Christopher Coons

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I come to the floor again today to talk about good jobs and how we can work together in a responsible and bipartisan way to create high-quality and lasting middle-class jobs. All of us hear from our home States about how they want us to work together to produce for America today and America tomorrow. As someone who worked for 8 years for a manufacturing company in the private sector before going into public service, I can tell you we can win in manufacturing. We can learn from our competitors, we can strengthen our workforce, we can strengthen our access to foreign markets, and we can strengthen our access to credit. We can do all of it and we can compete and win in advanced manufacturing in the United States. One of the aspects of my own experience in the private sector that has stayed with me is that more of our manufacturing employment was in Germany than any other single country, and that often seems unlikely given that Germany actually has higher labor costs, labor protections, environmental protections, and in many ways a higher cost of doing business than almost any other advanced country. So how is it possible they are so successful? In fact, more than twice the percentage of their GDP is in manufacturing than is the case in the United States. Why would we fight for manufacturing jobs? Why would we fight to emulate Germany's example? Because manufacturing jobs are great jobs. As the Presiding Officer and our colleague from Maine know, manufacturing jobs are high skill, high wage, high benefit, and have a positive impact on their surrounding community. They also need something. They need ongoing R&D, cutting-edge research, continuous improvement and innovations in order to remain at the cutting edge of productivity. What we are going to talk about on the floor today is a bill that learns from the lessons of our most successful European competitor, Germany. Germany has more than 60 manufacturing hubs located all over their country. These manufacturing hubs are in places where universities are doing cutting-edge technical research and companies are beginning to deploy these new technologies in manufacturing and the workforce that are needed to acquire the skills to be successful in these new areas of manufacturing all work in coordination. That is something we can, by working in a bipartisan way here in this Senate, advance, and advance rapidly, here in the United States. The Senator from Maine and I are going to talk about a bill--the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act--which has 14 cosponsors and is an indication of its broad base of bipartisan support. It has long been led by Senators Brown of Ohio and Blunt of Missouri, a bipartisan team, and to that they have added a great initial leadership team with Senator Stabenow, Senator Levin, Senator Reed, and Senator Schumer, all Democrats, as well as Senator Graham, Senator Kirk, Senator Collins, Senator Wicker, and Senator Boozman, all Republicans. Most recently our wonderful colleague, Senator Angus King of Maine, an Independent, has joined us. This bill has been endorsed by folks ranging from the National Association of Manufacturers to the U.S. Conference of Mayors to the United Auto Workers, and many more organizations at the national and local level, which is another indicator of how diverse its support is from across the country and many different sectors. This is a bill I have reason to hope can not just get a lot of endorsements from the private sector and not just a lot of endorsements from cosponsors here in the Senate but can actually move through regular order to be taken up and considered by the committee of jurisdiction, to be taken up here on the floor, and actually signed into law by the President of the United States. I am hopeful that could happen partly because this is good policy. There are already a number of hubs that have been established by Federal agencies spending money that has already been authorized and appropriated for specific research areas where the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense need to do work to develop cutting-edge manufacturing capacity in the United States. I think if this law gets taken up on a bipartisan basis and is improved, refined, and debated in committee and here on the floor, we actually have a shot at advancing a process that will be wide open and will allow elements of the Federal Government, in partnership with the private sector, to leverage cutting-edge research and deploy whole new technologies across this country. I am excited by it, and I know my colleague is as well. I will briefly state why Senator King is a great colleague to join all of us who have served as sponsors on this bill. He has previously worked in the private sector in clean energy. He has previously served as the Governor of the State of Maine and worked closely with the University of Maine and has a sense of how publicly funded research at a cutting-edge university, investment in workforce skills, and the deployment of new and innovative technologies in clean energy can work together to grow manufacturing, grow job opportunities, and grow our economy. I invite my colleague to address his experience in Maine and why he has joined this broad group of cosponsors on this promising and bipartisan manufacturing bill.

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 30 minutes as if in morning business and to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from Maine.

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from Oregon, Senator Merkley, who has done a tremendous job laying out the scientific case, the compelling economic case, the cultural case, and the global case for why we here in the Senate need to wake up, need to listen to the indisputable evidence of what climate change is doing in our home States, to our country, and around the world. Mr. President, even now as we speak in this Chamber, my own three children--Maggie, Michael, and Jack--are asleep at home. And as I reflected on this past summer, I was struck by something--an experience we had--that was a simple and telling reminder of the steady changes wrought by climate change in our Nation. Last summer we took a family vacation--a trip--to Glacier National Park. For those who have had the opportunity to hike in this majestic national park in Montana, it is the site of many striking and beautiful scenes, but there was one hike we took in particular that stayed with me. It was a hike to historic Grinnell Glacier--a glacier that is by many photographs over decades documented in its steady receding. In fact, since 1966 it has lost nearly half of its total acreage. We took a long and winding hike up the trail that takes you to Grinnell Glacier. You can't quite see until you come up over the last rise that most of what is left of Grinnell Glacier in the summers today is a chilly pool of water. For my daughter Maggie and for my sons Mike and Jack, as I look ahead to the long-term future, I think we all have to ask ourselves this question: How many more changes are we willing to accept being wrought on creation, on this Nation, and on the world by the steady advance of climate change? I know we can't simply take the examples of things such as Grinnell Glacier or what to me seemed a striking change in the cap of Mount Kilimanjaro. I first climbed it in 1984 and visited it again last year. There is a striking change, a visually powerful change. These aren't scientific. There are lots of other arguments, perhaps, as to why these two particular glaciers have retreated, but I still remember hearing a presentation at the University of Delaware by Dr. Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, a glaciologist who presented a very broad and I thought very compelling case based on ice cores for the actual advance of climate change over many decades. In fact, I see my colleague from Rhode Island has a photographic history of Grinnell Glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park, so the point I was just making in passing he is able to illustrate here. That is as of 10 years ago. The glacier has retreated even further from that. But this striking glacier from 1940 is now almost completely gone in just one generation. This and so many other glaciers that were monuments in our national parks are today receded or altogether gone. Well, I think we have to ask ourselves fundamentally, what is our path forward? We have heard from other Senators. Tim Kaine of Virginia spoke about the importance of innovation, and Angus King, the Senator from Maine, spoke about the importance of markets and of making sure our inventions and innovations in trying to solve these problems are also shared internationally. I think these are great and important insights. One of the things I wanted to bring to the floor today first was insights from my own home State of Delaware, where our Governor, Jack Markell, impaneled a sea level rise advisory committee starting in 2010 that looked hard at how climate change might affect my home State. At just 60 feet, Delaware has the lowest mean elevation of any State in the country, and that already makes it more susceptible to sea level rise than almost any State in the country. In my State of Delaware, we have seen and will continue to see the impact of climate change on our businesses, our communities, and our local environment. As the sea level rises, we are seeing the effects more and more. Sea level rises essentially for two reasons. First, as the planet's ice sheets melt--the much larger sheets than Grinnell Glacier--they add to the amount of water in the ocean. Second, saltwater actually expands as it warms as well. So as the planet's average temperature has steadily risen, so too has the level of its saltwater seas. The fact that the Earth's oceans are rising each year isn't new information. It has been rising as long as we have been keeping track. But what is really jarring is that rate of rise is increasing and increasing significantly. When the data was tracked from 1870 to 1930, the sea level was rising at a rate of 4 inches per 100 years. Over the next 60 years it rose at a rate of 8 inches per 100 years--more than double. In just the last 20 years the sea level has been rising at a strikingly more rapid rate of 12.5 inches per 100 years. The water is rising, and in Delaware it is rising fast. The land itself in my State is also actually sinking. There is actually a documented vertical movement of the Earth's crust under the mid-Atlantic coast. It is called subsidence. It has been happening in Delaware slowly but gradually since the ice age at a pace of just 2 millimeters of elevation every year. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up to another 4 inches over the century. So we have the water rising and the land sinking, making climate change and sea level rise--specifically for my home State--a very real issue. A wide array of scientists have studied this and its impact on Delaware, and they have developed three models for a future scenario. In the conservative model, by the year 2100 the sea level in Delaware will have risen about 1.5 feet. In another model, the water off Delaware rises another full meter. In another and the most disconcerting model, it is 1.5 meters or about 5 feet. Unfortunately, at present, this broad group of scientists--inside and outside of government--are estimating that is the most likely scenario. Let's make this real. Here is a projection of these three different scenarios in one area of Delaware. This is Bowers Beach. This shows how now this is a well-established beach community. The most conservative model, we still have something of the land; in the middle, it is completely cut off here from the mainland; and then in the most likely, sadly, given the most current evidence, there is literally nothing left except a little sandbar out by itself in the Delaware Bay. That gives one example of why the difference between these three scenarios matters so much. Unfortunately, there is no scenario in which Bowers Beach is still a viable beachfront community by the end of this century. This beach community of Bowers Beach is very close to Dover Air Force Base and ends up underwater. Now let's take a look at South Wilmington. The city in which I live is Wilmington, DE, and South Wilmington is a neighborhood in the largest city in our State. As the water rises in the Atlantic Ocean, it also rises up the Delaware Bay, the Delaware River, and the Christina River, which runs right through most of my home county, Newcastle County, and rises in the Peterson Wildlife Refuge too. The impacts here are potentially devastating. We are talking about water 1.5 feet higher than what Delaware experienced during Superstorm Sandy--not for a brief storm surge but each and every day. Again, take a look at today the conservative, the middle, and the most likely, most aggressive scenario in which virtually all of South Wilmington is underwater by the end of this century. The calculation of whether we are hit with a half a meter, a full meter, or 1.5 meters of sea rise comes down to the rate of acceleration of climate change globally, and it leaves for us a central and so far unanswered question: whether we try to slow the rate at which climate change is affecting our planet and maybe somehow turn the tide. This is the part of climate change policy called mitigation. Priority one in this strategy is cutting the emissions we are pumping into our atmosphere. To do that, we can and must diversify our energy sources and reduce our dependence on polluting fossil fuels. Clean energy technology, energy efficiency programs, public transportation, and more will help cut down on these emissions, but it will require a global effort in order to avoid or minimize local impacts. The second part of climate change policy is adaptation based on an acceptance of the reality that our climate is changing and will have real effects on our planet and all of our communities. The truth is that even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today--if we shut down powerplants, stopped driving cars, stopped using gas-powered farm equipment, trains, and ships, and all the rest--the amount of greenhouse gases, of CO2 and others already in the atmosphere would still take many years to dissipate. Changes in the world's climate are at this point inevitable. It is already happening and affecting communities, and we can expect these impacts to intensify as the rate of climate change continues to accelerate. We can modify our behavior to prevent those effects from being catastrophic. We can and should make better choices now to prevent disaster later. In Delaware, for example, we have had two laws on the books for now 40 years that have helped us adapt. The first was championed in the 1970s by a Republican Governor, Russ Peterson, a hero of mine and of our Governor's and others. It