Michael Bennet

Mr. BENNET

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 604, H.R. 1447.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 4926, which is at the desk.

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 5705, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 598, submitted earlier today.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. For the information of all Senators, there will be a cloture vote on the motion to concur on the Defense authorization bill at 10:30 a.m.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 11, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and that following any leader remarks, the Senate resume consideration of the motion to concur in the House amendment to the Senate amendment to accompany H.R. 3979, NDAA.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5471, and the bill be referred to the Committee on Agriculture.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the tributes to retiring Senators be printed as a Senate document and that Senators be permitted to submit tributes until December 23, 2014.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I object to any further proceedings with respect to the bill.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk about the tax extenders package the House is likely to vote on today. Unfortunately and sadly, it looks as though we have reached another low point in the world of dysfunctional Washington politics. The House will vote on what is being called a 1-year retroactive extension of dozens of expired tax laws. This bill contains everything from the research and development tax credit, to the wind production tax credit, to the new markets tax credit, and they have let us know that this is the best bill they could cobble together. But in reality this is not a 1-year extension; it is a 3-week extension of expired tax laws until the end of this year--3 weeks until the end of this year. On January 1 all of our tax laws will expire again. No one in the real world would ever run an enterprise in this manner. It is bad enough that we do extenders for 2 years without making them permanent, but to say the best we can do is a 1-year extension and to know that really it is only a 3-week extension makes no sense at all. If the purpose of this bill is to encourage investments in business or our communities, how does a 1-year retroactive bill make any sense at all? If the purpose of the bill is to provide greater certainty for families and for businesses, how does a 1-year retroactive bill accomplish that? Only in the land of flickering lights--in Washington, DC--where we are barely keeping the government running, does it make sense. I thought we had reached a new low 2 years ago when we voted on the so-called fiscal cliff deal--when the Bush tax cuts were expiring and there was a bipartisan deal that was meant to, among other things, avoid the sequester. That bill passed at 2:30 in the morning; then, 90 days later, the sequester went into effect--the very thing we were supposed to be protecting against. That deal is sometimes touted as a great act of bipartisanship. The only thing bipartisan about it was the confession that the two parties couldn't figure out how to actually get our fiscal house in order. Had we known that night that the sequester was going to go into effect 90 days later--had we known that that night--there is no way there would have been 92 ``yes'' votes for that deal. There is no way it would have passed. And we are still living with it today. Coincidentally, the last time we passed tax extenders, it was part of that deal. The fiscal cliff deal at least provided a 2-year extension to these temporary tax laws. Here, it turns out we will be lucky if we provide 3 weeks of certainty. Many of the people I represent say this bill is only marginally better than no bill at all, and they reasonably wonder why in the world we wouldn't just do another 2-year extension. They prefer more certainty than that to plan for their businesses and for their communities. Instead of doing the short-term House bill, the Senate should instead take up the bipartisan bill the Senate Finance Committee reported over 6 months ago. I always hear people in this body lament the lack of regular order, and I lament the lack of regular order. This bill represented a great attempt at regular order and it got the votes of Republicans and Democrats on the Finance Committee. We had a markup, and we voted on amendments. Some passed, some didn't. And then we voted the bill out to the Senate floor 6 months ago. The Ways and Means Committee in the House didn't hold a markup on the House bill they are considering today. It is my understanding the House will be allowing few, if any, amendments. So why is that bill in any way preferable to the Senate bill, where we did the work of legislating? Our 2-year bill deserves a vote here on this floor. Among dozens of provisions that are important to families and businesses in Colorado and across the country, I wanted to highlight two today. The first is the credit for wind energy. The wind PTC and ITC--the production tax credit and the investment tax credit--have always enjoyed broad support from both sides of the aisle, ranging from its original cosponsor, Senator Grassley from Iowa, to my friend and colleague from Colorado, Mark Udall. And I should say that nobody has been a greater champion for wind or more relentless over the years in support of the wind industry in Colorado and those high-paying jobs in our State than Mark Udall. If enacted into law, the Senate version of the PTC and ITC for wind will continue to drive job growth in Colorado. We are not talking about some fly-by-night experiment here. This isn't some Bolshevik takeover of the United States. These are jobs--manufacturing jobs and other high-paying jobs--right here in the United States. In Colorado, we have 5,000 people working in this industry. In Colorado, Vestas, which manufactures wind turbines, employs over 1,400 workers across 4 factories--from Pueblo