Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business and that the time I use not be counted against debate on the pending amendments.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 5, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. in order to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 5, 2008, at 10 a.m. in order to hold an open hearing. Select Committee on Intelligence

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the Committee on Veterans' Affairs to be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 5, in order to conduct an oversight hearing entitled: Review of Veterans' Disability Compensation: Rehabilitating Veterans.'' The Committee will meet in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 5, 2008, at 10 a.m., in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, in order to hear testimony on the President's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal. Committee on Veterans' Affairs

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, yesterday I met American heroes--dozens and dozens of American heroes--citizen soldiers who had returned from service in Iraq. Out of Brooklyn, OH, High School near Cleveland, 81 soldiers in the 256th Combat Support Hospital were honored at the Warriors Citizen ceremony. Many years ago--200 years or so ago--George Washington talked about farmers putting down their plows and serving their country. Yesterday I met nurses, teachers, doctors, farmers, and small business owners, all of whom had returned from Iraq last October, and all of whom we were honoring yesterday in Brooklyn, OH. MAJ Michael Evarts trained Iraqi soldiers. MAJ Michael Evarts, a citizen soldier, returned to Ohio; he works every day supporting his family as a pharmaceutical representative. Bryan Block from Zanesville left his restaurant for a year to serve his country. He left Charlie's Subs to his son-in-law in Zanesville and last October returned to a growing, prosperous restaurant. Bryan Block is a citizen soldier. LTC Shirley Koachway spoke with an infectious enthusiasm and with an obvious dedication to the veterans she serves. Not only is she in the Army Reserve, but she told me about her work in Sandusky--a city just west of Lorraine where I live--in a community-based outreach clinic serving veterans--a citizen soldier. CPT Dionne Moore is an optometrist who works for the Department of Veterans' Affairs in a community-based outreach clinic in Lorraine, OH. Captain Moore told me with some pain in her eyes how she is seeing more and more diabetic veterans who have not gotten their medicine or not often enough kept up with taking their medicine, which is causing a decreased use of their vision and an increase in blindness in all too many veterans. CWO Ron Kuntz, who directed the choir for the ceremony, spoke passionately not just about his service for our country but spoke passionately about his students whom he has as a music teacher in the Cleveland city schools--another citizen soldier. I also spoke with COL Ron Dziedzicki, who was a nurse and is now a hospital administrator who has been working with these men and women, with these soldiers in Europe and in Asia and all over the world in his many years--more than two decades--of service to our Nation--all citizen soldiers. Now, when I think of whom I met yesterday, when I think of these soldiers--men and women of all races, of all ages--when I think of these soldiers who give up their lives or time away--more than a year away from their families--one of these soldiers told me his child was born when he was overseas--when I think about them, I think about the duty we have to them. I know the Presiding Officer has spoken about this many times. The President and this Congress, for too many years in the past, have simply not taken care of veterans the way we should take care of them. For the kind of service we have asked of them and sacrifice we have asked them to make for our country, we haven't--even in a small way in too many cases--paid them back. That is why I come to the floor today just for a few more minutes to talk about the GI bill: the post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007. A whole generation of Americans in the 1940s and 1950s, a whole generation of soldiers and sailors and marines were educated because of the GI bill. They were people who came back without much money, enrolled in school, and the Government--paying them back for their service for winning World War II, for Korea, for all of their service to our country--the Government decided the most important thing to do was to give them the kind of educational opportunity that they earned and that they deserved. Do we know what happened? It wasn't just that the GI bill helped thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, a few million returning veterans, it is also what it did for the prosperity of our Nation because without the GI bill in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s, we would not have had the educated workforce, we wouldn't have the kind of educated citizens this country, the ``greatest generation,'' gave to us. That is why a government program such as this, a program that is all about opportunity to give these veterans the GI bill, give these veterans an opportunity, an education, will not only help