is called the Coastal Zone Act, and passing it cost him his career in politics. It prohibited future industrial development on a long strip of coastal land, allowing the State and Federal government to preserve it and reduce the impacts of flooding and coastal erosion. Ultimately, in the long run, Governor Peterson has been proven a visionary in preserving this vital barrier all along Delaware's coast. The second law empowered the State to protect and replenish the State's beaches, including the beaches on Delaware Bay, which are often overlooked. This has allowed our State to build a berm and dune system that protects infrastructure and protects property from being washed away. More important than these significant landmark laws of 40 years ago, today, instead of running away from the science, Delaware's leaders have embraced it. The State agency that manages environmental issues for Delaware--known as DNREC and ably led by secretary Collin O'Mara-- has taken the lead on a governmentwide project to assess the State's vulnerability to sea level rise and, as I mentioned, recommend options for adaptation. Delaware's Sea Level Rise Committee spent 18 months looking at 79 different statewide resources--roads, bridges, schools, fire stations, railroads, wetlands, people and their homes and businesses--and layered all of this onto maps to show just how far the water would reach at different models for sea level rise. If the sea level does get to 1.5 meters, we lose more than 10 percent of our State. The water claims 20,000 residential properties, significant percentages of wetlands, farms, highways, and industrial sites. We would lose 21 miles of our Northeast corridor rail lines to flooding, shutting down the vital Northeast corridor that transports so many millions every year. The Port of Wilmington would be rendered useless, nearly all the State's acreage of protected wetlands could be inundated, nearly three- quarters of our dams, dikes, and levees flooded out. In short, this scenario for our lowest-lying State would be devastating. As Secretary O'Mara said: We're looking at big risks for human health and safety, and not just at the Delaware Bay beaches. We have big concerns about [communities in Delaware]. It's much more complex than just the bay beaches or a community here or there. He is right. So once again, remember, we have two basic approaches to climate change policy: adaptation and mitigation. Once Delaware compiled its 200-page vulnerability assessment on sea level rise, the committee got to work on an adaptation strategy to protect our State and came up with slightly more than 60 options and hosted a whole series of public meetings and townhalls to discuss it. We are now working on a broader vulnerability assessment to examine the full range of impacts from climate change, even beyond sea level rise-- changing temperatures, extreme weather, changes in precipitation-- impacts which will affect us and our neighbors. Climate change will affect the distribution, abundance, and behavior of wildlife, as well as the diversity, structure, and function of our ecosystem. We are already seeing changes in natural patterns. As Senator Markey of Massachusetts commented earlier this evening, many commercial and recreational fish stocks along our east coast have moved northward by 20 to 200 miles over the past 40 years as ocean temperatures have increased. Scientists expect migratory species to be strongly affected by climate change, since animal migration is closely connected to climate factors, and migratory species use multiple habitats and resources during their migrations. These changes are impacting our own multimillion bird watching and waterfowl hunting, an important economic driver for us and critical parts of our heritage. According to the draft National Climate Assessment released in 2013, our farmers are expected to initially adapt relatively well to the changing climate over the next 25 years. But later, as temperature increases and precipitation extremes get more intense, crop yields and production of poultry and livestock are expected to decline. More extreme weather events--drought and heavy downpours--will further reduce yields, damage soil, stress irrigation water supplies, and increase production costs. All in all, this is a fairly grim long-term outlook in the absence of decisive action. I am proud of my State. Delaware was the first State to thoroughly assess the vulnerability of specific resources in as comprehensive a way as they have, and we are determined to confront these changes to our planet head on and to protect our communities and the way of life we have built. I will briefly review. There is so much we can and should do here in Congress in a bipartisan way to lay the groundwork for the actions we have to take. We can improve our energy efficiency. We could take up and pass the bipartisan bill recently reintroduced by Senators Shaheen and Portman to increase the use of energy-efficient technology across all sectors in our society. The new version of the bill has 12 cosponsors--six Democrats and six Republicans--and includes 10 new commonsense amendments which would save consumers electricity and money, a small but meaningful start on a journey toward changing our direction on climate change. Or we could level the playing field and help new clean energy technologies get off the ground by giving them the same tax advantages currently utilized by fossil fuel projects. The bipartisan Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act--which I am proud to cosponsor with my colleagues Senators Moran, Stabenow, Murkowski, Landrieu, and Collins, Democrats and Republicans working together-- would level the playing field for renewables and give them and other new technologies a fighting chance in our energy market. There are so many other steps we could do in combination, if we would but get past this endless, pointless debate which has long been resolved in the halls of science, and move forward in a way which better serves our country and our world. The bottom line is that our climate is changing. We know this. With this knowledge comes the responsibility to reduce our emissions, to mitigate the impacts, and prepare for and take action to deal with the coming changes. As I reflect on our own responsibilities as Senators, I am in part moved to respond to the challenge of climate change--not just because it is an environmental issue, an economic issue, a regional issue or global issue, but it is also for me and for many others a faith issue. It is a question of how we carry out our responsibility to be good stewards of God's creation, to be those Senators we are called to be each from our own traditions who stand up and do what is right, not just for the short term, not just for the concerns of the day, but for the long term. As I move toward my close, I will share with those in the Chamber and watching one of the things most encouraging to me as I have reflected on the change in the climate change movement over recent years is it has begun to draw support from all across the theological spectrum. There was last year, July of 2013, a letter sent to Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Reid, and all Members of Congress by 200 self- identified Christian evangelical scientists from both religious and secular universities all across the United States, a powerful and incisive letter which says: As evangelical scientists and academics, we understand climate change is real and action is urgently needed. All of God's Creation--human and our environment--is groaning under the weight of our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, bringing on a warming planet, melting ice, and rising seas. I urge any watching to consider reading it. It is posted on line. It goes on to quote Christian Scripture at length in making the case we have an obligation, if we are concerned about our neighbors and about the least of these in this world, to take on the challenge of making sure we are good stewards. Those of the Roman Catholic faith might be inspired by Pope Francis, who has taken the name of the patron saint of animals and the environment, and recently issued a call for all people to be protectors of creation. Last, I might read from a letter issued by the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a group not commonly known for their close alignment with my party. Leith Anderson wrote in a letter in 2011: While others debate the science and politics of climate change, my thoughts go to the poor people who are neither scientists nor politicians. They will never study carbon dioxide in the air or acidification of the ocean. But they will suffer from dry wells in the Sahel of Africa and floods along the coasts of Bangladesh. Their crops will fail while our supermarkets remain full. They will suffer while we study. This couldn't be more true. I urge all of us in this Chamber to reflect on whatever traditions sustain and bring us here that we have an obligation to those who sleep soundly in our homes now, to those from our home States around the country, to stand up and take action, to look clearly at the challenge which lies in front of us and to act in the best traditions of this body and of this Nation, to be good stewards of creation and to stand up to the challenges of this time.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I come to the floor once again to talk about good jobs--about manufacturing jobs--and about what we can do together in this Chamber to strengthen the vital manufacturing sector of the American economy. Last year, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Republican Senator Roy Blunt came together in a bipartisan effort to cosponsor an important bill, S. 1468, the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act of 2013--an effort to build a national network for manufacturing and innovation, also known as manufacturing innovation hubs. This bill, if enacted, would allow us to build institutes across our country dedicated to discovering the next breakthroughs in technology and translating them to the next breakthroughs in manufacturing. I have been proud to support and fight for this bill, and now, because of my colleagues' leadership and determination, we are close to getting a vote. We have heard about the importance of these innovation hubs for manufacturing before. Last year two hubs opened--one in Youngstown, OH, and another in Raleigh, NC. Just last week I was thrilled to hear about two more opening--one in Detroit and another in Chicago. These hubs are good first steps, but they are being done by the executive branch, without express and explicit authorization for a whole and broader program through this bill, which would extend this national network, would make its life longer and greater, and give more specific details to the process by which they would be authorized going forward. It is my hope, having already seen several demonstrations on a more modest scale, this Congress will come together in a bipartisan way and enact this legislation to put a framework in place for the long term. These hubs, as I said, are good first steps, but we in Congress can and should do more. In my home State of Delaware we are blessed to have some remarkable institutions of higher learning: Delaware State University, led by the great President Dr. Harry Williams; the University of Delaware--both research institutions which benefit from federally funded research and both of which do work in energy and engineering, relevant to manufacturing. We also have Del Tech--Delaware Technical & Community College--which does great workforce training and partners with manufacturers. We also have a whole series of manufacturers, large and small; some iconic companies such as DuPont, some unknown outside my State that employ dozens or hundreds. What a manufacturing hub would do is bring together a university that is doing cutting-edge research in a new field with companies looking to start manufacturing using that technology, with those community colleges and others who would train the new workforce, creating a network that would do the innovative work in an iterative way that would accelerate new manufacturing opportunities. The reason this bill has such a diverse set of bipartisan backers-- from Democrats such as Sherrod Brown, Debbie Stabenow, and myself, to Republicans such as Roy Blunt, Lindsey Graham, and Mark Kirk--is because these hubs represent a great example of how the Federal Government can help foster partnerships between businesses, universities, and communities in a hands-off way. As to these first four hubs I mentioned, in these instances, the Federal Government is also getting terrific leverage. There is a more than 1-to-1 match from private, State, and local partnerships in these existing hubs--partnerships, I might add, that have national reach, giving the hubs the potential to benefit not just their immediate regions or their immediate communities but the whole country. General Dynamics and Honeywell, for example, are two of the partner companies in the Youngstown, OH, lab. They have footprints all across our country. At the hub in Raleigh, NC, researchers from other universities--such as Arizona State and Florida State--are collaborators as well, contributing their knowledge to the great work of these hubs and then also bringing back to their labs and their communities what is being learned through this common collaborative work. So the Youngstown and Raleigh hubs--now well established--are about more than just those two cities, and the hubs in Detroit and Chicago will be about more than just Michigan and Illinois, and the hubs we would create, we would authorize, through this bill would be about more than just the cities or States in which they are based. By bringing together such a wide-ranging and diverse set of partners, hubs allow many different stakeholders to pool their resources, minimizing the risks of investing in the early stage research that is critical to innovation but not feasible for one company alone to invest in. It is about the private sector coming together with the university and public sectors to solve tough problems without just one firm bearing all the risk or the burden. R&D--research and development--as we know, is critical to our economic future. These hubs offer an innovative model for increasing our national capacity for invention. The Federal Government acts as a convener for private firms, nonprofits, universities, and researchers, creating an environment where they can all do what they do best and share it. This idea transcends ideology or party. That is why I think Members of both parties should feel comfortable getting behind this bill. It has been endorsed by folks ranging from the National Association of Manufacturers to the Bio, which represents the bio and pharmaceutical community, and folks in the private sector and public sector in my own State and