all the way up I-25 to Brighton and Windsor. These are not just manufacturing and design jobs in urban centers, but construction and operations jobs at the actual wind farms. I visited one of these turbine farms in Peetz, CO, a couple of years ago. It was a little scary because we climbed up--I climbed up--to the very top of the wind turbine. I thought we were done climbing, but then they opened a hatch in the top of this thing and they said: Senator, it is time to go out and see what this looks like, which I did, standing on the top of this wind turbine housing in the shoes I wear on the floor of the Senate. Even though I was hooked up, it was a little scary. The guy who took me there was telling me he had been able to come back to his home community--a rural community in Colorado--and work in this high-paying job because the wind industry was there. This was something he never would have imagined as a kid, but now he has real opportunity, and there are thousands of people just like him all over my State who are concerned the political conversation here has decoupled once again from their concerns and has become about the internal politics of Washington, DC, and not what is actually going on in places such as rural Colorado or in rural places all across the United States. This industry drives economic growth across our State--from the conference rooms of tech startups in Boulder and Denver all the way to the 6,000-acre Kit Carson wind power generating site just west of the Kansas State line. The production tax credit has driven $105 billion in private investment. This is actually amazing when you think about it, given the fact there has been so much uncertainty associated with it--$105 billion. It has opened up 550 industrial facilities and provided $180 million in lease payments to rural farmers, to ranchers, and to landowners who host wind farms. The mention of those rural farmers and ranchers brings me to the second provision of the EXPIRE Act that I would like to highlight: the tax incentive for conservation easements. Private land conservation is critical in States such as Colorado. Healthy grasslands, open landscapes, and abundant wildlife are a fundamental part of what is to be in the West and in Colorado. In the 2014 farm bill, we worked really hard to build a strong conservation title. The easement incentive in the Senate finance bill is an important complement to the work in the farm bill. This incentive accounts for the true value of conserved land, which allows family farmers, ranchers, and moderate-income landowners to preserve land for our kids and for our grandkids to enjoy. In Colorado, we have landowners lined up to take advantage of this very well-designed program. It opens up conservation opportunities to people who might be land rich but cash poor--producers who feed this country. This is land we have to keep in production. But when you are living in a place where the value isn't calculated properly, and there is a high value associated with it and you don't have the money to be able to put it into easement, this program can help you do that. If we do that, we get to hold on to our farms and ranches in our States. But here we are again considering a bill that extends these benefits for only 3 weeks. If it is good policy for 3 weeks, why isn't it good policy for 2 years? If we pass the House bill, we are telling the farmers and ranchers across States such as Colorado that we don't value long-term conservation, that we don't take it seriously. The loss of this tax incentive would mean less land across the West would be protected--again, a voluntary program. This isn't telling anybody they have to do anything with their farms and ranches; it is an option for them if they want to use it. More wildlife habitat will be lost, water quality will suffer, and Colorado's scenic beauty, which is critical to our way of life and our economy, will be threatened. If we pass the House bill, people's jobs across Colorado will be placed at risk. And this is all due to Congress's failure to do its job. We can do better than that. We should, at this late hour, reconsider this and pass the Senate bill--pass the EXPIRE Act. We should pass a bipartisan piece of legislation that came out of the Finance Committee through regular order 6 months ago. We have had plenty of time to consider that. Then we should come back and we should do comprehensive tax reform and give our country a Tax Code that is actually worthy of the entrepreneurs who are out there working every day to invent our future. The last time the Tax Code--this might be of interest to the pages here today--the last time the Tax Code was updated in this country, I was in college. I was in college. What are the chances that today's Tax Code reflects the American economy as it actually is, to say nothing of the global economy as it actually is? The chances are zero. This is the work we have been sent here to do. It is hard, but that is what we are supposed to be doing here. I hope in the new year there is going to be a big change around this place, and I hope all of us use that change to the advantage of the American people by putting ourselves back to work. They are working hard. The least we can do is work together to actually align our legislation and our regulation to the world as it actually exists rather than one that existed 50 or 100 years ago. Madam President, I appreciate the chance to speak today on these important issues to Colorado. With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Laura Sherman, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I first wanted to acknowledge the severity of the challenges we face as a country right now, whether it is military action to stop the threat of ISIS or the crisis in Ukraine. Colorado is waiting to hear from the President tonight. We are all concerned with that, as we should be. Today on the floor of the Senate is a proposed constitutional amendment. While it is on the floor I wanted to take a minute to talk about it. Tonight in Colorado, a swing