them personally and help their families, it will help their neighborhoods, it will help their communities, and it will help us to make our country even more prosperous. That is the whole point of programs such as the GI bill. It should help those veterans whom I met yesterday, those returning soldiers, some of them still in the Reserve, some of them having served their time and left. But that GI bill will spark the kind of economic growth and expansion for a whole generation of Americans. With programs such as this one, when we provide opportunities to college students, when we provide opportunities through Head Start, when we provide opportunities with helping families through the earned- income tax credit, not only does it help those individuals and help those families, it helps our communities, it helps our States, it helps our country. That is the story of the GI bill. That is why we need a new GI bill that really does pay those veterans back, pay those soldiers, sailors, and marines back for the service they gave our country. It is the smart thing to do. It is the morally right thing to do. It is the best thing to do for our country. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Madam President, Mr. Irving Herrman, member to the ``greatest generation,'' will be 90 years old on February 5, 2008. He was born in Akron, OH, the second of three sons of Armand and Therese Herrman and a first-generation American. His parents were Eastern European Jews who came to this country at the end of the 19th century. Mr. Herrman graduated from South High School in Akron and attended the University of Akron. He began working for Mr. Milton Radney until he joined the Army Air Corps and served during World War II; he was stationed in England. It was in England where he met his wife, Vera Grace Cressey. They married on March 19, 1945, and returned to Akron and then Cuyahoga Falls after the war, where they raised a beautiful family together. Upon returning to the Akron area, Mr. Herrman resumed his position with the Radney Cigarette Company where he managed the office. He remained with the company until he retired in 1982. He then worked parttime for H.R. Block until 1998. Mrs. Herrman died in 2000. Mr. Herrman loves his family dearly. He has two daughters and sons-in law, Brenda H. and Steven Lipp and Judith H. and Fred Jenkins; he has six grandchildren: Emily Lipp Sirota, Zach Lipp, Nate Lipp, Jake Plattner, Rachel Plattner and Maggie Plattner. Mr. Herrman is an active and beloved member of the community. He has been a member of Temple Israel for over 50 years. He has been a longtime member of the Hakoah Club at the Jewish Community Center, holding every office in that organization, including president. He is also a member of the Jewish War Veterans, holding offices in that organization, as well. In his retirement, he volunteered at local hospitals. One of Mr. Herrman's favorite pastimes is bowling. He won many competitions and rolled a 300 game in league play. He is also an avid ping-pong player and continues to enjoy golf and travel. But his favorite activity of all is spending time with friends and family. Mr. Herrman's life is one that represents the ``greatest generation:'' a life of family and service to country and community. It is people like Mr. Herrman who have built this country and made it great.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business, it adjourn until 11 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, January 31, and that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that the majority leader be recognized.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I understand H.R. 5140 is at the desk and due for a second reading.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I object to any further proceedings at this time.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, we are the wealthiest nation in the world. Yet American children go to bed hungry, and American seniors choose between food and medicine, between food and heating their home. American families stand in line at food banks stretched too thin to serve them. There is a term for what millions of Americans face every day. It is called food insecurity. It means children are not getting the food they need to grow up healthy in too many cases. It means mothers and fathers foregoing food for themselves so they can feed their kids in too many cases. It means seniors who are rationing their food to one meal a day in too many cases. I stood on this floor as long as a year ago telling the story of Rhonda Stewart who testified in front of the Agriculture Committee about food stamps. Ms. Stewart has a 9-year-old son. She has a full- time job, she is president of her local PTA, she is involved in the Cub Scouts for her son, and she teaches Sunday school. Yet she is squeezed at the end of every month because her food stamps simply do not go far enough. She gets about $6 a day from food stamps. The average food stamp in this country is $1 per person per meal. She told me that early in the month, she makes pork chops for her son because that is her son's favorite meal. They might do that once or twice early in the month. By the middle of the month, maybe the second or third week, she said she takes her son to a fast food restaurant, once, maybe twice. But