to deal with it. I am convinced and I believe all the people I just mentioned are equally convinced that two things will happen: No. 1, we will eventually have a cyber attack on our country that will be successful in some way that many Americans will understand the danger we face from the cyber threat and, No. 2, that we will eventually pass a bill. My strong belief is that will be a better bill if we pass it before that event rather than after that event.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, does the Senator from North Dakota have the floor?

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am concerned that we are going to go home without an agriculture disaster bill farm families can rely on. This disaster is real. The disaster programs for livestock ran out a year ago, September 30 of last year. We have a chance to do something about that, and I wish to see us do something about that. The idea that we would decide we could put this off another month, that we can put those families in jeopardy for another month not knowing what their solution seems to me is totally unacceptable. I will yield the floor to my friend from North Dakota, but I intend to do everything that I can to see we solve this problem with a real solution, not just another Washington excuse as to why we can't do what needs to be done. The Agriculture industry is a key economic driver for our country, supporting approximately 16 million jobs nationwide. The families that own and run these farms and ranches represent less than 2 percent of America's population, but they raise enough food and fiber to feed the nation. These producers have been greatly impacted by the worst and widest reaching drought to grip the United States in decades, which continues to get worse with no signs of slowing down as we head into one of the warmest months of the year. On Wednesday the USDA added 218 counties from 12 drought-stricken States to its list of natural disaster areas--bringing the overall total to 1,584 counties in 32 States. That's more than half of all U.S. counties. As of the end of last month, the entire State of Missouri was designated a State of severe to exceptional drought--the worst level of drought possible. For a State like Missouri, which is heavily reliant on agriculture revenue, this drought has been devastating. Missouri has more than 100,000 individual farms--the second highest number of farms of any state in the nation. Missouri also ranks No. 2 in the Nation in cow calf operations. Nationwide, 48 percent of our corn crop is now in poor to very poor condition, compared to 45 percent one week ago. Last year, only 14 percent was poor to very poor, while 62 percent was rated good to excellent. Among the hardest hit States, Missouri tops this list with 83 percent of our corn crop rated at poor to very poor. Based off the most recent data, approximately 73 percent of the domestic cattle inventory in the country is within an area experiencing drought. Meanwhile, 57 percent of American pasture and rangeland is in poor to very poor condition this week, compared to 55 percent last week and 36 percent a year ago. I have talked to many livestock producers who are being forced to decide whether to continue to feed their livestock or whether to liquidate otherwise productive livestock and dairy herds. For the few that have been able to put up hay, they are already taking it back out of the barn to feed--well before the normal feeding time in the winter months. A dairy producer and good friend of mine, Larry Purdom, said just the other day: ``Some are just giving up. Yesterday I saw three dairy herds sell out at the Springfield livestock auction and two more herds were ready to go. I think we could lose up to a third of our dairy cow numbers in Missouri.'' Undoubtedly, the best solution to assist our farmers and ranchers would be for Congress to pass a long term farm bill that includes funding for these disaster programs. I voted for the Senate farm bill, and I still believe we need a long-term bill to provide certainty to our producers. Many of these disaster programs have lapsed, leaving American producers with very few options to make it through this drought. While USDA has granted a primary disaster designation to every county in Missouri, qualifying them for emergency loan--this only gets our producers so far. It's time we step up and take further action. We have an obligation to our nation's producers to act immediately. The House has passed and sent us a targeted disaster aid bill. This bill is fully offset, and it immediately helps those farmers and ranchers who are facing the worst drought in decades. But instead of moving forward and providing our producers with the assistance they need, the majority has decided to play politics with drought relief. Now, the Democrats want to send the House the same bill that has already passed Senate, with no immediate disaster assistance attached. As we head into the August work period with no sign of relief in sight, it is unacceptable for the Majority to stand in the way of helping our producers. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Des R. Goyal as he completes a long and distinguished career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, USACE. Mr. Goyal was born and educated in India, where he eventually received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering. In 1970, he came to the United States to further his studies while earning his U.S. citizenship. Mr. Goyal started his career with the Corps in 1978 as a project engineer on navigation locks in the Corps of Engineers Huntington District. Since that time, he has held numerous assignments with the Corps of Engineers, including working on military construction projects in Saudi Arabia and serving in Germany as Chief of the Mechanical/Electrical design branch for the Corps of Engineers Europe Division. In 1999, he was assigned the job of Chief, Operations Division, Kansas City District of the Corps of Engineers. 