State, families will endure an avalanche of political ads. Many of them will come from obscure interests with deceptive names such as America, Inc., the Government Integrity Fund Action Network, something called Citizens for a Working America, and so on and so forth. There will be no way to tell who these folks are, because under the laws of the United States many of these organizations do not have any obligation to disclose where their money comes from, a privileged status that individual Americans do not have when it comes to funding political campaigns. It is enough to make everyone in our State, in Colorado, hate their TV, much less American politics, and probably not in that order. In Washington, on the other hand, which--I guess I should say only in Washington, which has become a Disneyland when it comes to any sense of reality, there are people defending the current system--the current campaign finance system--on the grounds that it is a great victory for free speech and a great victory for our democracy. It is the position-- it is the position of the defenders of the current system that what we need in our politics is more money, not less, that more money is going to help our politics, not less. I have never met a Coloradan who thinks what is wrong with our politics is that we do not have enough money. In fact, they believe the reverse. They believe the exact opposite. That is because they know our system of financing campaigns, far from being about elucidating the truth, is a system expressly designed to obscure the truth. From Colorado's perspective, it is a system that is really good for the special interests and the occupiers of the past, and really terrible for the American people and for our future. Over the last several months, almost every one of us at some point has lamented the Senate's inability to address the big issues facing our Nation, whether it is reforming our broken immigration system, creating a more competitive Tax Code that encourages innovation and helps produce an economy that lifts middle-class family income again in the country. Energy, climate, education, and infrastructure are left unanswered as we barely summon the votes to approve another noncontroversial judge or nominee. My colleagues, we share the pathetic distinction of being on target to becoming the least productive Congress ever. Ever. Close readers of American history will know this is a particularly ignominious achievement. How will it feel when the next history books are written to know that we managed to do even less than the do-nothing Congress? That is how you acquire a Congress that now has a 14-percent approval rating, below President Nixon even had during the height of Watergate. This less-than-do-nothing Congress is not just failing the American people on the big issues. We have given up on those for now around here. We are struggling to pass basic appropriations bills, to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent over the long term. Some of my colleagues in this Chamber, this land of flickering lights, have argued that the tea party and obstruction are to blame. Others have argued that the majority's limits on debate and floor amendments are at the root of the problem. But I think it all starts with our broken campaign finance system, which has never been perfect but recently has become substantially worse. First, let me say when I first studied the Court's most significant prior opinion on finance, the case of Buckley against Valeo, decided in the early 1970s, it seemed to me that if the Court had actually understood what had happened as a result of that decision, they might reconsider their holding that money is speech. But by then it was abundantly clear that the wealthier you are the louder your voice, an outcome that seemed to me at odds with a democracy grounded on the notion of one person, one vote. This is not to say we should expect to live in a country where everybody has equal speech. We could never succeed in ensuring that, and we would certainly fail if we tried. But we could address unfair practices and advantages. We could devise commonsense regulations of our campaign finance laws to make sure our government could actually function. We could hope to lift the voices in the town square and on every street corner in the country and reward the effort of each individual American, no matter what they believe, no matter who they were, who became involved in politics to help create the future of this country. We could do that. In fact, we did do that for decades. We could do it until Citizens United was decided, when the Court not only did not wince at its holding in Buckley, but doubled down, holding, among other things, that independent expenditures do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption, an absurd proposition on its face to anyone who serves in the Congress. Also, in McCutcheon, another opinion, the Supreme Court held that there is ``only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption.'' That is it. It can't be regulated to do anything else. The Court went on to hold that ``spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder's official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner `influence or access to' elected officials or political parties.'' Think about that for a minute. The majority in McCutcheon doesn't believe that an individual who spends large sums of money would garner influence or access to elected officials? The Court doesn't think they are trying to influence our official duties? Could anyone in this Chamber agree with this conclusion with a straight face? In fact, some do agree, but there isn't a single soul in Colorado who does. But to me the more significant point is that the Court failed to recognize how unlimited and undisclosed campaign spending corrupts the very act of government. This extends far beyond the traditional notion of quid pro quo corruption. In search pretty much in vain--not entirely but pretty much in vain-- for the pitiful politician hiding cash in his icebox or