at the end of the month, she often sits at the kitchen table with her son as he eats. She sits there not eating, and her son asks: Mom, is there something wrong? Are you sick? She says: I just don't feel like eating tonight. She runs out of food month after month. Food insecurity, not having enough food, to put it bluntly, affects one in six seniors in this country. Our Nation letting children and seniors go to bed hungry is as shortsighted as it is heartless. An hour and a half ago, from 6 o'clock until about 7 o'clock, I was in a call with more than two dozen people in Ohio who run food banks and food pantries from all over the State. Let me tell you some of the things they told me. They told me they have pretty much about the same amount of dollars to run their food pantries as they had a year ago or 2 years ago or 3 years ago. A woman by the name of Tina Ossa in southwest Ohio, generally a pretty affluent part of the State--Butler County, Claremont County, that area--said she is running out of food in part because the cost of frozen chickens--she used to be able to buy a tractor trailer load of frozen chickens--has gone up almost 50 percent. She said a tractor trailer load of egg noodles has doubled in cost in the last year or so whether they are buying it wholesale or buying it directly from the food manufacturer. Others told me on this call that the food banks are always sort of the last stop, an emergency safety net. The food stamp benefit is limited to $1 per meal per person. The cost of energy to heat their home has gone up. The cost of going to work has gone up with the cost of gas at $3 a gallon. And the last emergency stop for so many people is to go to a food bank because it is a safety net. Yet these food pantries are running out of food. One food pantry told me typically this time of year they have 1 million pounds of food on hand. Now they have 400,000 pounds of food on hand. The lady, Ms. Ossa from Fairfield, OH, in Butler County, told me she started that food bank in 1983. It has never been close to as difficult a situation as today. They are getting fewer donations partly because the Government has not stepped up and partly because the people who have given to them--charity--in the past, who have given dollars for food, are hurting themselves and not as likely to contribute or contribute as much. She said the companies, the supermarkets and food manufacturers, are more efficient and squeeze any waste out of their system. Any slightly damaged cans, any kind of items they might have given to a food bank before they are not doing so. They are more in tune to Wall Street and the bottom line, so they are less likely to give these charitable contributions. One person on this call from Cleveland said there is a large bank in Cleveland where a woman at the bank organized other employees for a dress-down Friday. You can wear jeans on Friday if you give $5 to a local food bank. It has raised significant dollars for the food pantry as a result. The husband of this woman who organized this drive at this major bank in Cleveland lost his job. She is now barely making it. They together are barely making it. The father-in-law has moved in because he has had problems, and she now is going to this food bank. She is a full-time worker with a good job in Cleveland, and she is going to this food bank because she cannot make it. There is story after story. The most amazing story took place in Logan, OH, in the southeast, probably the most hard-hit Appalachian part of the State. It looks a lot like the area of the Presiding Officer in western Pennsylvania. This is southeastern Ohio. In Logan, OH, on a cold day in December 6 weeks ago, people began to line up at 3:30 in the morning to get food from this food bank which opened at 8 o'clock. By 8 o'clock, cars were snaked all over the city streets in the town of Logan, a county of about 30,000 people. At 8 o'clock, they opened the door. By 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 2,000 people had been to this food bank, in a county of 30,000; 7 percent of the residents in this country had gone to this food bank, and many had driven 20 and 30 minutes to get there because it is a rural, pretty spread-out county. I might add, Mr. Dick Stevens who runs this food bank told me that probably half of those beneficiaries who visited that food bank at the United Methodist Church in Logan, OH, were employed. Imagine that: You work hard every day, you play by the rules, you work as hard as any of us who dress this way in this institution do, many harder in some cases, you are working hard for your family, involved in your community, and you have to go to a food pantry to get enough food to make it through the week. Something is wrong that we in this body allow that to happen. Another person involved in food pantries told me 90 percent of the people who come into food banks in Warren County, an affluent county straight northeast out of Cincinnati, the first county out of Cincinnati, 90 percent of food bank recipients are employed. In some places, it might be 30 percent employed or 90 percent. The fact is, nobody who has a full-time job ought to have to go to food banks, especially since those food banks, in most cases, are giving enough for 1 week, not 2 or 3, and they don't let them come back as often