in States across the country. Manufacturing is at the heart of what can and should make this country competitive and prosperous in this century. At the end of the day, this is about creating good jobs. Manufacturing jobs are high- quality jobs. It has a significant secondary benefit in the community as well as having higher wages and benefits than jobs in any other sector. If we are looking for the key to a dynamic innovation economy, we need to look no further than manufacturers. They invest more in R&D than any other private sector within the country. When we think of manufacturing and innovation today, we often picture researchers in the United States inventing things and manufacturing factories overseas. But that is not how sophisticated, advanced manufacturing innovation works anymore. The reality is that innovation is just not linear. R&D and manufacturing need to be closer together. It does not just start in the lab and then get sent to a factory and then to a store and your home. More often R&D results in innovations that improve the products already in our home, that improve the manufacturing process to discover better ways to make things faster, more safely, more efficiently, and that innovative cycle can speed up the more closely connected and articulated it is. By creating these manufacturing innovation hubs, all of which focus on a specific sector or industry, we can help fuel the discoveries that will make manufacturing a critical part of our long-term economic future, while ensuring that the discoveries that change our world are made here in America and the products that come out of them are manufactured here in America. These hubs focus on emerging areas where there is enormous potential. For example, the hub in Youngstown, OH, is focused on 3D printing, which already has the potential to transform how manufacturing, large- scale and small-scale, is done not just in the United States but around the world. We believe--I certainly believe we should continue to be at the cutting edge of developing and deploying what 3D printing has to offer. The one in Raleigh, NC, is about wide bandgap semiconductors or energy-efficient electronics and will likely dominate much of the next generation of electronics. Again, why would we not want to be on the ground for not just the inventing of new technologies but demonstrating how to manufacture them? In Detroit, researchers and businesses and universities and other stakeholders in this newest hub will work together on advanced lightweight materials, on remarkable metals that are stronger, more durable, more ductile, and more lightweight than other existing materials, with applications, of course, in automobiles but across a very wide range of products and platforms. Lastly, in Chicago, small businesses, universities, and larger companies are working together on some remarkable advances that speed up the whole manufacturing process so new ideas can go from the lab to your home faster than ever before. Hubs such as these are central to our competitiveness because it is not just about the work happening at the lab or the institute itself; it is about how they then attract companies with a national reach to an area that is capable of building sustainable and dynamic local economies. It is about bringing researchers and manufactures together to spur innovation, commercialize R&D, and create good jobs that do not go somewhere else. It is about the larger impact for our communities and our country, as innovation breeds new supply chains and new businesses locally and across our country. Today's global economy is more competitive than it has ever been. We are competing not just with developing countries that have lower labor and environmental standards or lower wages but also with developed nations that are trying to out-educate, out-research, and out-innovate us. Germany, for example, has a well-developed, well-established, well- deployed network of more than 60 manufacturing innovation hubs exactly like the ones I have just described. It also has fairly high labor and environmental standards but is the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe. It has nearly double the percentage of its GDP in manufacturing as the United States. How are they able to do this? How can they sustain these high levels of manufacturing? It is in no small part because of the manufacturing innovation hubs they have developed and deployed. So let's get this done. There is absolutely no reason that the season of governing and of legislating here in Washington needs to be over, especially when there is so much important work to do--work that I know we can and should get done on a bipartisan basis. Senators Brown and Blunt have done great work and shown strong leadership in developing this bill, refining this bill, and getting it to this point. Let's show that we can come together in areas where we do agree and put campaigns and politics aside for now and put American jobs and American innovation first. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich.) The clerk will call the roll.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I yield 45 minutes of my hour under cloture to Senator Sanders, chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. COONS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. I come to the floor once again to talk about manufacturing jobs and their importance for rebuilding the American middle class, their importance for our economy, and their importance for our future. Last week President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address before a joint session of this Congress, and he talked about what we can and should do together to invest in America's workers, to spur job creation, and to expand economic opportunity. He said: What I believe unites the people of this nation . . . is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all--the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can and should get ahead. . . . Opportunity is who we are. And the defining project of our generation is to restore that trust. I couldn't agree more. At a basic level, one thing we need to do is to put up a floor under the struggling workers in America who are continuing to seek work and to come together to extend emergency unemployment insurance for these long-term job seekers. While jobs remain, sadly, more scarce than they should be in our economy and as we continue in recovery, we can't let Americans fall through the cracks as they continue to seek work. But since the extended unemployment insurance benefits expired last December, 1.7 million Americans, including more than 4,000 Delawareans, have lost the unemployment insurance that is critical to their families, to keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads. Emergency unemployment insurance, which this body once again today failed to extend, is a critical lifeline to Americans out of work through no fault of their own and who are doing everything they can to get back to work. While they are searching for jobs, we should make sure they can put food on their tables and keep their families sound. One Delawarean I have heard from who relies on this lifeline is Raymond from Newark. Raymond was laid off last April from his job at the EVRAZ steel mill in Claymont. He is not sitting at home based on these unemployment benefits. He is not showing dependency, as some have suggested here. He has averaged more than 30 job applications each and every week. He has four children depending on him--one in college with tuition payments. He wrote to me saying: ``My job search is more than finding a job; it is searching to make an honest living.'' Raymond, to you, and to the more than the 1 million Americans who rely on decent work to give meaning to their lives, to give support to their families, and to give purpose and opportunity to their children and their future, we can and should do more--not only by extending the unemployment insurance, not only by increasing the minimum wage, but by building the middle class of this country to work together. Folks such as Raymond have worked hard and paid their taxes. They have earned the opportunity when they really need it to get unemployment insurance. That is why they paid into it for so many years. But we need to do more beyond just extending unemployment insurance. We need to invest in Raymond's future. We need to invest in the skills that will help Americans like him transition from his job in a steel mill to a plant that is open and has a job that needs to be filled. Throughout our history broad-based job growth and job creation have ensured economic opportunity that was there for millions of millions of Americans across several generations. Anyone who was able and willing to work in this country for a long time was able to find a decent job and a ladder into the middle class. By investing in our Nation's workforce, our people, through public education, through the GI bill, and through access to higher education, we have been a country where anyone who was willing to work could make it if they combined their work ethic and talents with the skills they needed. During World War II, in the postwar boom, manufacturing was an economic backbone. Our country was the pathway to the middle class that made all of this possible. American manufacturing was the sturdy manifestation of that central American idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can provide for your family today so your children can get access to higher education, a brighter future, and you can have a secure retirement tomorrow. That is the essence of the American middle class. The basic opportunity that manufacturing provided--those strong and stable rungs by which Americans could pull themselves up the ladder of opportunity--was the heart of America's economic engine, it was the glue that held communities together, but over the past few decades it has changed dramatically. As the world has changed, as billions of competitors have entered global markets, from China to India to Russia, so has the nature of manufacturing, as technology has advanced and the playing field on which we compete globally has changed fundamentally. The critical impact of low wages abroad and of trade deals that were not effectively enforced has been well documented. But too often people draw the wrong conclusion about the future of manufacturing based on its recent past. I have heard many arguing that manufacturing is no longer an industry, a sector where America can compete because this global playing field is tilted and there will always be workers in some country who will work for less, and so we are relegated to inevitably lose what is left of our manufacturing in a race to the bottom. The suggestion has been made in some sectors that we should thrive with service and high-skilled research and development and financial services but not manufacturing. Nothing could be further from the truth. In my view, only if we continue to be a country where we invent things, grow things, and make things will we continue to be a leading economy where there is real opportunity for all Americans. Why? Because manufacturing jobs are high-quality jobs both for those who work in them, who get higher wages and higher benefits, but also for the local economy, where manufacturing jobs provide more of a compounding benefit than any other sector. Some suggest we just can't compete because our labor standards, our environmental protections, and our wages are too high. But look to Germany and Europe, and you can see this isn't true. They have higher labor standards and higher environmental protections than we do, and yet more than double the percentage of their economy, the percentage of their GDP is manufacturing because their government, their education sector, and their private sector work in close harmony to do what we need to do. Since manufacturers invest the most in private sector R&D, where there is manufacturing, there is also a wealth of high-skilled research work. That is one of the other benefits of manufacturing. Tech development works the best when research centers are close to where products are made. Over the long term it is hard to have one without the other. So as our manufacturing base has moved offshore, we have been at risk of losing our research base. But just in the last few years there has been a dynamic that is encouraging of jobs coming back to this country. As our productivity continues to grow, as our energy costs go down, and as that wage gap closes, we have actually been regaining ground in manufacturing. I am convinced that if we want to rebuild an economy that is dynamic and that grows, one that provides opportunities to the middle class, manufacturing must be at the center--in fact, must be the foundation. What is true is that because the global economy has shifted so dramatically, we need to shift our strategy and our approach. The manufacturing that America excels at today is more advanced and requires higher skilled workers than ever before. Rather than repeating the same tasks over and over, workers today in manufacturing have to be able to carry out complex and varying tasks; to be able to see what is not going right and fix it as a collaborative team; to understand the manufacturing process and to innovate continuously. They have to have critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The sorts of things workers weren't expected to do 30 years ago are a minimum requirement today. They need to understand manufacturing, and they need to be able to program and to improve the caliber and productivity of the machines that do most of the repetitive simple labor of manufacturing today. We can train Americans for these jobs, but our schools and our institutions of higher learning, our community colleges and universities have to be tightly integrated into a skill-training system that is demand-driven rather than giving people training and praying that somehow they will find their way to an appropriate employer. That is why I was so encouraged when President Obama placed such an emphasis on workplace skills training and manufacturing in his State of the Union speech. By modernizing our education system and building real and enduring partnerships between schools and businesses, we can ensure our workers have the skills that employers actually need today and tomorrow; so when a guy like Raymond from a steel mill in Claymont is laid off, he can have the opportunity to improve his skills, to retool his abilities, and to move right into an open and available manufacturing job. A recent study showed there were more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs--high-skilled, high-wage, high-benefit jobs--in America today unfilled because of this skills gap. While I understand and even appreciate President Obama's commitment to making some progress in the coming year through Executive orders, he should not give up on working with