somewhere beneath the south 40, the Court missed the real corruption. In doing so these decisions and the looming threat of unchecked spending have led to almost complete paralysis--the end of principled compromise on behalf of the public interest. In his dissent in Citizens United, Justice Stevens warned of this potential problem when he wrote: The influx of unlimited corporate money into the electoral realm also creates new opportunities for the mirror image of quid pro quo deals: threats, both explicit and implicit. Starting today, corporations with large war chests to deploy on electioneering may find democratically elected bodies becoming much more attuned to their interests. That is precisely what we found. Inertia has become the new reality in the Senate and in the House. Congress is now frozen by its own fear of taking on incumbent interests, whether it is our failure to address long-term deficits or to create a coherent energy policy. We can see this corruption in the difficult decisions we avoid. It is the tough vote that we will not take. It is the bill we can't pass even in the face of urgent need. It is the deal that can't be reached. It is the speech that is never made. It is the story of the do-less than the do-nothing Congress. This corruption, by its nature, is difficult to prove because it is invisible, but it suits the incumbent interests just fine. The Court imagined a world where people with bags of money are wandering around Capitol Hill--and only then could you regulate it-- trying to get people to do something for them. Ninety percent of what happens around here is people coming and trying to keep you from doing something, trying to keep things the same, trying to keep the incumbent interests embedded in our Tax Code, in our regulatory code, and in our statute book. The Supreme Court was silent completely on that corruption. I would argue that is at the core of our dysfunction as a Congress. There is a reason the dysfunction that is so hated by the people I represent coincided with the era of these Supreme Court opinions. This is why everybody in Colorado continue to scratch their heads and wonder how we can be so disconnected from their set of priorities, so decoupled from their set of priorities--what they care about, for the future of their families, the future of their business--and how we can come here all week and just vote on judges. To my knowledge, there are no super PACs devoted to votes on judges one way or another, which is maybe why that is what we spend our time doing. I have a lot of respect for the Supreme Court, as I know the Presiding Officer does, and the separation of powers, and I know how serious it is to consider a constitutional amendment, an amendment to the Constitution, which is why it should be a last, not a first resort. But the Court got it wrong when it came to the practical day-to-day operations of this Congress and the way its campaigns work, and its decisions have unleashed a new torrent of spending that is corroding the vibrancy of our democracy. I think it is useful for us to take a moment to think about or to consider the practical effect of these decisions. During the entire 2010 election cycle--that is the year Citizens United was decided--super PACs spent a total of $63 million in this country. So far, September 10, in this election cycle, super PACs have spent $116 million. That is almost twice what was spent in 2010, and it is only the beginning of September. There are States where you cannot buy TV time because so much TV time has been bought by these outside groups. For the three election cycles before Citizens United, outside spending totaled about $113 million. In contrast, in the three election cycles since Citizens United was decided, outside spending has totaled about $530 million. This is almost a fivefold increase in spending. There probably are people around the country who aren't beneficiaries of this incredible speech. Unfortunately, folks in Colorado are because we are a swing State, as I mentioned at the beginning. You can't actually at this point watch anything else on television. In 2012 the top 100 individual donors to super PACs--the top 100 people, people along with their spouses--represented 1 percent of all individual donors to super PACs, but their donations totaled 67 percent of the funding and therefore 67 percent of the spending. But the spending doesn't only affect how this place works, as I mentioned earlier, it affects what we work on in Congress. That is why Congress has repeatedly enacted reasonable limits on campaign spending, which have largely been upheld until very recently, until 2010. In fact, as recently as 2003, in FEC v. Beaumont, the Supreme Court found that ``any attack on the federal prohibition of direct corporate political contributions goes against the current of a century of congressional efforts to curb corporations' potentially `deleterious influences on federal elections.' '' The Court made the point that our current laws grew out of the late 19th century belief ``that aggregated capital unduly influenced politics, an influence not stopping short of corruption.'' It is an influence that stops the work of the Senate and the House dead in its tracks. This concern about aggregated capital and its effect on our democracy actually goes back to the earliest days of our country. In the Federalist Papers James Madison wrote: We may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people. . . . It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it. So there is nothing unprecedented about seeking to regulate campaign spending. What is unprecedented is the ease by which the Supreme Court has undone decades of campaign finance laws, which has led to this dysfunction in Congress and the misery the folks in Colorado are suffering as they watch these ads. What is unprecedented is the sheer volume of money that is flooding the Senate and congressional races. What is unprecedented is the corrupting influence this money is having on the institution of Congress. Because