2011 was arguably the most challenging year in the 114-plus-year history of the Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District. While executing the challenging Operations and Maintenance program, the District battled an epic 145-day flood in the Missouri River Basin and established a Recovery Field Office in Joplin, MO to respond to the fifth deadliest tornado in U.S. history. As an integral part of the Operations Division, Mr. Goyal led the effort to ensure his Emergency Management and Contingency Operations were fully manned by competent personnel from throughout the District. These additional missions comprised approximately 25 percent of the Kansas City District's workforce at various times, placing significant stress on the organization. However, Mr. Goyal remained poised and calm, responding with a plea for volunteers, and was instrumental in the success of these efforts. During these challenges, he clearly demonstrated strong leadership and technical competency. His past experiences significantly augmented the success of the mission during this timeframe. Throughout his career, Des Goyal has promoted leadership and mission execution. He has mentored many USACE employees and military personnel while leading the efforts on large, complex projects and programs throughout the world. He has tremendous passion for the advancement of his colleagues and those they serve. He championed the use of the Student Career Employment Program, SCEP, in the Corps of Engineers Northwest District, which serves as a valuable tool in providing college students the critical experience and networking opportunities to encourage employment in a public service career. Mr. Goyal continues to press for positive change through a focus on good government, professional organizations and community service. I thank Des Goyal for his service to his adopted country and wish Des and his wife, Usha, an enjoyable retirement.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I wish to honor Neosha A. Mackey, who retired earlier this summer as dean of university libraries at Missouri State University after 27 years of service. During her years of dedicated service, Mackey oversaw the expansion of the Meyer Library to meet the needs of the academic community with improved access to local archives, manuscripts and photographs. The MSU library system also improved its access to other research materials with a Special Collections and Archives section available to internet users that was previously only accessible to view at the MSU Library. Mackey started at Missouri State as the head of reference in 1985. Later she served as associate dean of library services, 1987-2009; acting dean, 1993-1995, and was appointed dean of library services in 2009. During her tenure, the library enhanced services with a $28 million addition and renovation project. Mackey has also been a presence in the classroom teaching both undergraduate and graduate level courses while monitoring budgets and coordinating personnel matters. As Missouri State reached out to establish programs and classes for students in China, Mackey and her husband John took a leadership role in the development of those programs. Mackey also directed an expansion of the Meyer Library's local archives and collections with a loan agreement to house, preserve, and provide access to manuscripts and photographs owned by The History Museum for Springfield-Greene County. The History Museum holds a comprehensive collection of photographs and personal documents capturing decades of history and changing cultures in Springfield and Greene Counties. The new campus location promises improved access for researchers and the general public as well as a safer climate- and temperature-controlled location for these priceless archives. Before arriving at Missouri State, Mackey was at the Ohio State University from 1978-1985 as personnel librarian and head of the home economics library. She served as assistant to the dean, 1975-1977, and as head of the Parish Business Library, 1970-1975, at the University of New Mexico. Mackey has a bachelor of arts in economics and a master's in library science from the University of Oklahoma and an MBA from the University of New Mexico. Mackey's achievements and her personal commitment to excellence have guided the Missouri State Library program to a place of national prominence. I thank her for her efforts and wish her well in her well- deserved retirement.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. It is disappointing in that, as the Senator says, it is not even that hard to figure out what we could be doing or what we should be doing or what is the fundamental work of what we should be doing. There are things the Constitution says we can't do, such as initiate a tax bill. So we are spending a lot of time on tax bills that, even if we passed one, would be unconstitutional. The House has the right to start those bills, and they would say: We are not even going to deal with that because it is outside of the Constitution. It is not as though this is a hard formula. How do you get spending under control? The No. 1 domestic priority in the country today should be more private sector job creation. But the No. 1 priority for the Federal Government would be, how do we get spending under control? How do we begin to pay off debt rather than add to debt? And the only way we can do that is to debate the spending bills. The Senator mentioned the former head of the World Bank a minute ago. I heard him mention a few days ago that several years ago after leaving the governorship, he spent some time in Australia and made good friends there--one of the former Prime Ministers of Australia. And I will let him tell that story. Everybody in the world knows the best and strongest economy and workforce in the world is ours, if we just do the right thing. And the right thing is not that hard to figure out. The Senator from Tennessee was telling me one of the former Prime Ministers had just returned to the government after some time away. What about his comment about what it takes for our country to reassert itself as the economic place to watch and place to be and want to be. When the Senator reminded me about that story, I thought it was very telling. People all over the world understand what it is we ought to do, but we are just not doing it.