Congress. It is just February. It is too early in this year for us to give up on the possibility of passing bipartisan legislation together. I think more than ever, because of the message it sends domestically and internationally, we have to find a way to work together to make progress on the critical issue of manufacturing skills and to do what we can together to grow our economy and rebuild our middle class. That is why I have been working so hard with my colleagues on the Manufacturing Jobs for America campaign here in the Senate. Manufacturing Jobs for America is a campaign to build support for good manufacturing legislation on which Democrats and Republicans can agree. So far we have had 26 Democratic Senators introduce 32 bills. Almost half of them have Republican cosponsors already, and we are seeking more each and every week. Our bills focus on four areas that, if we were to enact them, could have a real and substantial impact on manufacturing and opportunity in our country: strengthening America's modern workforce skills, as I have spoken to; fighting for a more level global playing field and opening export markets to America's manufacturers of all sizes. Medium and small businesses have been growing their exports, but we could grow so much more, and that would sustain the growth in manufacturing; third, making it easier for manufacturers to access capital and invest in the R&D I spoke to a moment ago; and fourth, ensuring a coordinated government-wide effort in support of a national manufacturing strategy. All of our competitors have them. We alone don't, and we need a national manufacturing strategy to make sure that skills, access to exports, and access to capital all happen. Madam President, adapting our economy to the realities of a new era is a challenge we have struggled with for more than a generation. Yet figuring out how to realize an economy where growth is both strong and more equitable--one that is dynamic and creative and globally competitive and also has a broad middle class, provides security for working families, and leaves no one behind; an economy that invests in the dreams and aspirations of our children--building that economy is the central challenge we face. Manufacturing can and should be the foundation of that economy. If we want America to be as strong in the 21st century as it was in the 20th, we need American manufacturing. Let's work together and get this done. I thank my colleagues from both sides of the aisle for their partnership, their interest, and their work. I so much look forward to working together in the weeks ahead to prove to the American people that we can make bipartisan progress on manufacturing. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a bill introduced today--a bipartisan bill--a bill that will strengthen America's innovation economy. Over the last 60 years our national laboratories have served as leading centers of research and discovery in America. Today we have 17 DOE labs charged with three broad research missions: science, energy, and national security. Although they have grown and changed since their founding to encompass much broader ranges of work and are successful in carrying out their primary missions, labs are not fully optimized to take part in today's innovation culture. That is a problem, because in this century of rapid change, America's best competitive advantage remains our capacity to innovate. Over the coming months, I will be talking more about a few things Congress can do to streamline and jumpstart our Nation's hubs of discovery so that we can thrive as a 21st-century innovation economy. At the top level, it will mean reauthorizing the America COMPETES Act to reaffirm our commitment to the robust national strategy for science and technology programs that will continue to be a critical underpinning of American prosperity. And one part of that is how our national labs operate, which is why today Senator Rubio and I have introduced the America INNOVATES Act. Already, our labs have incubated many groundbreaking innovations. Their research has led to breakthroughs from new Melanoma and HIV/ AIDS treatments to IED detonators that can save the lives of our troops in combat. And that research is critical because although the private sector will continue to be a key source of innovation, the Federal Government has and will continue to play a central role in advancing innovation. Why is that? Private markets, historically speaking, tend to underinvest in R&D relative to the potential benefits to society. This is especially true in the energy sector. But, if there is a problem that I have heard since coming to Congress, It is that too often, the great work of our scientists doesn't translate to the marketplace. Right now, too much groundbreaking science and too many innovative ideas never leave the walls of our national labs, squandering enormous potential in the commercial market. Now, in our bill, we continue to support our labs' core mission. We are not proposing anything drastic. What we are doing is modernizing the labs for the 21st century--so ideas in the lab can more effectively become innovations in the market. Luckily, we need only look to the labs themselves for inspiration on how to do this. We make two broad proposals. First we are integrating the management of the Department of Energy's science and energy programs to improve the linkages between basic and applied sciences. This will allow the early stages of research and development to be translated more efficiently, and it is something that Secretary Moniz has signaled he supports and is moving forward on. Second we are giving the national labs more power to work with the private sector to ensure that more scientific discoveries can turn into commercial breakthroughs. Together, these steps would allow us to streamline the labs' work so it can more quickly and effectively translate into the transformative innovations that can create jobs and grow our economy. Now, to explain what our proposals intend to achieve, I will walk through what is known as the innovation pipeline, which shows how basic science research can become a world-changing innovation. First, I will use the example of the great work that scientists at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO, are doing to advance cellulosic ethanol technologies. One of our country's big challenges today is reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and to do that we need new fuel options that we can create here in America. Cellulosic ethanol is an advanced biofuel with a lot of promise because it is produced from abundant materials like grasses and wood chips as well as other types of biomass and waste. And because these materials are so abundant, cellulosic ethanol has the potential to replace a significant portion of our Nation's petroleum consumption. The challenge comes, however, because, unlike corn, these cellulosic materials are made of complex starches that are harder to break down into ethanol. To make the promise of cellulosic ethanol a reality, we needed to develop the enzymes and micro-organisms that could break down and then ferment those complex starches. That is where the innovation pipeline comes in. At the NREL in Colorado, scientists started at this first step here--basic science. Basic science is very fundamental, it is the study of the elementary principles of the universe--really discovery level science. Enzymes are large biological molecules that are nature's catalysts-- accelerating metabolic processes that sustain life. To develop enzymes and micro-organisms capable of converting starchy biomass into cellulosic ethanol, you need to start at the fundamentals of biology and biochemistry. This includes studying the intricate details of the relevant biochemical processes, as well as probing the proteins and amino-acids that form the building blocks of enzymes down to the submolecular level. At this point, scientists can move into the applied science stage of the pipeline. Applied research generally concerns translating those basic, fundamental principles into an application. In this example, scientists apply the insights gained from the fundamental basic science stage to develop new enzymes with desired performance traits such as high selectivity, specificity, and stability to enable effective and efficient conversion of the complex starches into ethanol. Applied research can also include controlled lab-scale demonstrations to test how effectively these newly developed enzymes and micro- organisms can turrijsay, wood chips, into fuel. Still in the lab and far from full commercial scale production, the kinds of small discoveries that happen at the applied science level act as an early demonstration that something new is possible. At the applied research stage, we are still far away from creating something ready for the market, but between these two stages our scientists have gone from the basic science of how an idea may work to actually demonstrating that it could work in practice. At this point now, the private sector is more likely to see its potential value. Our scientists have shown that the technology is possible, and next we move to the commercialization and scaling and deployment phases, where private investors and companies take the technology our lab scientists have developed and make it a product that can succeed in the market. During the applied research stage at NREL, scientists were hard at work showing that they really could produce cellulosic ethanol efficiently and cheaply--eventually meeting their goal to make it price competitive with conventional fuels in today's commercial market. That is where we are right now with cellulosic ethanol. Companies across the country, such as DuPont, Poet, and others, are currently building plants to produce cellulosic ethanol at large scale and at competitive prices. So that is one model of public-private partnerships for innovation-- where the basic and applied science research can begin in the lab and then be transferred to private sector companies who can create a commercial product. I had the opportunity last year to witness another model of public- private partnerships for innovation at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, which is home to the Advanced Light Source, or ALS. The ALS serves thousands of researchers--from private sector scientists to university researchers--who use light sources such as soft xrays, ultraviolet light, and infrared light to conduct a wide range of scientific experiments. Experiments at the ALS are performed at nearly 40 beam lines that can operate simultaneously around the clock and year-round. The facility's resources would be too expensive for any one company to invest in alone, but by building a public facility that then is partly sustained by fees and targeted infrastructure investments by users, the ALS becomes a place where many different partners can come to test new ideas and approaches. In terms of the innovation pipeline, what the Berkeley Lab and its ALS do is allow a diverse range of researchers to engage in various stages of research under one roof. The unique capabilities offered at the ALS also attract many industry partners and encourages productive public-private collaboration. A good example of this is the partnership between the lab and the semiconductor industry. Semiconductor technology is one of the most transformative scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Semiconductors are at the heart of what makes a computer work. Their constant advancement is what allows us today to hold the computing power of last generation's supercomputer in our pockets. However, the manufacturing techniques previously used to produce new, smaller, and more powerful semiconductor products aren't adequate to build the next generation of nano-electronic devices. So what has happened is a consortium of companies including Intel, IBM, HP, and Dow Chemical--called SEMATECH--came together to leverage the unique capabilities at the lab to advance semiconductor manufacturing technology for next-generation electronics. As the lab reports, ``[By] tapping into the Center's long term expertise in short wavelength optics and the unique properties of the ALS Synchotron facility, SEMATECH funded the development of the world's highest resolution projection lithography tool and highest performance [extreme-ultraviolet] microscope''--developments that were only possible because of the facilities and expertise at the lab. Having then developed new tools capable of manufacturing the next generation of semiconductor devices, a company like Intel can take the new technology and scale it up in their own plants. Of course, there are many variations of public private partnerships that our labs can and have utilized to take ideas from the lab to the market. These two examples--cellulosic ethanol and the advancement of semiconductor manufacturing technology--show us what is really possible by working in partnership with our national labs. In our bill Senator Rubio and I are trying to expand the flexibility and freedom of all our labs to innovate and build productive partnerships so that every research project has the potential and opportunity to eventually enter the market. As we see here on the innovation pipeline, the payoff for all this work doesn't come until the very end, so one of the best things we can do is focus our policies to make the movement of ideas through the pipeline as efficient as possible. While there are plenty of areas where Senator Rubio and I disagree, we have come together on the America INNOVATES Act because we both agree that government has a role to play investing in the early scientific research that can lead to innovations that change our world. In this bill, we aren't talking about expanding government or calling for new spending or regulation, we are talking about the early science work that only government can fund because there isn't yet a clear payoff for the private sector and finding out how to connect the national labs and the private sector along this innovation pipeline in a better and stronger way to deliver more products to the American marketplace and the world markets. Once again, I thank my Republican colleague Senator Marco Rubio. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in supporting this bipartisan innovation jobs bill.