of this new world of unlimited spending, Members of Congress are a lot less likely to seek compromise than they once were and work together if they know they may become the target of a super Pac from people who can write checks that are larger than my imagination. Reasonable limits on campaign spending can help address this problem. We believed for decades and decades and decades that the Constitution allowed us to do that. The Supreme Court has now decided that we can't, and we are looking at this choice. I would say also on this point that notwithstanding my observations about the Court, it is also true that eight of nine Supreme Court Justices have said that disclosure requirements are constitutional, that disclosure does not require a change to the Constitution. I, for one, say at least let's pass that, Republicans and Democrats coming together and saying, You know what. We have always had an expectation about the First Amendment that we are going to be willing to stand and say who we are--or maybe we will not require people to say who they are, but we will just say at the end: Paid for people who are so embarrassed about what they are doing that they refuse to put their actual names on this advertisement. But it seems to me that if we can be required to say: I am Senator so and so and I paid for this message, we ought to be able to say that about everybody who is advertising in political ads. Changing these rules would bring more compromise and consensus building to this institution but, most important, above all else, it would help give individual families a greater say in the political process. We offer this amendment not as a one-size-fits-all solution but to allow Congress and the States to place reasonable limits on campaign spending to experiment with what works and put away what doesn't work, similar to the rules that had existed for decades, similar to the rules that existed when the Congress actually functioned, similar to the rules that existed when Democrats and Republicans didn't seem to have such difficulty working across the aisle. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Alabama for allowing me to go ahead of him in cue.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, we say that America is a nation of immigrants, and, of course, that is true. There is no other country in the world for which immigration is so central to its history and its identity. Let's take a moment to reflect on what that really means. Here is a photo. I am afraid it is not a very good quality. I took it myself. It is a photo that I took at a naturalization ceremony held for Active Duty servicemembers in Fort Carson, CO. The 13 soldiers and spouses who became U.S. citizens on that day represented 11 different countries of origin even though they are wearing our uniform. They came from all over the world: Colombia, Haiti, Malaysia, Mexico, Nicaragua, China, the Philippines, South Korea, Togo, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. They all came for this pursuit of the American dream, and they all came to serve this country. They are going to be the people who help us determine our future. The same is true with the refugees fleeing persecution from around the world. The parents seeking opportunity for their children and those stepping forward to serve and sacrifice for our shared values have made this country the America we love. But our existing immigration policies do not reflect this history or the values that shaped it. Instead, it is a mess of unintended consequences that hurts our businesses, rips families apart, and keeps us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. Tomorrow marks 365 days--1 year--since the Senate acted to fix these problems and passed bipartisan immigration reform. Yet here we are still waiting for the House of Representatives to do the same. The House's inaction is costing our Nation. It has cost us, among other things, $13.4 billion in lost revenue in this last year alone. With each additional day that passes, we lose another $37 million of revenue. What is most frustrating about this to me is that we agree--on both sides of the aisle--that our current immigration system is broken. We agree that our immigration system is critical for our economy and for our country. In June of last year we passed a bill in this Chamber with strong bipartisan support. It won the support of a broad coalition of Republicans and Democrats. It also has the support of countless organizations, from migrant workers to farmers and ranchers, from law enforcement agencies to the faith community, Latino leaders across this country, and the Chamber of Commerce to labor unions. Often I tell those who despair about the lack of leadership in Congress that there is a model we can learn from, and it is the bipartisan work that was done on this bill. I cannot say enough about the Republican Members of the Gang of 8 who negotiated a bill over seven or eight months, knowing what the base of their party might say about the fact that they were in that room but still willing to do it because it was right to do for their country and it was right to do for their party--in that order. In this job I have had the opportunity to meet with a diverse cross section of Coloradans throughout the State, each struggling beneath the weight of a broken immigration system. I have spoken with peach growers on the Western Slope, vegetable growers in Brighton, and melon farmers in the San Luis Valley--farmers such as Philip Davis from Mesa Winds Farm and Winery in Western Colorado who cannot get the seasonal workers he needs. He will tell you how hard he and his family have had to work to fill these gaps, and how every single day they have to keep fighting to prevent their 36-acre farm from closing. A legal, reliable, competent workforce for our Nation's farms and ranches is essential for Colorado's $40 billion agricultural industry, and it is essential for our agricultural industry across the country. Maybe that is the reason why both the United Farm Workers union and