because they are running out of food. They have the same amount of food or less trying to serve more people. It is pretty clear this is as bad a situation as we have seen in recent memory. One of my constituents told me that he and his wife for years have donated time and money to Cleveland area food banks and soup kitchens. Over time, as his wages did not go up and with the higher cost of transportation, the cost of heating their home and the cost of food, Tim and his wife quit donating money but donate their time to the food banks. Today, Tim is going to the food bank for food. Tim said: It took great humility in that food bank to ask for food. He said: I used to consider myself middle class, but the salary and cost of living don't make it anymore. The Emergency Food Assistance Program that helps fund our Nation's food banks is the quickest, most efficient way to get food into the hands of people as their last stop emergency measure. But since 2002, because the President has had other priorities--tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, a $3-billion-a-week war--the President has flat funded these food banks. Its current level of $140 million does not come close to taking care of these problems. Think about that. We talk a good game about personal responsibility, we talk about family values, yet for the basic level of nutrition, one in six seniors does not have enough food, and even a higher percentage of children in this society do not have enough food, and people who work full time in this society--forget about health care; we know many of them don't have health care--do not have enough food. Yet the President, because of the $3-billion-a-week war in Iraq, because he insists, even in his State of the Union Message, on more tax cuts, as Senator Casey, the Presiding Officer, was talking about earlier today, more tax cuts for the richest people in the country, we continue to spend exactly the same shrinking dollars for the last 5 years because you cannot buy nearly as much food on $140 million today as you could 5 years ago. We worked with other concerned colleagues to increase funding for food banks to $250 million in the farm bill. There has been bipartisan agreement there. Unfortunately, the President has threatened to veto this bill, in part because of increased spending on nutrition. We have also seen the President flat-line funding of the Women, Infants and Children program, which is about as pound-foolish and penny-wise as you can imagine. We are going to spend less to keep women who are pregnant, low-income women, healthy, spend less on nutrition for them, so we will have more low birth weight babies, more children not getting what is most important after they are born--at the most important time in their lives, in utero and after they are born--having the kind of nutrition they need--we are not going to fund that? What kind of priority is that? It is all a question of priorities. Do we give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this country or do we take care of low-income women who are pregnant and children after they are born? And are we going to fund this $3 billion-a-week war in Iraq or are we going to look at some other priorities to take care of the 1-in-6 elderly people who have to choose between food and heat or food and the medicine they take? Are we going to continue to do these tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, at the expense of people who can't always help themselves? Again, most of these people who go to food banks are people who are employed. They are working hard and playing by the rules, and they simply can't quite make it because their incomes haven't kept up with the cost of gasoline in getting to and from work; the cost of heating, to stay warm in the winter; and the increasing cost of food. The President hasn't called for emergency measures to aid hungry Americans. He has consistently, as I have said before, tried to cut nutrition programs that target populations in desperate need. Indifference to human suffering is a moral failure, a moral failure that obscures our Nation's values and dampens our Nation's potential. Think about that: children in this country who don't have adequate food growing up, pregnant women who don't have the right nutrition. Considering what our other priorities are and how much we are spending on those other priorities, it is clearly something we should be doing in this body and in the House of Representatives. In the stimulus package that is about to pass the Senate, we have an amendment to provide an increase of $100 million for emergency food assistance. I know the Presiding Officer supports that, and I know most of my colleagues do. We also fear the Republicans will filibuster that because they do not think we should spend money directly on food programs. Some don't, some do. We know the President has threatened to veto anything in the stimulus package that wasn't his idea. There are few things in our country more important than making sure seniors, people who have worked all their lives, and children whose parents are working hard and playing by the rules and doing their best should be adequately fed and adequately housed. So I urge that this Congress, in the next couple days, amend the stimulus package to include this food assistance.