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise to speak about a bill introduced today--a bipartisan bill--a bill that will strengthen America's innovation economy. Over the last 60 years our national laboratories have served as leading centers of research and discovery in America. Today we have 17 DOE labs charged with three broad research missions: science, energy, and national security. Although they have grown and changed since their founding to encompass much broader ranges of work and are successful in carrying out their primary missions, labs are not fully optimized to take part in today's innovation culture. That is a problem, because in this century of rapid change, America's best competitive advantage remains our capacity to innovate. Over the coming months, I will be talking more about a few things Congress can do to streamline and jumpstart our Nation's hubs of discovery so that we can thrive as a 21st-century innovation economy. At the top level, it will mean reauthorizing the America COMPETES Act to reaffirm our commitment to the robust national strategy for science and technology programs that will continue to be a critical underpinning of American prosperity. And one part of that is how our national labs operate, which is why today Senator Rubio and I have introduced the America INNOVATES Act. Already, our labs have incubated many groundbreaking innovations. Their research has led to breakthroughs from new Melanoma and HIV/ AIDS treatments to IED detonators that can save the lives of our troops in combat. And that research is critical because although the private sector will continue to be a key source of innovation, the Federal Government has and will continue to play a central role in advancing innovation. Why is that? Private markets, historically speaking, tend to underinvest in R&D relative to the potential benefits to society. This is especially true in the energy sector. But, if there is a problem that I have heard since coming to Congress, It is that too often, the great work of our scientists doesn't translate to the marketplace. Right now, too much groundbreaking science and too many innovative ideas never leave the walls of our national labs, squandering enormous potential in the commercial market. Now, in our bill, we continue to support our labs' core mission. We are not proposing anything drastic. What we are doing is modernizing the labs for the 21st century--so ideas in the lab can more effectively become innovations in the market. Luckily, we need only look to the labs themselves for inspiration on how to do this. We make two broad proposals. First we are integrating the management of the Department of Energy's science and energy programs to improve the linkages between basic and applied sciences. This will allow the early stages of research and development to be translated more efficiently, and it is something that Secretary Moniz has signaled he supports and is moving forward on. Second we are giving the national labs more power to work with the private sector to ensure that more scientific discoveries can turn into commercial breakthroughs. Together, these steps would allow us to streamline the labs' work so it can more quickly and effectively translate into the transformative innovations that can create jobs and grow our economy. Now, to explain what our proposals intend to achieve, I will walk through what is known as the innovation pipeline, which shows how basic science research can become a world-changing innovation. First, I will use the example of the great work that scientists at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, CO, are doing to advance cellulosic ethanol technologies. One of our country's big challenges today is reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and to do that we need new fuel options that we can create here in America. Cellulosic ethanol is an advanced biofuel with a lot of promise because it is produced from abundant materials like grasses and wood chips as well as other types of biomass and waste. And because these materials are so abundant, cellulosic ethanol has the potential to replace a significant portion of our Nation's petroleum consumption. The challenge comes, however, because, unlike corn, these cellulosic materials are made of complex starches that are harder to break down into ethanol. To make the promise of cellulosic ethanol a reality, we needed to develop the enzymes and micro-organisms that could break down and then ferment those complex starches. That is where the innovation pipeline comes in. At the NREL in Colorado, scientists started at this first step here--basic science. Basic science is very fundamental, it is the study of the elementary principles of the universe--really discovery level science. Enzymes are large biological molecules that are nature's catalysts-- accelerating metabolic processes that sustain life. To develop enzymes and micro-organisms capable of converting starchy biomass into cellulosic ethanol, you need to start at the fundamentals of biology and biochemistry. This includes studying the intricate details of the relevant biochemical processes, as well as probing the proteins and amino-acids that form the building blocks of enzymes down to the submolecular level. At this point, scientists can move into the applied science stage of the pipeline. Applied research generally concerns translating those basic, fundamental principles into an application. In this example, scientists apply the insights gained from the fundamental basic science stage to develop new enzymes with desired performance traits such as high selectivity, specificity, and stability to enable effective and efficient conversion of the complex starches into ethanol. Applied research can also include controlled lab-scale demonstrations to test how effectively these newly developed enzymes and micro- organisms can turrijsay, wood chips, into fuel. Still in the lab and far from full commercial scale production, the kinds of small discoveries that happen at the applied science level act as an early demonstration that something new is possible. At the applied research stage, we are still far away from creating something ready for the market, but between these two stages our scientists have gone from the basic science of how an idea may work to actually demonstrating that it could work in practice. At this point now, the private sector is more likely to see its potential value. Our scientists have shown that the technology is possible, and next we move to the commercialization and scaling and deployment phases, where private investors and companies take the technology our lab scientists have developed and make it a product that can succeed in the market. During the applied research stage at NREL, scientists were hard at work showing that they really could produce cellulosic ethanol efficiently and cheaply--eventually meeting their goal to make it price competitive with conventional fuels in today's commercial market. That is where we are right now with cellulosic ethanol. Companies across the country, such as DuPont, Poet, and others, are currently building plants to produce cellulosic ethanol at large scale and at competitive prices. So that is one model of public-private partnerships for innovation-- where the basic and applied science research can begin in the lab and then be transferred to private sector companies who can create a commercial product. I had the opportunity last year to witness another model of public- private partnerships for innovation at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, which is home to the Advanced Light Source, or ALS. The ALS serves thousands of researchers--from private sector scientists to university researchers--who use light sources such as soft xrays, ultraviolet light, and infrared light to conduct a wide range of scientific experiments. Experiments at the ALS are performed at nearly 40 beam lines that can operate simultaneously around the clock and year-round. The facility's resources would be too expensive for any one company to invest in alone, but by building a public facility that then is partly sustained by fees and targeted infrastructure investments by users, the ALS becomes a place where many different partners can come to test new ideas and approaches. In terms of the innovation pipeline, what the Berkeley Lab and its ALS do is allow a diverse range of researchers to engage in various stages of research under one roof. The unique capabilities offered at the ALS also attract many industry partners and encourages productive public-private collaboration. A good example of this is the partnership between the lab and the semiconductor industry. Semiconductor technology is one of the most transformative scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. Semiconductors are at the heart of what makes a computer work. Their constant advancement is what allows us today to hold the computing power of last generation's supercomputer in our pockets. However, the manufacturing techniques previously used to produce new, smaller, and more powerful semiconductor products aren't adequate to build the next generation of nano-electronic devices. So what has happened is a consortium of companies including Intel, IBM, HP, and Dow Chemical--called SEMATECH--came together to leverage the unique capabilities at the lab to advance semiconductor manufacturing technology for next-generation electronics. As the lab reports, ``[By] tapping into the Center's long term expertise in short wavelength optics and the unique properties of the ALS Synchotron facility, SEMATECH funded the development of the world's highest resolution projection lithography tool and highest performance [extreme-ultraviolet] microscope''--developments that were only possible because of the facilities and expertise at the lab. Having then developed new tools capable of manufacturing the next generation of semiconductor devices, a company like Intel can take the new technology and scale it up in their own plants. Of course, there are many variations of public private partnerships that our labs can and have utilized to take ideas from the lab to the market. These two examples--cellulosic ethanol and the advancement of semiconductor manufacturing technology--show us what is really possible by working in partnership with our national labs. In our bill Senator Rubio and I are trying to expand the flexibility and freedom of all our labs to innovate and build productive partnerships so that every research project has the potential and opportunity to eventually enter the market. As we see here on the innovation pipeline, the payoff for all this work doesn't come until the very end, so one of the best things we can do is focus our policies to make the movement of ideas through the pipeline as efficient as possible. While there are plenty of areas where Senator Rubio and I disagree, we have come together on the America INNOVATES Act because we both agree that government has a role to play investing in the early scientific research that can lead to innovations that change our world. In this bill, we aren't talking about expanding government or calling for new spending or regulation, we are talking about the early science work that only government can fund because there isn't yet a clear payoff for the private sector and finding out how to connect the national labs and the private sector along this innovation pipeline in a better and stronger way to deliver more products to the American marketplace and the world markets. Once again, I thank my Republican colleague Senator Marco Rubio. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in supporting this bipartisan innovation jobs bill.

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS. Madam President, today, this week, we have come together to consider an omnibus appropriations bill. That is a big mouthful--an omnibus appropriations bill--but I hope to lay out in plain language for our folks back home and for those in this Chamber why that matters, why I am excited about it, and why I support it. This is first time since I joined this body 3 years ago that we have considered one, and it is a real step forward. The agreement we came to on the budget and the agreement I hope we will pass on this appropriations bill means no more shutdowns, no more crises, no more autopilot, at least not for this fiscal year. This bill helps us return to regular order and to the process that, once election day is over, it is our job as the representatives of the people, elected to come together to find common ground, to solve bigger problems together, and to move the Nation forward. This appropriations bill is the result of a lot of hard work by Members and staff. I must begin first and foremost by thanking the Senate Appropriations Committee chair, Senator Mikulski, and the vice chair, Senator Shelby, as well as the House chairman Rogers, and the ranking member, Congresswoman Lowey, who showed great leadership and worked together on a very tight deadline to craft such a vast and comprehensive bill. Their work follows on the leadership of Senator Murray, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, and Congressman Ryan, of the House Budget Committee, after they came together on a bipartisan budget that paved the way for the Appropriations Committee to reach this deal this week. I applaud their leadership and thank them for the example they have set. As a member of both the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee, it has been a privilege to work with them to craft these bills and ensure we meet our Nation's needs. The bill before us is, of course, a compromise. It is the essence of a compromise that it is not perfect by any means. There are many who can find fault within it or disappointments aplenty among choices made or not made. It doesn't include--for example, to pick one thing of great importance to my State--enough funding to make real headway on Amtrak's critical infrastructure improvements that I think are essential--just in dealing with the $6 billion backlog of investments needed in aging tunnels, bridges, and tracks. So while this bill does provide adequate funding for Amtrak today, which I am very pleased about, it puts off those critically needed investments in repairing these essential elements of its infrastructure, which we will inevitably need to make. That is only one example, and in a bill this big there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the tough tradeoffs that had to be made between House and Senate, between the appropriators, and between the majority and the minority. But as we consider our vote on this bill and how it does or doesn't meet our own priorities or our State's priorities, we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to remember that at least in this case the alternative to this bill isn't our own individual or perfect vision of government--whatever view we might hold. The alternative is crisis after crisis, government that doesn't move forward with the country but treads water as the world passes us by in an increasingly competitive global environment. What this bill does in a very real way is bring back some stability to our government, to our economy, and it allows us to make important investments in our country's growth. For instance, it takes a number of valuable steps for my home State of Delaware. It funds meat and poultry inspectors, critical to Delaware's chicken industry and its 13,000 jobs. It funds the next