the growers all across the United States of America endorsed this bill. I have heard from Colorado's high-tech companies such as Full Contact, a tech startup in Boulder, CO, that acquired a company overseas. They have been unable to hire the talented engineers they need to grow their businesses and add jobs. I have also heard from Colorado's dedicated teachers and administrators who work tirelessly to teach the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators--teachers such as Mary Edwin from Colorado Springs. Mary, a graduate of Johns Hopkins with a master's degree in education, will likely be forced to return home to Nigeria, leaving behind the children she works with at Turman Elementary School, all on account of our broken, outdated visa system. This year on April 7, approximately 6 months before the 2015 fiscal year even begins, the government announced it had already reached its statutory cap on H-1B petitions for H-1B visas. It has also reached its exemption for 20,000 advanced-degree holders. These are exactly the type of workers our State and the national economy require. I will paint a picture of what our country would look like if the Senate's immigration bill were actually enacted. First, millions of people who came to this country for a better life, including young people whose parents brought them here as children, would have the opportunity to enter a tough but fair pathway to citizenship. With a path in place, we would see higher wages, greater consumption of goods and increased revenue. It would reduce our debt by nearly $1 trillion-- even in Washington that is real money--over 20 years, and increase our economic growth by roughly 5.4 percent over that period of time. Next, our bill would put in place an efficient and flexible visa system that would enable us to compete in a changing 21st century global economy. Talented entrepreneurs and innovators from around the world would have the opportunity to stay here in order to create jobs and fuel our economy. High-skilled workers in math and science, and lower-skilled workers in industries such as hospitality and tourism would come into the country to fill jobs where there are no available U.S. workers. We would provide stability for our agricultural industry with a new streamlined program for agricultural workers--one that is more usable for employers and protects our workers. Our borders would be more secure. There is one border security bill that has passed the Congress, and that is the bill passed by the Senate. It allows for new fencing, doubling the number of border agents, and increased spending on new technology. We would have full situational awareness on the border in order to allow us to intercept threats rapidly and successfully. And with the mandatory employment verification system and more effective entry-exit system, we would prevent future waves of illegal immigration. A huge number of people who are here entered the country legally; we just don't know where they are. We ought to have a system that tells us that. These are all changes that our Nation urgently needs. In the time since the Senate passed the bill, we heard a litany of reasons why it can't pass the House. They say the Senate bill doesn't have support in the House. If Speaker Boehner put the bill on the floor tomorrow, it would pass. They say the Senate bill is too long, too big, too comprehensive. I, for one, am willing to consider looking at this bill in smaller pieces as long as all the problems with the system are addressed. But the House has not produced--never mind voted--on a single bill, much less a series of smaller bills. They say they want more border security, but what do they know about the border that our Republican colleagues from Arizona, John McCain and Jeff Flake, don't know? What do they know about the border that Senator Flake and Senator McCain don't know? We have 21,000 border agents, and we are putting another 21,000 on the border if this bill were passed. We spend more money on the border than we do on all other Federal law enforcement combined, but they say there is not enough border security--not that they passed a border security bill. The only folks who have passed a border security bill are right here in the Senate. We should ask them how many more agents they need, and how many more billions of dollars we should spend. If the House wants to secure the border first, which the Senate bill does, let's see their legislation. We are waiting. I, for one, would like to see them think about customs agents and trade instead of adding more billions of dollars at the border. The most common excuse we have heard is that the House has not had time to pass a bill. The House was only scheduled to work 9 days last September. Ultimately, they came back for a few extra days to shut the government down. In the year since the Senate passed the bill, the House has found the time to vote 17 times to repeal, delay or dismantle the health care bill--54 times in total in the last 4 years. They voted to name 20 post offices and an assortment of 20 other government buildings. They have held five separate House committee hearings. They produced three different public reports and passed one resolution on the topic of Benghazi--a topic that has never come up in most of our town hall meetings. What I hear in Colorado over and over is we have to stop excuses, stop posturing, and pass a bill--a good bipartisan bill, and that is what the House of Representatives ought to be doing now. Fixing our broken immigration system is long overdue, and I believe that the bipartisan solution crafted in our Senate bill will fix it just fine. It is time for the House to act. With that, I yield the floor, and I thank my colleague, again, for his patience and kindness in allowing me to go first.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 30, 2014, at 10 a.m., in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Dollars and Sense: How Undisclosed Money and Post-McCutcheon Campaign Finance Will Affect the 2014 Election and Beyond.''