Mr. BLUNT. That is exactly right. That is the way the process is supposed to work. I think the observation the Senator made on the Budget Control Act is that is the maximum amount of money we agree to spend. The majority leader's view is: Well, if the House decides to spend less than that, somehow we cannot move forward. The truth is that is the excuse for this year. In the 6 years that the current majority has controlled the Senate, they have not passed a budget three times and three times have not brought a single appropriations bill to the floor. I do not exactly know what the excuse was the other times, but this year it is: Well, the House has a different number. The House is a different institution. It is the House of Representatives. They get elected every 2 years. They bring bills to the floor. In fact, they have had a budget the last 2 years and we have not. I think the House the last year that the majority controlled, the last year Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, did not have a budget. That may be the only time ever since the budget law in 1974. But the Senate has not had a budget for 3 years. There is that old saying: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Clearly the budget is a plan, and the Parliamentarian says we do not have one. The Parliamentarian says the Senate has failed to obey the law for 3 years now because we do not have a budget. We are not prepared to tell the American people what our budget is. And even in spite of not having a budget, the Senate Appropriations Committee has gone ahead and figured out a number they could use as the number to appropriate to. Those bills are ready. The only problem is, those bills are not allowed to come to the floor. A few days ago, I cannot remember what the waste of time that week was on the Senate floor, but I said, in the leadership stakeout: Why are we not doing the things we are supposed to be doing that give us a plan, that tell the American people what we are for? Then at the next moment, the next press opportunity, the majority came out and they asked the leader: Why are we not doing that? And the majority leader said: Well, because the House has a different number, so we are not going to have an appropriations process until the election is over. It is particularly interesting to me that the majority's view is that they do not want to tell people until the election is over what they are for. The House is saying what they are for. They have had 11 of the 12 bills ready to go to the floor, and more than half of them have been voted on. They voted on a budget. But in the Senate, we are not prepared to tell people what we are for. Another thing, this is 38 percent of the budget. Senator Alexander mentioned this earlier. What about the other 62 percent? The other 62 percent now gets spent if we do not even show up, if nobody takes any action, because we have already defined the so-called entitlement part of the budget. A lot of that is Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security--62 percent. By the way, that was all of the money that came in. And while we have not had a budget for 3 years, while over 6 years we have only brought appropriations bills to the floor three times, our national debt has nearly doubled. It went from $8.67 trillion when the current majority leader became the majority leader to $15.87 trillion now 6 years later. We have doubled the debt. We have failed to plan. So I guess the old adage is true: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Our big failure is we have allowed the debt of the country--the debt that was accumulated in over 200 years, we have now doubled in 6 years. During that 6 years, we have simply been unwilling to do our work. The American people are upset about what is happening in Washington, and they should be. I am upset about it too. We could be talking about spending on the floor of the Senate. That is the only way to ever get spending under control--the appropriations bills, the most basic work the Congress is supposed to do. By the way, we ought to get to where we are talking about more than 38 percent of the budget when we talk about the appropriations bills. We have to get that back in the right category as well. We have to make the Senate work. The best way to do that is to do the job the Congress is supposed to do, the House and the Senate. When only the House does it, there is no chance to have that conference. That is how legislation works, back to the Senator's original point. The House passes a bill. Any of us who had the basic civic course remember how that chart looked: The House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, then you go to conference and talk about the differences. But the current majority has said: Well, there are differences. We could never work that out, so we will not do our part of the legislative process. We will not have the debate in the Senate. We will not tell the American people what we are for, and we will let them go to the polling place on election day guessing what we might be for, but we are certainly not going to let them find that out by bringing legislation to the floor. The Senate is not doing its work. This is the fundamental work that needs to be done. I mean, imagine when the Senator was the Governor of Tennessee or when he was president of the University of Tennessee, if he decided they were not going to have a budget, or this interesting argument some of our colleagues make that the Budget Control Act is the budget because it sets the top line. That would be like when Senator Alexander was Governor and had gotten his adviser and Cabinet together and said: Here is the amount of money we are going to spend. Now let's see how it works out. That would be the budget? Of course that wouldn't be a budget. It would be a disaster. And the 6-year deficit numbers of $8.67 trillion to now, 6 years later, $15.87 trillion proves the disaster truly has happened. I just can't imagine. How could one possibly run a State or university or a business if their budgeting process was, here is the top number we are going to spend; now let's see how it works out.

Mr. BLUNT. I do think we are having that discussion, and particularly about the budget. There have never been 60 popularly elected Republican Senators, so anytime the Republicans have controlled the Senate, it was with a number that was below 60. And the budget became incredibly important because you can do things that involve spending money or collecting money during the 10-year budget window, and that decade can be extended every single year if you wanted to. So you can always be talking 10 years in the future of solid policy. And, by the way, in a democracy, 10 years of knowing what the policy is is a lot of time. We have to have a budget. Our friends in the majority--now there are 53 of them--could do anything in the budget or at least set out to do anything in the budget that 53 of them said they wanted to do. They could change tax policy for 10 years if 53 of them wanted to do it. They could change how we implement the President's health care bill, if 53 of them wanted to do it, because that is spending money, and we would have to do that. I don't think there is any doubt that if our side were in the majority, we would have a budget because, frankly, it is the biggest tool our size majority has ever had. There have never been 60 of us. We couldn't rely on 60.

Mr. BLUNT. My only thought, as we are standing here finishing up this discussion, is that as people hear this, they may wonder if Senator Alexander and Senator Blunt are talking about how the Federal Government can spend the money, and that being the most important thing. If we are going to get spending under control, of course, it is the most important thing. It is not a desire to spend money, it is a desire to debate how we spend the money, to plan how we spend the money, and give as much notice as we can to the country, to the States, and to the people who are trying to make job-creating decisions. We want to show them the American government is going to do the right thing and is going to plan for a future that makes sense rather than fail to plan and stumble into a future that continues to just do the wrong things. We have seen the debt of the country almost double in 6 years. Surely, that is enough indication that what we are doing is not working and more of the same is not the answer. Getting back to the real responsibility of the Senate to do its job--the House is doing its job. They are going to take some criticism about the programs they said should be cut or redefined. We need to do our job. That is the way this process has to work. It is disappointing that it is not working. We are going to come back in all likelihood in September with bad choices that will be made. One is to shut the government down. One is to just somehow continue to spend money as we have been spending it as the debt of the United States of America doubled in about 6 years. I yield back to my friend from Tennessee.