stage of an Army Corps of Engineers project to deepen the Delaware River from 40 to 45 feet so that we are ready and can be competitive when the expansion of the Panama Canal nears completion. It dedicates funding through the Victims of Child Abuse Act--and I am an original cosponsor of a bill reauthorizing the Victims of Child Abuse Act--for the three children's advocacy centers throughout my State. These centers are critical to delivering justice for the victims of child abuse without harming their healing process. The bill maintains funding for the Bulletproof Vest Partnership, an initiative that has supplied Delaware police officers with nearly 1,000 bulletproof vests in the past 2 years. Two of those vests, I should add, saved the lives of two officers during a shooting at the New Castle County Courthouse only last spring. These are only a few of the things for which I am grateful in this broad omnibus bill. Nationally, it also allows us to meet our key priorities of training our workforce for this century, making our communities safer, building a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our society, and, in combination, making us safer, stronger, and more just. The investments it makes in America's workforce by funding education programs can last a lifetime. Head Start Programs ensure kids don't fall behind before they have even had a chance. This bill increases that funding by $1 billion to serve 90,000 more kids this year. There is a competitive grant program to help States and communities find innovative ways to provide high quality preschool options for low- and middle-income families that I am particularly excited about. In Delaware, we saw the power of this program when we competed for-- and won--Federal funding on a competitive basis for high-quality early education only last year. The Department of Education's first in the world initiative will help colleges to measure--and thus improve--outcomes, and it brings down costs for students and families. This bill increased our investment in job training programs such as Job Corps and the Veterans' Employment and Training Service, which help everyone from low-income Americans who failed to get on their feet in the job market to veterans who stood for us around the world and have earned our support upon their return. Next, this bill includes crucial funding that makes our communities safer. We are upping our investment in the COPS program--first championed on this floor by my predecessor Senator Joe Biden. It will put 1,500 more officers on our streets and in our neighborhoods, keeping us safe. The Violence Against Women Act, which we came together in a bipartisan manner to pass last year, is fully funded. We are taking important steps to stop the scourge of gun violence that affects each and every community: a new comprehensive school safety program I am excited about, new investments to improve background checks, and new training to help local law enforcement react and protect the public from active shooters. Of course, the second part of making our communities safer is ensuring that justice is delivered in our courts when crime does happen. Unfortunately, the sequester's cuts to our Federal courts cut the judiciary to the bone, imposing furloughs, and hurting our Nation's justice system by leading to layoffs of hundreds of experienced, seasoned, senior court staff. Yet, thankfully, the bill before us reverses these and many other cuts and will minimize the delays of justice that resulted and that are unacceptable to our Nation. Finally, this bill allows us to build and sustain what I like to call a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our society that reflects our shared commitment to each other. Our most basic values: Investments in the WIC Program, for women, infants, and children, will make sure 87,000 more mothers and children will have the food they need at a vital early stage of development. LIHEAP--or the Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program--ensures that low-income families don't freeze during the coldest months of the year, and this bill's funding increases will ensure 400,000 more houses have this critical assistance. And lastly, when we pass this bill, which I pray we will by week's end, we will reverse the sequester's devastating cuts to housing programs and, as a result, prevent more than 100,000 American families from becoming homeless. Each of these investments in our workforce, in our public safety, and in protection for our most vulnerable, together make up the foundation of a safer, a more just, and a more inclusive society. But when we also combine them with investments in research and innovation and infrastructure, we lay the groundwork for growth and shared prosperity today and tomorrow. After the last 3 years, which in my experience have been mostly defined by bipartisan gridlock--stopgap budgets, crisis governance-- this bipartisan Appropriations bill allows us to create some stability for our Nation and our economy. I think it reminds us we are a nation that is at its best when we are determined to be open to each other's ideas, to hear each other's concerns and criticisms, and to find ways to work together. Although there are plenty of areas where I disagree with my Republican colleagues, as I have gotten to know them over the past 3 years we have found many more areas of common good and common work. Let me briefly mention a few of them as I celebrate what I think is the most important aspect of this bill, which is that it is truly bipartisan. Senator Marco Rubio and I were both elected in 2010 and came to this Chamber at roughly the same time, and we found ways to work together to invest in STEM education and to open pathways to college for young Americans. Senator Hatch and I wrote a bill together called I-Squared-- and we are joined by Senators Klobuchar and Rubio--and this is a bill that helps bring high-skilled workers to our shores and helps invest in STEM education for American citizens. Senator Kirk and I have worked together to create a national manufacturing strategy that focuses our energy and resources on creating manufacturing jobs in America. And just this Monday Senator Roberts of Kansas and I announced our partnership on a new bill to make the research and development tax credit and its funding available to startups and to young innovative companies. There are so many issues where we can work together to invest in our workforce, to protect the public, to sustain this storied circle of protection around the most vulnerable, to invest in long-term economic growth, and to lift up every community and every American. I am incredibly thankful for the leadership of Senators Mikulski and Shelby and the way they displayed that leadership with action through this process, by putting aside their differences and finding common ground. I wish to also close with a note of personal thanks to the countless committee staff on both sides who worked tirelessly throughout the holidays to make this bill a reality. With this Omnibus appropriations bill it is my sincere hope we are putting an end to a cycle of manufactured crises and we are sending to the American people and to our markets and to our communities the message that we can and will work together to confront the many challenges that remain here and in the future. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Madam President, 50 years ago today President Lyndon Johnson challenged a joint session of Congress and the American people to begin a war on poverty. ``Unfortunately,'' President Johnson said, ``many Americans today live on the outskirts of hope. Our task is to replace their despair with opportunity.'' Since President Johnson first issued that call, Congress and our Nation have taken important steps to build and sustain a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our society. That protection is not as complete or as strong as it can or should be, but through programs such as unemployment insurance--which we are considering this week in this Congress--we are more able to catch our neighbors when they fall and support them as they work to get back to their feet. Earlier this week this Senate began debate on whether to extend emergency unemployment insurance for the 3,600 Delawareans and more than 1 million American job seekers whose benefits just expired. It is absolutely critical that we approve this extension. During this fragile but sustained economic recovery, unemployment insurance has been a critical lifeline, one that has prevented millions of unemployed Americans from slipping further, falling into poverty. In 2012, unemployment insurance kept 2.5 million Americans, including 600,000 children, out of poverty. That means without Federal action to extend unemployment insurance, the Nation's poverty rate would have been doubled what it was. These numbers are for 2012, not the height of the recession. So let's be clear about what we are debating when we discuss an unemployment insurance extension. These are long-term benefits for jobless Americans who have been out of work through no fault of their own for more than 26 weeks. When I say through no fault of their own, I mean it. People cannot get benefits if they are fired for cause. As they receive unemployment insurance benefits, they must diligently search for another job. So when we talk about the millions of long-term unemployed Americans, we are talking about folks who were laid off because of the recession, are fighting to get back on their feet, and rely on those benefits to keep their families afloat, to keep a roof over their head, food on the table, their families together, and sustain them as they continue looking for work. Yet 2 weeks ago, funding for long-term emergency unemployment insurance benefits ran out. That meant $300 less weekly income for the average job seeker and that meant $400 million left our economy in just the first week. In Delaware it pulled $877,000 out of our economy. That is money that otherwise would be spent in local grocery stores and our markets. One of the most vexing comments I have heard in the debate over whether to continue these benefits is that they somehow incentivize people to not bother looking for jobs, to not be serious; they instead lull able-bodied Americans into lives of dependency. Given the people I know in Delaware, that is not just absurd, it is, forgive me, offensive. As President Obama said yesterday, it sells the American people short. I have met a lot of people in my years of public service. I have heard from and spoken with Delawareans up and down my State who are relying on unemployment benefits that they paid into when employed. Every one of them would trade a job for not relying on unemployment insurance in a heartbeat. Let me share a few stories of Delawareans who have contacted me and shared how hard this has been for them. Debbie from Middleton, DE, wrote to me that while she is receiving unemployment benefits, she has applied to 156 jobs. She has been interviewed three times. She is 56. She has worked diligently since she was a teenager. She has worked hard. She paid her taxes. She paid into this unemployment insurance system practically her whole life. Yet now when she needs it most, we fail to continue to provide this lifeline of support. Linda from Newark wrote to me that on just $258 a week her family has been barely able to stay afloat. They are doing everything they can to keep up on their bills, to stay current, but even with unemployment insurance they have had to sell some of their family's treasured possessions and goods. She wrote to me: This is no way for anyone to live. It's disheartening and it is difficult to stay motivated to keep searching. Frankly, she said: I am thoroughly fed up with being categorized as someone who lives off the Government by collecting unemployment benefits. I agree with her because, frankly, Linda, you paid into these benefits for years. This is what it is there for. John from Frederica told me he was laid off from the Dover Air Force Base in part because of the sequester and now depends on unemployment benefits while he continues diligently searching for another job. This is a man who is a Navy veteran, was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Yet right now, because of the partisan gridlock in this Congress, we are not there for him and his family. The millions of Americans such as Debbie, Linda, and John in Delaware face a very tough job market. Nationally, for every available job there are three job seekers. The longer someone remains unemployed, the harder it becomes for them to find work. The more their skills are out of date, the more difficult the search becomes and the more they need our support to sustain that job search. I have seen these effects up close and personal in Delaware. In my 3 years as a Senator I have hosted 16 different job fairs to connect Delawareans looking for work with employers looking to hire, and I have been honored to partner with Senator Carper and Congressman Carney in hosting these job fairs. In fact, we are hosting another one in Dover, DE, in just a few weeks. When you listen to unemployed Delawareans and listen to them talk about their struggle, about how hard it is to keep making ends meet and get a job, you get a sense of how important these jobs are for their survival as families and you get a sense of how much more we can and should be doing to tackle long-term unemployment in America. As poverty of opportunity and hope afflicts too many of our communities and darkens the lives of too many of our neighbors, let us not suffer in this Chamber from a poverty of imagination, determination, and ambition. On this issue, which is so fundamental to who we are as a nation and to our service to this body, we cannot give in to complacency and apathy. Fighting poverty is hard, and adapting our economy to the realities of a new era is a challenge we have struggled with for more than a generation. It is hard finding out how to realize an economy with growth that is both strong and more equitable, one that is dynamic and creative and competitive and also has a broad middle class, provides security for working families and leaves no one behind, an economy that invests in the dreams and aspirations of every child, but building that economy is surely one of the most urgent and difficult challenges we face. Doing so requires that we put aside our personal politics and ideologies and come together in areas where, until recently, there has been a broad and bipartisan consensus. I now hear some of my Republican colleagues talk on this floor about the war on poverty, 50 years later, as having been an abject failure. They make sweeping indictments on government action, putting small government ideology ahead of the shared national goal of fighting poverty. But this perspective misses the point. The original war on poverty was made up of a lot of programs, energetic initiatives that worked at every level of government, some that failed but many others that through steady and determined bipartisan work and steady improvement and refinement over the years have become critical, central, and widely valued strands that hold together our social safety net. Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps, unemployment insurance, all of these programs are valued and hold American families together and sustain American job seekers. Bipartisan leaders across the decades have reaffirmed the importance and value of these programs time and time again. These programs, let's remember, are about so much more than lifting people out of poverty. They are about keeping people out of poverty in the first place. We need them to build and strengthen the American middle class, which is one of the greatest legacies of this Nation. As we search for ways to adapt our fight to new times and new challenges, there is no one way to win the war on poverty President Johnson declared 50 years ago. It is not a question of big or small government, Federal or local action. As President Johnson himself said: It will not be a short or easy struggle. No single weapon or strategy will suffice. . . . Poverty is a national problem. . . . But this attack, to be effective, must be organized at the State and local level. . . . For the war on poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House. This was not an ideological call for big, centralized government. It was an all-hands-on-deck call, a moral call, for our Nation to meet a national challenge. Although we have made progress since he first addressed this Congress in 1964, his call to combat poverty remains just as important today, even as our challenges have evolved. We have come a long way since the depths of our own great recession just a few years ago. More than 8 million private sector jobs have been created. There has been more than a three-point drop in the national unemployment rate. We have resurgent energy, housing, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors. Although a few years have passed since our economy sunk to its lowest lows, this crisis remains for those Americans and their families who are still struggling to find a job either for their families' food or to keep a roof over their heads. This week, while we are debating extending emergency unemployment insurance, we should note this is not only obvious and necessary to do, it is the beginning of our real work of sustaining the war on poverty. I am proud to be engaged in bipartisan efforts to strengthen the middle class, to focus on jobs and skills and manufacturing. We have to find bipartisan solutions that engage the private and public sectors, Federal and local governments, in putting our people back to work. While we do that, we cannot forget to continue to insist on a circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our society rather than allowing that valued circle to crumble. We have to remember we are all in this together, that ``there but for the grace of God go I,'' as we see those in our community, in our families who are struggling in this recovery. We know that today it may be our neighbors, tomorrow it may be us. President Johnson called on us to focus on the best of America, the spirit that we hold each other up, the spirit that builds community through mutual sacrifice. As we begin our work in this new year to jump-start our economy and spread hope and opportunity, we must never forget that basic spirit which President Johnson called forth and which has kept this country moving from generation to generation. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privilege of the floor be granted to Julia Sferlazzo for the pendency of this Congress.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor once again to talk about manufacturing jobs. This week, under Senator Amy Klobuchar's leadership, the Joint Economic Committee released a report that thoroughly and thoughtfully lays out why manufacturing jobs have such promise and how Congress can act to help spur manufacturing job creation now and into the future. The report shows that today manufacturing jobs are high-quality jobs, that they pay better than jobs in any other sector in wages and benefits, and that they help create more local service sector jobs, that they contribute more to the local economy, and that manufacturers invest the most in private sector R&D of any sector in our country. Manufacturing, as the Presiding Officer well knows, has long played an important role in our Nation's economy, has served as our economic backbone, and has built the American middle class. But over the past 60 years, manufacturing in our country has changed, gradually and then dramatically. As our economy and the world have changed, so has the nature of manufacturing and the playing field on which we can and must compete. Due to global competition and the worst recession since the Great Depression, we lost 6 million manufacturing jobs in the United States in the first decade of this century. We are now on our way back, but we are well short of where we were in 2000. We have gained 550,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 3 years, and that gives me real hope. In just the last 6 months, we have seen new signals that our manufacturing sector continues to be on the rebound. A new report from the Institute for Supply Management shows the U.S. manufacturing sector grew last month at its fastest pace in 2\1/2\ years, and hiring has reached an 18-month high. The value of our manufacturing exports has grown 38 percent in the last 4 years, and those exports now account for nearly 3 million jobs on American shores. But, as the Presiding Officer and I well know and as many of our colleagues know, we need to invest more in that success and in that growth, in the private sector and in the public sector. Overall, this is great news, about the slow, but real, steady recovery of our manufacturing sector. The reason we are coming back is the United States is actually poised to compete in advanced manufacturing, in the manufacturing economy of this century. In the 21st century, manufacturing is fundamentally different than it was in our past. Rather than repeating the same simple tasks over and over, workers must now carry out far more complex and varying tasks. They need to be critical thinkers and problem solvers. They have to do math and communicate with each other in writing and as a team and work in ways simply not expected 20 or 30 years ago. Crucially, they need to understand the entire manufacturing process in a way that wasn't necessary before. Yes, there are machines doing a lot of work, but we need workers who can oversee them and understand them to keep our steady, growing benefits to increase productivity. Manufacturers can't rely on someone from outside our country to fix a problem every time there is one. Today they rely on their workers to troubleshoot on the fly. Our workers need to continue to be some of the most productive in the world and, to do that, they need to be more skilled than ever, particularly because they are overseeing highly complex operations. The manufacturing floor today, as this report reminds us, is no longer the dirty, dingy, dangerous manufacturing workplace of 150 years ago. Today it is clean, high tech, highly productive, and it needs a highly skilled workforce. We can win by training our workers for these jobs. While some nations engage in a race to the bottom on environmental labor and wage standards, this isn't the playing field we can or should try to win. Fortunately, we already have the tools to lead the way in manufacturing, in an innovation-centered economy. This Joint Economic Committee report outlines how low-energy costs, due to greatly expanded natural gas supplies, a highly skilled workforce relative to much of the rest of the world, and having still the world's best universities, all in combination give us a real fighting chance. American manufacturing, I am convinced, is poised for a takeoff. Now we have this report from the Joint Economic Committee which shows us just that. It shows why we should remain optimistic about American manufacturing, if we can simply in this body harness the will to act. This report frankly lays out a lot of why we have created Manufacturing Jobs for America. Manufacturing Jobs for America is a campaign. It is a campaign to build support for good manufacturing legislation that Democrats and Republicans can agree on. So far, 26 Democratic Senators have come together to contribute 44 bills to a conversation; 31 of those bills have already been introduced in this body, and almost half of them have bipartisan cosponsors. We are actively seeking Republican cosponsors on the rest. Our goal overall is to generate more and work more closely with Republicans to build consensus for bills that can pass the Senate, pass the House, and go to the White House to become law. We want to see manufacturing bills that can really help put Americans back to work. I am grateful for the leadership of Senator Debbie Stabenow who, along with her cochair, Senator Lindsey Graham, led the bipartisan manufacturing caucus that is helping take great ideas and bills generated through this initiative and turn them into solid, bipartisan bills. This Joint Economic Committee report emphasizes that there are four key areas where we have to focus to create manufacturing jobs now and in the future and they are exactly the areas that the Manufacturing Jobs for America initiative centers on as well. First, we have to strengthen America's workforce. Second, we have to fight for a more level global playing field so we can open markets abroad and compete successfully. Third, we need to make it easier for manufacturers--especially new and small businesses--to access capital, to invest in research and development as well as new equipment and products. Fourth, we can and should do more to ensure a coordinated, all-of-government effort in supporting manufacturing by insisting on a stronger, clearer national manufacturing strategy. Together, across these four areas, the bills in Manufacturing Jobs for America can have a real and substantial impact if they become law. I believe in the power of this initiative because I have seen the potential of manufacturing up close. In my time in the private sector, I developed a fierce belief in how we can and must act here in Washington to support and spur American private sector manufacturing. Before I came here, much of my work in the private sector was at a manufacturing company, a materials-based science company that makes hundreds of products. At one point I was part of a site location team that had to decide where to locate a new state-of-the-art semiconductor chip packaging manufacturing plant. What made the difference? In the ultimate decision it was first and foremost we needed a skilled and reliable workforce. Second, we wanted the State, county, and city governments to be responsive and have made investments in infrastructure. While we also of course considered tax credits and training grants, the first two really were the main factors--the skills and capabilities of the workforce at all levels and the responsiveness of the local government, the State government, and the Federal Government in investing in infrastructure. This experience taught me two things: that the advanced manufacturing sector can thrive in the United States--that facility was located in America, not overseas; and there is a critical role for government to play. So if this Congress makes a concerted, across-the-board push to help create manufacturing jobs in America, I am convinced we can lay a strong foundation for growth today and tomorrow. The opportunity is there, just in front of us. We just need to stop the endless partisan struggles that have dominated this Congress in the last few years and seize the very real, very positive opportunity in front of us--to lay out a bipartisan path forward to strengthen the manufacturing sector in our country. Together, we can keep our factories humming and lead the way in new industries in the future. We just need the political will to try. That is what this effort, Manufacturing Jobs for America, is all about. I am so grateful to Senator Klobuchar and the Joint Economic Committee for the Manufacturing Jobs for The Future report and for the vision it lays out, and I appreciate the effort of all of my colleagues who contributed great and strong and clear ideas to this Manufacturing Jobs for America initiative. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum be rescinded.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. I came to speak to a bipartisan bill which I hope to take a few minutes to talk about, but first I wish to comment on what is happening or not happening on the floor and the comments of the majority leader. I have been a Senator for only 3 years, as the Presiding Officer well knows. We were sworn in as a group of those elected to the class of 2010. I just came from an inspiring event where the Vice President, who previously held this seat on behalf of Delaware, gave an award to the former majority leader, a real patriot, a veteran, former Senator Bob Dole. They talked about how compromise, principled compromise, made it possible for Senator McGovern and Senator Dole, folks from opposite ends of the political spectrum, to work together in the interests of hungry children in the United States. Frankly, what I have seen in the 3 years that I have been in the Senate, the 3 years that we have served together on the Judiciary Committee, has been a slow walk. There are minority rights in this body, but there are also minority responsibilities. There are majority rights but also majority responsibilities. I wish to add to the comments of the majority leader that the nominees to serve on the DC Circuit, the nominees to many district court seats, whose confirmations I have either presided over or attended, were not objected to on substantive grounds. I have trouble with the idea that the three empty seats on the DC Circuit do not need to be filled. I have listened at great length to the arguments about caseload and about workload. As the chair of the courts subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, I presided over the presentation of the Judicial Conference's report on where we need additional judgeships and where we don't. I will note briefly and in passing that Judge Tymkovich, who presented this report, did not suggest there was some need to reduce the DC Circuit by eliminating these currently vacant spots. We could go through this chapter and verse. This has been debated to death on this floor. In my view, we have three excellent, qualified candidates. I regret that we have spent so much time burning the clock and that we have had to make changes that ultimately will make it possible for qualified nominees to be confirmed. It is, to me, a subject of some deep concern that we cannot work better together, Republicans and Democrats, to move work forward. If I might, I would like to move for a moment to an example of exactly the sort of bipartisan bill that we should be able to move to here, that if there weren't this endless obstruction, if we weren't running out the clock on nothing, we might be able to get done together. This is an example of the sort of reaching across the aisle that used to dominate this body when giants such as Dole and McGovern served here but is no longer the case. They are no longer the daily diet of this body. We are no longer reaching across the aisle and finding ways to make our country more competitive, create more manufacturing jobs in partnership with the private sector, and responsibly reduce our deficit. I was encouraged as a member of the budget conference committee that we seemed to be moving toward enacting a significant--small in scale but significant in its precedence--deal for the Budget Committee that could allow us to go back to regular order for appropriations. But here, as we waste hour after hour running out the clock to confirm nominees, I wonder. I wonder whether we are going to be able to take up, consider, and pass substantive legislation.