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Madam President, I say to my colleague from Wyoming that I disagree with him on this issue, but I do agree wholeheartedly with his observation about the importance of training people for this 21st century economy, and I have enjoyed working with him so much on the HELP Committee. I am on the floor today to talk about the minimum wage bill that is before us this week, and once again to have the opportunity to come here and say that Washington, DC, is absolutely decoupled with the conversations people are having in Colorado, whether they are Republicans, Democrats or Independents. We had another example of that here today during this debate--if you can call it a debate--because once again there are people in the Senate who are using their prerogatives as Senators to keep us from debating a bill fully and to keep us from actually having an up-or-down vote on a bill that the vast majority of Americans support whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. There is a reason why America supports this legislation. If you work 40 hours a week in the United States of America--the greatest country in the world--at a Federal minimum wage, you barely make over $15,000 a year. If you work 40 hours a week--week after week after week--you make $15,000 a year. A worker in this country with a spouse and two kids, a family of four--a typical family in this country--depending on the single minimum wage paycheck is in deep trouble. They are not just below the minimum wage, that family makes two-thirds of the poverty level. A breadwinner in a family of four working at the minimum wage is more than $8,000 below the poverty line. That family with a full-time breadwinner is impoverished in the United States of America to the tune of $8,000. If you have a family who depends on you to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table, that is not enough to get by. It is not even close. It may be hard for people here who are paid $174,000 a year to understand what it would be like to live on $15,000, but let's think a little bit about what that family's life is like. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says that even under the cheapest plan possible--the thriftiest plan possible--where the family cuts every single corner, spending as little as can be spent, it costs over $7,000 a year to feed a family of four with growing kids. It costs $7,000 under the most difficult circumstances possible. At least half of that family's $15,000 paycheck goes just to groceries--just to feeding a family and keeping them nourished. After payroll taxes, that leaves a family with less than $7,000 to cover every other cost--that is it. Food is half of what you bring home and you are left with $7,000. In Denver, where my family lives, the average rental unit costs over $12,000 a year. That is an average. That includes tiny studio apartments. In Denver, this family of four would have to squeeze into a rental unit well under half that cost. They would need to live in a space woefully inadequate for their needs, their family, and their children. That family would have to stretch their pocket change--and whatever is left after they spend the money they barely have to feed and house their children--to cover utilities, medicine, health, clothes, transportation, school supplies, and the countless other expenses that life throws at us. It cannot be done. It is simple arithmetic. A family such as the one I just described needs thousands of additional dollars from the Federal and local government just to get by. We don't want to have a minimum wage that is so low that people who are working 40 hours a week have to be on public assistance just to support their families. Think about how crazy that is. Someone working full time, 40 hours a week in a minimum wage job today, needs thousands of dollars in support from the Government to provide for their family. That is not what we want in America. The situation is a lot worse than it used to be because the minimum wage is not indexed to inflation. So as costs rise, the minimum wage loses its purchasing power and stays the same until Congress raises it, which is why we are trying to have this debate here. There is no one else who can do this in America. Democratic and Republican Congresses that have dealt with this over the years have found ways to do it. Congress has raised the minimum wage over and over for precisely that reason. Even so, today, as we stand on this floor with the responsibility to the American people, our minimum wage is down substantially from where it used to be. The Federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 an hour. That is $3.44 an hour and more than $7,000 a year below what it was in 1968 in real inflation-adjusted dollars. It is a $7,000 gap, which makes a huge difference to the family of four we just considered trying to survive on the minimum wage. In 1968, a minimum wage job kept a family of three out of poverty. That is what the Congress did in 1968. They said if you work 40 hours a week, your family ought to live above the poverty line. A full-time worker with two children was 20 percent above the poverty