Mr. BLUNT. I think the Senator is exactly right. He has made that pledge at press conferences. I think some of that has been said recently on the floor of the Senate: Let's get our work done. And if we were in the majority, we would pledge that we would get our work done. That means Republican Senators and Democratic Senators would wind up having to take some votes they would just as soon not take, but that has always been part of being in the Senate, that you are here to say what you are for, and you are here for 6 years to say what you are for. The last 6 years--if you have served in the Senate and your only time in the Senate, as would be the case for some of our colleagues up to now, has been the last 6 years, you have really never had a chance to say what you are for. Half the years you didn't even have an appropriations bill on the floor. And we have added to the legislative dialog normal phrases that didn't used to be quite as normal, such as ``continuing resolution.'' And what is a continuing resolution? That means you basically can't get your work done for the next year, so you decide to just put a couple of bandaids on whatever were the rules for last year and move forward. When you talk about a continuing resolution, that is failure. We are going to have a few more days here in July and early August, and then, as Congress has always done, we will go home and hear a lot of complaints in August this year because we are not getting our work done. We are going to come back in September. The fiscal year--the spending year--ends the end of September, and what are our choices going to be? We are not going to have good choices. We have had no appropriations bills. So the choice is to either let the government stop functioning on October 1 or continue spending money at the level we decided who knows how many years ago, to spend that money in many of these programs because we really have not talked about these programs. So we go from no good choice to an even worse choice.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for his kind comments. I wish to comment on a couple of things that have been said, and one by my friend from Connecticut that there are competing concerns here and they don't need to be mutually exclusive at all. When we talk about cybersecurity, we are not talking about the government somehow securing everything that happens in the cyber world; we are talking about, what are the things we can identify and agree on as critical infrastructure? There is a lot of security about what happens on the military cyberspace, dot-mil, and a lot of comfort about what happens in the government part, the dot-gov. What we are concerned about is what is outside those two networks that doesn't have the kind of protection those networks have, not about controlling everything--in fact, about defining specifically in the most limited way possible what is critical to the ongoing daily operation of the country. Senator Mikulski talked about that. She also said that if something happens, there is no telling what kind of legislation will pass. And I couldn't agree more with that comment in every way I can think of. We are going to pass a cybersecurity bill at some time, I believe, in the not too distant future, and it will either be in the kind of environment the four Senators along with me here on the floor have been working to create, where we do this in the most thoughtful way, we do this in a way that has taken time to bring people together and have a discussion, or in a post-cyber attack moment, like a post-9/11 moment, and who knows what we might do. I think Senator Mikulski said wisely and rightly that it will go further than it should go and it will cost more than it should cost because then we are reacting, and that is what we need to avoid. We can do this in the right way or the wrong way, and the wrong way would be waiting too long. The right way is to do this now. You don't have to be well read into the intelligence community. I have a chance to be on that committee with Senator Mikulski. I served on the House committee when Senator Whitehouse was on the Senate committee and know they have long been advocates of securing this part of our vulnerability. But you don't have to be on the Intelligence Committee or even have access to the information that all Senators have to know that this is believed to be our greatest area of vulnerability. And why is it? Because it involves everything. It involves how we communicate, it involves how we get gasoline, and it involves how we power everything from the drinking water system to the electricity at home. A windstorm created all kinds of problems. Two different 30-minute- or-so stops on the Metro system in the Washington area because the screen went blank caused all kinds of problems. Imagine that multiplied by whatever multiple you want to use, and the country would quickly not be functioning in any way--traffic in Washington, traffic anywhere in the country, trying to get from one gas station to the other only to find out that, by the way, the gas pumps don't work because the electricity is out and your car doesn't have enough gas. This is a huge problem. How do we define that critical infrastructure, and how do we do that in a way that is the most responsible, as Senator Blumenthal said, protecting civil liberties at the same time that we are carefully carving out that spot where government does have some obligation to make that area secure, and if we can do that in a way that encourages people to get into that environment. One of the things Senator Coons has been talking about--a former local government executive who knows all of the impact of police and fire and the court system and everything else he had to be responsible for, as well as his private sector work--has brought real value to this discussion. Somebody told me the other day, if you are in almost any kind of business, you have either been attacked, are going to be attacked, or you are being attacked right now as people are trying to figure out--maybe for malicious purposes, maybe just to see if they can do it--how they can get into your system. And Senator Coons has been so helpful in these discussions. I would like to hear what his thinking today is on this and where you are, talking about this on the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. I think Senator Mikulski made the case so well here, too. When we looked at this, when we have gone through exercises, the power grid is where you go first because it is the most dramatic, I suppose. But there are so many other places you could go--the description of the financial networks. Suddenly business stops. I was making a list here. We were talking of the kinds of things that could be at risk through some kind of cyber-attack--everything from electromagnetic pulse attack to literally a cyber-attack that comes into these various networks. There are 111 powerplants in Missouri. In our State alone, there are 111 powerplants. They are all in some way or another hooked into the grid. They can be disabled in a significant way. I was talking to a friend of mine who, during the last few days, was in West Virginia with their family. Driving to West Virginia, the electricity was out and they began to see abandoned cars because nobody could get to a gas station, and if they could get to a gas station, it was closed. So there were cars all over the place. That is assuming you can even get out of the traffic mess you would be in in more urban areas. But where would you go? What would you do? The desperation we understand. It would be something that is preventable if we prevent it. It is something that is preventable in ways that--particularly Senator Whitehouse has been thoughtful in putting together ideas of how you encourage people to voluntarily want to get into this space, to where they have assistance that they would not otherwise have, where they have assurances that they have done everything they could do to prevent this from happening. Frankly, if we do everything we can do to prevent this from happening, there is a chance it will not happen. But if we do not, there is certainty it will happen. We know that. I am glad my colleagues are here. I hope the Senate turns to this issue and we have a full and free debate because if we are united on this in a bipartisan way, that finds that sensible answer Senator Mikulski was talking about. Senator Whitehouse.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with some of my colleagues on the minority side for 30 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT. I will yield to Mr. Wicker who I believe has a unanimous consent request as well.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Chair. I thank my colleagues for joining me.