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN

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

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 438, submitted earlier today.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I appreciate the comments from the Senator from North Dakota, who understands probably better than anybody in this body what this trade deficit means, what this trade policy means. And what is amazing is the President does not look at the $800 billion trade deficit. When I came to the Congress in 1992, it was $38 billion. Now it is over $800 billion. The President's father once said $1 billion in trade deficits translates into the loss of 13,000 jobs. Now it is $800 billion, and the President did not address that. But what he did say is: Let's do more of this. He said: We need a trade agreement with Columbia, we need a trade agreement with Panama, we need a trade agreement with South Korea. And it just makes me incredulous that the President cannot look at what has happened and say: Wait a second, let's do a timeout. Let's do no further trade agreements. Let's go back, as the Senator from North Dakota, Mr. Dorgan, has suggested, and let's have benchmarks. Let's look at what NAFTA did to our country, look at what CAFTA has done to our country, look at what trade with China has done to the middle class. The President totally missed that. At the same time, the President said: Let's do more tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent at the expense of the middle class and drive up these budget deficits. So we have trade deficits of $800 billion, plus we have budget deficits of about $1 billion a day. And that is fundamentally the biggest problem with our economy, as you suggest.

Mr. BROWN. When I hear Senator Dorgan talk about this, I think about 20 years from now, 15 years from now. We are going to look back on this time, and we will think: What were they thinking when they changed the laws to allow so many cheap imports from China, made by workers in unsafe conditions, sending products back, toxic toys to our children's bedrooms and contaminated food into our kitchens and pantries? We are going to look back 20 years from now and think: Why did we dismantle our industrial base, jeopardizing our national security, the security of our family farms in North Dakota and Ohio and small businesses and manufacturers in New Jersey and all over the country? We are going to look back and think: Why did we let corporations lobby this Congress so that they changed the rules so that it made sense for these companies, in terms of their bottom line, in terms of their profits, to go to China instead of manufacturing in Galion or Toledo or Youngstown, OH? Imagine instead if we as a nation decided we were going to have a Marshall plan or go to the Moon kind of plan on alternative energy, that we changed our trade law and our tax law and we began through biomass, through production of wind turbines and solar panels. Imagine if we set out to remake our energy policy and our country's industrial base by changing trade law, by changing tax law. We clearly still do the best R&D in the world on all kinds of scientific research and medical research. But so often we do the R&D here, which is good for the economy and good for creating jobs, but then most of the production is shipped offshore. So what good is that for our country, when we develop the research, we do the research and development and then send it offshore? The Senator mentioned the Ohio Art Company. That sort of tells the story. It is a company in northwest Ohio right in the corner where Indiana and Ohio intersect with Michigan. They make something that most of us knew as children called Etch A Sketch. About 7 or 8 years ago--I was in Bryan a couple months ago talking to an executive of Ohio Art Company. Seven or eight years ago a major U.S. retailer went to them and said: We want to sell your product in our stores for less money, for under $10. The only option that Ohio Art Company had was to stop most of its production in Ohio and move its production overseas. Every job that was moved to China meant less money for the Bryan Police Department, less money for the Williams County government, less money for public schools, less money paid into Medicare, less money paid into Social Security. It made us poor as a nation. At the same time, those products moved to China. But it lifted the living standards there because wages are so low. The Chinese wink and nod at best at any kind of environmental rules or worker safety rules. We have done little to lift up. Senator Dorgan and I want more trade but a different set of rules. Instead of lifting workers up so Mexican workers would be buying American products and we would be buying Mexican products back and forth the way we should trade, and their living standards would go up, they would have good environmental and worker safety standards, their wages would rise. That is what happened with the 50 States in the United States. As companies moved around the United States to the South, eventually their wages went up and we began to enrich all sections of the country. We are not doing that with China. We are not doing that with our trade policy. That is why I was so disappointed that last night the President said: We want a new trade agreement with Colombia. We want one with South Korea. We want one with Panama. Instead of going in the right direction, we are changing our trade policy and moving in a different direction.