line. Today that same family is 19 percent below the poverty line all because the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation. It also has not kept pace with average earnings. In 1968, the minimum wage was 54 percent of the average hourly pay for a U.S. worker; today it is just 36 percent. At the same time, even when you account for inflation, college costs are three times what they were four decades ago. It is no wonder that the working families I hear from in Colorado feel they are working harder than ever before but falling farther behind. The bill we are talking about today raises the Federal minimum wage by 39 percent to $10.10 an hour. That is actually less than the 47- percent increase that is required to get back to the 1968 level. So we are still not going to be back where we were in 1968, but we will make progress in the sense that the people who are earning minimum wage will no longer be living in poverty. Consider what this bill does for a family's ability to provide for itself. Look at just one major Federal safety net program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. Food stamps is what that is. The reason the House of Representatives held up the farm bill for so long was over the issue of food stamps. As we think about what we are doing here and the debate we are having, I think that is important to keep in context. This is a program that millions of low- income families depend on in order to eat. This minimum wage bill would reduce SNAP enrollments by over 7\1/2\ percent because people would now be making a living wage. That is over 3.1 million Americans who would no longer have to depend on a program to feed their kids. If you vote for this legislation, you are voting to reduce the roles of those who depend on food stamps by 3 million Americans. It is not a virtue that we have those 3 million Americans on food stamps. They ought to be earning a living wage. We would save $46 billion in SNAP payments over the next decade if we pass this bill. It applies to other programs as well. Two-thirds of Americans who earn under $10 an hour use public assistance in some form--two-thirds, two-thirds, two-thirds. Working families--Americans who actually have a job who are working 40 hours a week--cost the Government about $243 million a year through programs such as SNAP, Medicaid, and other safety-net programs. Raising the minimum wage makes American workers less dependent on these programs to support their families. There are many compelling reasons to raise the minimum wage. There is a compelling reason why all the surveys show that the American people, no matter what party they are in, think we ought to raise the minimum wage. Yet in a few hours, if nothing changes, a minority of Senators will most likely not even come to the floor to vote on this but will use their powers in the Senate to block an honest up-or-down vote about whether we ought to raise the minimum wage in this country. They don't even want us to have a proper debate on this bill much less pass it. What is so radical about what we are trying to do that they won't even let us have an up or down vote? Is this somehow unprecedented? Is what we are talking about unknown in the annals of the Senate? Actually, it is not. Since the minimum wage was enacted by the Congress in the 1930s, we have managed to raise the minimum wage on 10 different occasions over 70 years. We have raised the minimum wage very routinely to try--not always successfully--to keep pace with inflation. We have done it many times. Democratic and Republican Congresses have raised the minimum wage. Democratic Presidents have signed minimum wage increases into law and Republican Presidents have signed minimum wage increases into law. President Eisenhower signed a 33-percent increase in the minimum wage in 1955. President Nixon signed a 44-percent minimum wage increase into law in 1974. George H. W. Bush signed a 27-percent minimum wage increase into law in 1989. In 1996, a Republican-controlled Congress enacted a 21-percent minimum wage increase which President Clinton signed into law. Most recently in 2007, President George W. Bush signed a 41-percent increase into law. You can see on this chart all the different times the minimum wage has been raised and by how much. If you look at the 10 different times we have increased the minimum wage, the average increase has been about 41 percent. This increase increases it by 39 percent, and that is below average. But to hear some people talk, you would think this bill is an unprecedented assault on American capitalism. Tom Delay described the minimum wage earlier this year as unconstitutional. Others have said it doesn't affect a lot of workers. Several years ago the Speaker--before he was Speaker--said he would ``commit suicide before [he voted] on a clean minimum-wage bill.'' This makes no sense. It is at war with our history. I see my colleagues are here. I ask and beg my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are not allowing us to have an up-or-down vote on something that the American people want--whether they are Democrats, Republicans or Independents--to allow us to have that vote. With that, I yield the floor.