Mr. BLUNT. How much?

Mr. BLUNT. Well, I am pleased to have the time on the floor today to talk about these issues: the attack on small business, and the idea that the private sector is doing fine, that we just need more government jobs. I just do not find anybody in America who believes that is the reality of the world we live in today. The reluctance of the Senate to take votes--Mr. Wicker, who has served in the House of Representatives with Mr. Isakson and I, said we should have amendments; we should take votes; we should say what we are for; and we should not wait until after the election to say what we are for. The reports that are out are consistent with the President's view in 2010 when he said we should not do anything to change tax policy because the economy was struggling. By any measure of the economy, it is struggling more now than it was in 2010. Growth in the economy is about half what it was when the President said: With this kind of economy, we should not raise taxes. So he agreed to extend the current tax policies for 2 more years. But the minute we did that, we made exactly the same mistake we had made the previous 2 years: We created a big question mark out there for the American people as to what tax policies were going to be. We already have the tax increases with the President's health care plan. It raises the top rate to about 43 percent. The top rate goes up automatically with the President's health care plan to about 43 percent. If we go back to the old 39 rate, then we add the President's taxes in, we put an extraordinary tax on working families who, for whatever reason, decide they are not going to participate in the insurance system. The mandate--the tax on that would fall heavily--50 percent of all of that tax comes from families of four who make less than $72,000. Between $24,000 and $72,000 for families of four--we decided we are going to penalize them with a tax if you voted for the President's health care plan. What are we thinking here? Why are we ignoring all of the warnings? Last month the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, gave a rare warning that if we let the defense sequestration go into effect and return to the tax policies of 2000, we will be in a recession, that we will see a 4-percent decline in growth in an economy, as I said earlier, that has more people signing up for disability than new jobs being created--already the case, and we want to take another 4 percent out of that economy? The Ernst & Young report my friend from Utah mentioned said that if we drive over this fiscal cliff one of the Senate majority leaders said this week at the Brookings Institute that the majority is prepared to drive over, that we would lose 700,000 jobs, we would shrink the economy by 1.3 percent, we would reduce investment by 2\1/2\ percent, and we would cut wages by 2 percent, and this is in a country in which middle-class incomes have already dropped by $4,350 since the President took office. Why would we be looking for another time to cut wages? Why would we think this is a better time to slow the economy than the end of 2010? Chairman Bernanke from the Federal Reserve was here yesterday and said that we are being held back because there is so much uncertainty. We are being held back because people are not making the investments, they are not taking the risks Senator Wicker talked about. I would like to go back to Senator Lee and talk a little more about his ideas on taxes. Whenever you do not reward risk, people do not take risk. If they do not take risk, they do not create opportunity for others. If we look at putting this tax on small businesses, if we are putting this tax on people who otherwise might take a chance with some of their investments, we are just not going to have the risk-reward system work the way it needs to work. If you don't want people to take risks, don't reward risk. Government has traditionally taxed the things it wanted to discourage and subsidized the things it wanted to encourage. We appear to be subsidizing a lot of things, such as Solyndra, that don't work and taxing a lot of things that might work by constantly talking about not only today's taxes but the likelihood that if the current majority has its way and the President has his way, the current tax policies will dramatically go up. In fact, they are guaranteed to go up from the current rate even if we stayed at the current rate because of all of the health care taxes. We would also say we want to go back to a death tax that goes back almost to a $1 million exemption. If you are a small business or a family farm--many family farms, if you just calculate the value of your farm equipment, you are suddenly at the edge of that number that sounds so big until you realize you would have to sell the farm to pay the taxes. If you have the business that you are trying to pass along, maybe to the very people who stood by your side, your children and grandchildren, who helped you grow that business--it is almost impossible to evaluate who created that growth. But when you pass away, as the person who started the business, suddenly this big tax obligation falls to your family. Senator Lee's proposal to eliminate the death tax would address that. The proposal that we are for on this side to continue current tax policies as we look toward an effort to have tax policies that make more sense--we have the highest corporate rate in the world. We are seeing American companies say: Well, we think we are going to incorporate in Great Britain. We are going to move our company, our headquarters, who we are, to Great Britain because they have better tax policies. Who would have ever thought Great Britain would have