Mr. BROWN. Absolutely. I remember back in the early 1990s, we were concerned about the twin deficits, the trade deficit and the budget deficit. We had a budget deficit then of about $300 billion a year and a trade deficit, as the Presiding Officer knows--who joined me in voting against NAFTA a decade ago--of under $100 billion. We considered that a serious problem. Today, President Bush doesn't recognize that this trade deficit means anything. To the contrary, he says, it seems to be working. Let's do more of it. Again, I go back to what his father said, that a billion dollars in trade deficit translates into 13,000 lost jobs. You can see how it does. Because a billion dollars in trade deficit means we are buying a billion dollars, we are importing a billion dollars more than we are selling, and that means we are manufacturing less because we are not making it ourselves. If we manufacture less, it means thousands of Ohioans or North Dakotans or New Jerseyans are finding they are not working at $12 or $15 or $20 an hour. If those plants lay off workers, communities get less tax dollars, police, firemen and teachers are laid off. It undercuts the economic vitality of the community and the public safety. It undercuts the ability of our schools to educate our children. It is clearly a downward spiral that is only accelerated when we pass a trade agreement with Colombia and with Peru and Panama and another trade agreement with South Korea.

Mr. BROWN. I will yield to the Senator.

Mr. BROWN. Last night we heard a vision that the President of the United States was standing in the Chamber of the House of Representatives speaking to all of us. He talked about how best to proceed during times of clear economic crisis, job loss, health care, energy costs soaring, threats to our domestic safety nets, and a war in Iraq with no end in sight. When news media people asked me what I thought about the speech, one of the things I said was I wished the President could have sat in on some of the meetings that I had as I traveled Ohio in the last year, my State. I had about 80 roundtable meetings of 15, 20, 25 people in a community where for an hour and a half I would ask them questions about their communities, about their problems. In every corner of the State, I heard from veterans and first responders, from farmers, from people running small businesses, from teachers, from students, from community leaders, from mothers and fathers. I wish the President had been able to hear some of this because people clearly want to hear their Government is finally committed to change and to fighting for the middle class. They want to hear that the economic policies of the last 7 years, policies that have failed them, are a thing of the past and we have a new direction. They want to hear about a plan to finally bring back good-paying jobs, lower our health care and energy coasts, secure our safety nets, and end the war in Iraq. For Ohioans, the future is about change. Let's say you are driving down the road. You notice that the signs, mile markers, exit signs, billboards as huge as houses are telling you that you are going in the wrong direction: Signs saying wages stagnating, signs saying U.S. jobs being shipped overseas, a housing crisis deepening, health care costs soaring, increased dependance on foreign oil, product safety unsure, no end to the war in Iraq. The longer you stay on the road, the worse things get. So you hit the gas pedal and head further down that road. If you drive down the road, the wrong road, long enough, does it become the right one? Of course not. You do not proudly log more miles on the wrong road. You change direction. If there is one thing you can say about the administration and its supporters in Congress it is that they are consistent. They consistently answer to the wealthiest Americans and to the largest corporations and pay lipservice to the rest of the population. Think about last night. The President said 116 million people--if we extend the tax cuts, 116 million people will get tax cuts averaging $1,800 a person. Does the President really say--does that really say what the tax cuts mean? It is a very small number of people getting huge tax cuts, and tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans are getting almost nothing. Does he say it that way? Does he tell the American people that is what it is? Of course not. He says the average American will average $1,800 from the tax cuts. Simply, that is very misleading. We have seen that on tax policy over and over and over in this administration.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I thank Senator Murkowski for her work. There is absolutely a need for that legislation. I appreciate what she has done.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate as in morning business for 15 minutes.