better tax policies than the United States of America, but it does today, as does every other European country. We have managed to get at the top of the list. In return for those lower tax rates and a system that works internationally, let's eliminate a lot of the complexity of this Tax Code. We are for that. But let's not increase taxes while we are having that debate. Let's commit ourselves to that debate and not increase taxes, not move forward with all of the new health care taxes and the taxes that--apparently the majority says: Well, we are prepared to raise taxes on the middle class because then they will put so much pressure on Republicans in the Senate that we will have to eliminate some of the current tax policies that impact small businesses and other individuals. Does the Senator want to talk a little bit more about it? I think we have now a couple more minutes to think about how these tax policies really hold back opportunity for other people. If you don't reward risk, people don't take risks. If they do not take risks, they do not create opportunity and we do not have the jobs out there in the private sector that are clearly the key.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, we have heard our colleagues talking about jobs. Clearly, that needs to be the No. 1 priority in the country today, and it needs to be domestic jobs. The private sector is not doing just fine. The answer to the problems we face is not more government jobs, it is more private sector jobs, and the numbers aren't good anywhere we look, any way we look. In fact, if we look at the last 3 months in the country, more people signed up for disability than new jobs were created. More people signed up for disability than new jobs were created. More people decided they were going to opt out of the workforce because of disability reasons than people who got jobs. We are here talking about things that have minimal impact on the economy when we could be talking about things that have lots of impact on the economy: good energy policy, good tax policy, good regulatory policy. As long as this uncertainty continues or as long as there is substantial certainty that all of those things are going to begin to work against job creators, people aren't going to create jobs. This week we voted twice on something called the DISCLOSE Act that had absolutely no chance of becoming law this year and everybody on this floor knew it. What we ought to be disclosing is what our budget would look like. The Senate hasn't had a budget in 3 years and the law already requires that. The law already requires a significant disclosure on the part of the Senate, and that is disclosing how we are going to spend the money. The Senate of the United States, for the first time in the history of the Budget Control Act, 3 years ago--the second time 2 years ago and the third time this year--has decided we are not going to obey the law. One of the leaders was asked: Why aren't you having a budget? He said: Well, we would be politically foolish to say what we are for. What kind of responsible position is that? The other way we could disclose things is we could have the appropriations bills on the floor. The House has a budget. The House has passed half of the appropriations bills already. We haven't had a single bill on the floor, and the majority leader announced last week that we wouldn't have an appropriations bill on the floor before the election. Why is it we don't want to say before the election what we are for? Why is it we don't want to say before the election how we are going to spend the people's money? Why is it we don't want to say before the election what the budget would be? Even before the last election, the Senate wouldn't say what the budget would be, so we don't have one. When we don't have a plan, we plan to fail. Clearly, the economy is doing exactly that. Statistic after statistic is not what the American people would want them to be. Housing prices are down. Unemployment is up. The labor group of people who want to be in the economy is at a 30- year low. If we had the same number of people looking for jobs who were looking for jobs and had jobs in January of 2009, the unemployment rate would be over 11 percent. The only reason the unemployment is 8.2 percent is because so many people have given up on the economy. Nobody thinks we have fewer working-aged people than we had when Ronald Reagan was President, but the labor force we are counting is smaller than at any time since Ronald Reagan was President. There must be some big problem or people would be out looking for jobs. People would be out finding jobs. People would want to be part of an economy that they see as faltering. We are talking about little things instead of big things while the big things that affect America are dramatically affecting American families and American job creators. The President is telling small businesses that if their business was successful, it wasn't because of them; it was because of all kinds of other factors that they happened to take advantage of. No small businessperson in America believes that. Nobody who ever opened the door to a business on the first day and put their phone number in the phone book the first day and said, ``Call me; I can provide these services for you,'' thinks they weren't successful because of their work. I wish to turn to my friend, the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Wicker, to speak on these issues as well. There are so many things we could be talking about today, but clearly jobs and the economy are critical to American families.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator. Madam President, how much time do we have?

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I urge my colleagues to vote for the issue before us that says we don't want to have this rule. We want to do the right thing, not the wrong thing. I thank the Senator for this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I thank the Senator for this time. I rise in support of this resolution. We have only been able to use the Congressional Review Act successfully one time, and I think that means at some point we need to look at the Congressional Review Act because these regulations often don't meet the commonsense standard, and this is one of them. However, it appears to meet the standards that the President would want his regulators to meet. In fact, in January of 2008, the President--while running for President--said that coal-fired plants would go bankrupt. He said later in the campaign that electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket under his plan to tax greenhouse gas emissions through what was then the cap-and-trade system. The House passed that system in 2009. Missouri utilities all went together, including the rural electric cooperatives, the for-profit utilities, and the municipal utilities and paid for a study in our State, which is in the top six States of dependence on coal. That study indicated that the average utility bill would go up 82 percent in the first 10 years and double shortly after that. You don't have to be a genius to get your utility bill out and multiply it by two. If it is your utility bill at home, it may be a utility bill you cannot pay. If it is your utility bill at work, it may mean that your job is no longer there because the utility bill went up. That House-passed bill would have had that result in our State. There are five States that are more dependent on coal than we are for utilities. The Senate then rejected the cap-and-trade bill, and thank goodness it did. But when it did, the President said there are other ways of ``skinning the cat.'' He said there are other ways besides just an ``all-of-the-above'' energy policy. His administration has bypassed the Congress, bypassed the will of the American people, and they are clearly trying to do by regulation what I believe the Congress would now never do. Once the American people figured out that cap-and-trade and policies such as this would have this devastating impact on their utility bill--about 50 percent of all of the utilities from the middle of Pennsylvania to the western edge of Wyoming are coal-generated utilities. Once people figured that out and the impact it had on their ability to have a job and their ability to do what they need to do at their house, they didn't want to do it. With this rule the EPA has finalized a regulation that would require power companies to reduce emissions in a period that is unrealistically short. A 3-year timeframe means that many power-generated facilities don't reduce emissions, they close the plant. What this stands for is an assault on coal and coal-based utilities. The Administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, said recently that the current challenges for the coal industry are ``entirely economic.'' That is what she said, ``entirely economic.'' I don't know how anyone who is paying attention to the EPA, to regulations, or to the price of coal, could say that the problems are entirely economic. They are not economic at all. We have more recoverable coal than anybody in the world. We now think we have more recoverable natural gas than anybody in the world. By 2016, under the current EPA rules that are out there, plus this one, our utilities in our State would go up as much as 23 percent for the average Missourian, and more than that for some people in parts of our State. That is a 23-percent increase on your utility bill by 2016. The estimates are that by 2020, we will lose 76,000 jobs because of that increase in utility rates. Where are those jobs going to go? They are not going to go to California or Massachusetts or somebody who has bills higher than ours today. They are going to go to places that care a lot less about what comes out of the smokestack than we do. Last year in States where coal generated at least 60 percent of the electricity, consumers paid 30 percent less in energy prices than States that used less coal for their electricity. And in our State, as I said, 82 percent of our electricity comes from coal.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I know this week we are talking about, among other things, the Agriculture bill, and I am supportive of moving forward with that bill. Like so many other things in our economy, the more certainty we can create for farming families, for agribusinesses, the more likely they are to make decisions now and to make decisions that create good results. The more things we know in advance, normally, in decisionmaking, the more things there are to know. There is plenty people don't know in agriculture. My mom and dad were dairy farmers, and there is a lot that can go wrong on the farm. People don't know how many things there might be--weather and lots of other things that they can't count on. It would be nice to have a farm bill that people could count on. I know the bill we pass here will only be half of the work of getting that bill passed, but we need to do that and we need to get our economy going again. Like so many others, I disagree with the President's sense that the private sector is fine because the private sector is not fine. The economy is not fine. As I have said on this floor many times in the last 2 years, private sector job creation should be the No. 1 priority domestically of the government today: What can we do to create more private sector jobs. Two years ago, the administration and the White House kicked off the Recovery Summer. They said the success of the $831 billion stimulus plan had done its job. Secretary Geithner penned an op-ed in the New York Times that said: Welcome to the Recovery. But today we still see unemployment higher than it should be, the unemployment rate at 8.2 percent. If we were looking at the same workforce we had 30 years ago--and we know the population has gotten bigger, so logically the workforce has gotten bigger too. If we were looking at a workforce that was reflective of the workforce in January 2009, unemployment would be 11.1 percent today. It is 8.2 percent because we are considering a workforce that is smaller. The number of people who are actively out there considering themselves either in the workforce or wanting to be in the workforce is lower than any time in the last 30 years. Certainly, the Recovery Summer didn't work. The rhetoric was high, but the economy didn't grow as we would have hoped it would. The creation of jobs didn't occur. GDP, the gross domestic product, grew at 1.7 percent in 2011, and it is still below 2 percent--1.9 percent--in 2012. Only 77,000 jobs were created in April, and only 69,000 jobs were created in May. We are just not doing the job here. The stimulus didn't work. Part of the stimulus was to try to help States offset the shortages they had. But to some extent all that did was postpone for another year or maybe even 2 years States having to make decisions that only States should make. The Federal Government has enough things to run without trying to run everything. The Federal Government shouldn't be responsible for the things States are responsible for, and we should do the things we do at the Federal level the best they can possibly be done, starting with defending the country. We are looking at some reduction in defense spending that, if it happens, will not only negatively impact our ability to defend the country, if we don't do those reductions exactly right, it will also have real impact on the economy. The stimulus didn't create the jobs. The labor force participation rates are at a 30-year low. Middle-class incomes have dropped $4,350 in the last 3 years. The private sector is not doing well, nor is the economy doing well. The number of long-term unemployed has doubled to 5.5 million since the President took office. Housing prices continue to decline. Many of the economic forecasters, including the Congressional Budget Office, project that economic growth downgrades and skepticism toward the recovery will continue. The Congressional Budget Office recently released a dismal long-term budget outlook showing that the country's Federal debt per person is on track to triple in a generation. That track has to stop. We can make the decision: Do we want to be Europe? Do we want to be Greece? Do we want to be Italy? Do we want to be Ireland or Portugal or Spain? All we have to do is pick up a paper any day of the week now to know surely that is not who we want to be. Or do we want to get our government rightsized for our economy? Do we want to get back to where we don't let our economy be overwhelmed by the government? What has happened in so many of the countries I just mentioned and others in Europe is that they have let the government get bigger than the economy can support. The CBO talked about what would happen if we don't take this action between now and early next year: If we let taxes go back up, if we let defense spending go in the direction that it appears to be heading, what happens then? Even President Clinton and former domestic adviser to then-Secretary of the Treasury Summers said we need to continue current tax policies for some time in the future. I remember at the end of 2010, the President said: Now is not the time to discourage jobs. Well, exactly when would be the time to discourage jobs? The job of the Federal Government domestically should be to figure out what we can do to encourage jobs because with only the rarest of rare occasions the Federal Government, with few exceptions, doesn't create jobs. The Federal Government, however, has a lot to say about the environment in which people make that decision as to whether they are going to create a job. With constant discussion of energy policies that don't make sense and too much regulation and raising taxes and health care costs that are unknown for every job that is added, people just don't add those jobs. So whether it is the agriculture economy--which, again, I will say, even though the unemployment there is twice as high as government sector unemployment, the agriculture economy is almost twice as high as the 4.2 percent of government sector unemployment. It is still a bright spot in the current economy. But that economy will be better if we give people more of a chance to plan. The Recovery Summer didn't work. We will soon know what the court has to say about the affordable health care act. But we only have to talk to a few job creators, and not for very long, to know that the affordable health care act is standing in the way of job creation just as are regulations. The EPA keeps regulating. The shortest path to more American jobs would be more American energy. We have energy resources in greater abundance than we believe we had just a few years ago, oil shale and gas shale. We should produce more of our own energy that would allow us to make things again. And what we can't produce, if we can buy it from our closest neighbors and our dependable friends, we should do that. There is nothing wrong with buying from people who don't like us. But it is crazy to have to buy from people who don't like us, particularly if we can buy from people who like us. When we send $1 to our neighbors in Canada, they send almost $1 back every single time. The likelihood that Canadians will decide they don't want to sell us oil or gas is virtually zero. We can't say that about every country we have gotten too dependent on in recent years. So let's do the right thing. Let's have a true path to recovery. Let's have good energy policy. Let's have good tax policy. Let's have good regulatory policy. And let's see if we can't get the private sector the kind of priority in job creation it needs. Of course, that includes one of the brightest lights in the private sector, which is farming families and the agriculture economy and our ability to compete in a world because of the great job we do in agriculture. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I do think there are those things that we can agree on. I am glad to join the three of you and Senator Rubio as one of the cosponsors of this bill that you all crafted and put together. Good energy policy, good tax policy, good regulatory policy are important to the future. But there are things we can do right now even outside of these bigger debates we need to have that are in this bill. Who would have thought--Senator Moran brought this poster to the floor--Great Britain would become a real competitor for us as a better place to do business? I have talked to more than one American business lately that has actually changed their worldwide headquarters and their corporate structure to Britain instead of the United States of America. Then we have another--this poster is ``Entrepreneurs are Great Britain.'' I think entrepreneurs are still the United States of America. But this ad would suggest otherwise. ``Your next big idea. Canada.'' Canada is a great trading partner. They are a neighbor of ours. They are a friend of ours. But I do not think we would have thought a decade ago that these countries would be repositioning themselves, and that has happened. Also, I think we have not kept up like we should and we could have with things such as the Startup Act. These countries are putting themselves in a position where they understand that private sector job growth is critical, that government can do some things to encourage that, but government does not create very many private sector jobs. One of the reasons I decided to cosponsor the Startup Act 2.0, the second version of the Startup Act, is I think it does some of what we need to begin to do. Seventy-five percent of all U.S. engineering and technology firms in the last decade, the decade we have good numbers on, the one that ended just a few--that ended really--the numbers I have are 1995 to 2005--75 percent of the engineering and technology startups were started by people who were born in another country. This bill simply creates a visa program that allows entrepreneurs who have good ideas and, frankly, have some money to go along with these good ideas, to come to the United States of America and start these jobs, to take advantage of our great workforce, to take advantage of the position we have to be able to send products all over the world, and to do that here. This act also requires that we have a true cost-benefit analysis of rules and regulations. Last year the Federal Government--of the 66 rules which cost more than $100 million, only 18 of them had what one could describe as a cost-benefit analysis. There are lots of things that would be fine to do, but if the cost to the economy, the cost to jobs, and the cost to families is greater than the benefit, we should not do them. So this bill says let's go ahead. Let's not let the cost of something overwhelm the benefit to the economy or become a negative impact on the economy. Long-term investment in this act with startups would have some exemption from the capital gains. People are risking a lot of money with a startup. This is saying: We want to raise the reward quotient of that risk so we encourage people to take the risk. If someone is doing a startup, the odds are pretty high that money may not ever come back. So we need to do whatever we can to encourage that money be put on the table and those jobs be created. In 2009, 651 startups were created with university research involved as a component. This further opens the door for grant dollars that are already available, of Federal research and development funds to be even more open to a university partner as part of that private sector effort. So I think we have to be focused on the opportunity for families, the opportunity for individuals. Who creates the jobs in America? Small business creates the jobs in America. Startups create the jobs in America. I am pleased to be here standing with Senator Moran. The next big idea is the biggest idea of the last couple hundred years, which is the United States of America intends to be a competitive leader in the world. What do we need to do as Members of the Senate to see that happen? I am glad he and Senator Warner, Senator Coons, and Senator Rubio are leading this effort. I am glad to join in it and glad to be here on the floor today.