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Tom Carper, Congressman John Carney and myself, I rise today to recognize the Aetna Hose Hook & Ladder Company and its many volunteers and leadership who, on December 17, 2013, will celebrate the 125th anniversary of the company's founding in 1888. For more than a century, Aetna has provided exemplary firefighting and lifesaving services for residents of Newark, DE. From its humble beginnings at the turn of the century, when the company consisted of a simple, hand-drawn hose cart, the Aetna Hose Hook & Ladder Company has grown to incorporate 5 stations, 17 trucks, and hundreds of members dedicated to ``service for others.'' Prior to 1888, residents were forced to combat fires on their own, until a fire in a woolen mill resulted in the loss of 800 jobs. The disaster prompted the town council to call for the creation of a town fire company. Founded on December 17, 1888 at a meeting of 30 town citizens, Aetna Hose Hook & Ladder Company's first leadership group included John A. Mullin as chairman, Isaac J. Moore as secretary, William H. Simpers as president, and Joseph T. Willis as foreman--the 19th century term for fire chief. Dues for active members began at $1, while contributing members paid $2 per year. The company was incorporated on December 13, 1889, with 57 charter members. During its humble first years, Aetna's fire alarm system consisted of ringing Catholic Church, academy and college bells. In 1893, the company purchased its first hose carriage and in 1901, it received its first $250 appropriation from the town of Newark, prompting a celebratory parade. The fire company soon became an integral part of the Newark community, hosting banquets, carnivals, and bingo nights to raise money for equipment and firefighting gear. Formed in 1949, the Aetna Ladies Auxiliary has provided unwavering support for the company's members, from fundraising to providing hot meals for firefighters and their guests. Today, Aetna is proud to be home to more than 20 highly decorated firefighters, EMS, and EMT members. Recent citations include Heroic EMT of the Year to Jeff Evans, Eric Barsky, Paul Testa, Steve Walls, and Garland Church, and Lt. John P. Murphy; EMT of the Year to Rob ``Dusty'' Sweetman, Joshua Rainey, Michael Shao, Kevin Eichinger, Theodorica Cenizal, Ann Gillespie, Arman Fardanesh, Laurel Petchel, and Melanie Patnaude; and Lifetime Achievement in EMS Awards to Diane Silverman, E. David Bailey, and Gene Niland. Aetna is also the home to 12 EMS Top Responders, including 4-time winner Eric B. Barsky. The Delaware congressional delegation is proud to recognize the Aetna Hose Hook & Ladder Company and its team of first responders for 125 years of honorable service to the community of Newark, DE.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak on the tragedy, on the ongoing crisis of sexual assault in our Armed Forces and what I believe we must do. There are several options before us, each of which has been the subject of lengthy and passionate debate, a debate that I think is healthy, and needed, and welcome here in this Chamber. I commend my many colleagues--Chairman Levin and Senator Inhofe, Senator McCaskill and Senator Ayotte--for the very real progress, the very significant steps taken both in the base bill, the NDAA, and in the amendments to be offered by Senators McCaskill and Ayotte, serious and important steps forward to protect victims, to ensure that commanders are held accountable and to criminalize retaliation. A wide range of important and significant reforms that will make real progress towards addressing the ongoing decades-old scourge of sexual assault in the United States military. As was said recently on the floor by another of my colleagues, this disagreement today is over one of more than a dozen important and needed reforms. But in the end, we have to decide. I believe the measure offered by Senator Gillibrand of New York, of which I am a cosponsor, is the right additional path forward. Because at the end, here is the bottom line: Sexual assault has been a disease, a corrosive and widespread and horribly negative influence on our military that has simply not been effectively treated. I think this significant, dramatic step is the needed driver for extensive reform. I understand that the chain of command is essential, that it is central to the proper functioning and order of the military, especially during war time. In fact, the chain of command is nearly sacred. But ensuring that our spouses and our siblings and our children can serve with honor and not have to face another enemy within our ranks is sacred. This is, in the end, a debate about justice--justice within our own Armed Forces, justice so we can fulfill that sacred duty of protecting men and women in uniform as well as they protect us. Despite many years of good-faith efforts by leaders in our Armed Forces to work within the parameters of our current system, literally tens of thousands of sexual assaults are still occurring annually within our Armed Forces. That is, frankly, unacceptable and it reflects a fundamental breakdown in order and discipline that in my view we cannot tolerate anymore. The current system, in this important and vital way, is failing. I understand the intense desire our leaders feel to fix what was broken and for our military leaders to atone for taking their eyes off the ball, to paraphrase the testimony of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But, once again, this debate is not about them, about their commitment or about their strategy or about their determination. It is about justice. In America, justice must be blind. Whether someone receives it or not should not depend on the fact of whether or not he or she serves in the military rather than in other workplaces. We know the chilling facts, that according to the Department of Defense's own Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, 50 percent of female victims state they did not report the crime in the first place because they believed nothing would be done, and one-quarter or 25 percent who received unwanted sexual contact indicated the offender was in their chain of command. In my view, we strengthen our military when victims of sexual assault have the confidence to come forward and to report crimes and when we remove fear and stigma from the process. We strengthen our military when we are able to deliver fair and impartial justice on behalf of victims. When we know the military chain of command in this one area is failing, we should not continue to tolerate an exception we would not make in other settings. I came to this decision with great reluctance, recognizing as many in my family have, that the importance of the chain of command, the importance of respecting the unique and different traditions and structures of the military is something that we should only come to with great hesitation. One of the responsibilities of serving in the Senate that I take seriously is my annual responsibility to review and approve candidates for the military academies who are selected by my independent military academy advisory board, and personally calling the top candidates to inform them that they will be the ones--of the dozens and dozens of highly qualified competitors, they will be the ones selected to go to the Merchant Marine Academy, the Air Force Academy; to Annapolis, the United States Naval Academy, or to the U.S. Military Academy, to West Point. This is a moving experience each of the 3 years I have had the chance to do this. But this past year, the three top candidates for West Point, for Annapolis or for the Air Force Academy were all women-- impressive, compelling, determined to serve our Nation. Meeting with them and their families, the nervous and proud parents of these confident cadet candidates is also a great annual experience. It reminds me always of my responsibility to them. I promised their parents that we will support and respect them and their service. When we speak to the cadets and thank them for their willingness to serve, I am reminded we have a responsibility to not send them into an institution where they will face threats that we can and should address. I believe I have a responsibility to send them into an institution I know is well equipped to respond strongly and swiftly to threats to their safety. Yet, today, I am not able to uphold that responsibility because we have not protected our men and women in uniform from sexual assault. I thought of my picks for the service academies when I heard another Senator say to General Dempsey that the Senator would not advise a parent to encourage his or her daughter to join the military. What made this decision difficult for me to join Senator Gillibrand on this particular amendment was an unfortunate, tragic case. Last spring while I was trying to decide which path to follow on this bill, my office received a gut-wrenching call from the father of a young woman serving honorably in our military. He was calling against his daughter's wishes, and only as a desperate last resort. She had been the victim of sexual assault and, as so many others, reported it to her commanding officer up the chain of command. As so many others, her case went nowhere. Her by-the-book reporting and patient waiting for results was met with delays, excuses, and nonresponse. Ultimately, during these repeated delays, she was physically assaulted after she had warned leadership she feared for her safety. We took action and, ultimately in this instance, justice was done. A chain of command such as that isn't strengthening unit cohesion and morale, it is harming it. After this particularly troubling case, I made a decision to join Senator Gillibrand as a cosponsor, to say to all of us, how can we accept this? How can this situation that has gone on for years be tolerated? How can we justify the status quo? I am grateful for the leadership of the many Senators on the Armed Services Committee and throughout this body who have taken real steps to add significant improvements to the UCMJ and to the code that underlies our military and the requirements for leadership in the service to take on and tackle these very real problems of sexual assault in the military. In my view, taking decisions out of the chain of command should only be done under the most serious of circumstances, but that is exactly what we have. We wouldn't find justice if this was the way that any other workplace in America operated. How can we argue that we have justice today for these thousands of victims in our military? The men and women who dedicate themselves to keeping us safe and protecting our rights deserve equal dedication on our part to their safety and to those same rights. I wish to speak about three bills I am offering as amendments to the NDAA that all relate to a topic I have spoken to many times on the floor, to manufacturing and manufacturing jobs. The first is the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act, a bill I introduced last week with Illinois Senator Mark Kirk. It enjoys the support of the Presiding Officer, as well as Senator Blunt and Senator Stabenow. It is a simple but important objective, to require the creation of a national manufacturing strategy. We need to know our country's direction as we try to support the growth in manufacturing. We have grown more than half a million manufacturing jobs in the last 3 years, an encouraging sign, but one we need to strengthen and support with a coordinated strategy between the Federal Government, State governments, and private sector to align all our investments in research and development, new skills, and new infrastructure, to make sure they are all heading in the right direction. Our leading competitors all have successful and well- deployed national manufacturing strategies. Whether Germany, China, India, South Africa, or Russia, they have all thoroughly developed, deeply researched, and prominently successful strategies, which we lack. Our amendment would require that every 4 years the Secretary of Commerce, advised by a board of 15 different folks, pull together and think through, research, and then deliver a national manufacturing strategy. This amendment is bipartisan, simple, does not cost the Federal Government a dime and doesn't create a new program, Like the next two amendments I will speak about, it is a commonsense measure that I hope we will adopt. Secondly, I wish to speak to an amendment I am cosponsoring with Congressman Blunt to ensure small businesses are not subject to conflicting guidance from Federal agencies. In the 1970s Congress passed a measure for the Small Business Administration to ensure that small businesses that get contracts from the government aren't actually fronts for much larger companies. Last year we passed similar but distinctly different rules for the Department of Defense. Most of the time these two sets of rules can peaceably coexist, but in a few cases they come into conflict, creating significant compliance difficulties for very small business. This amendment would say that when both sets of rules apply to a small business contract, the SBA rules would apply, while DOD rules would not. This amendment is bipartisan, has no cost, and will help small businesses focus on effectively delivering products and services without worrying about compliance. Last, I wish to speak about an amendment I am cosponsoring with Senator Booker of New Jersey to ensure that our defense and intelligence communities maintain their vital technological edge. This is an important measure that would create more opportunities to train America's best talent and pave the way to new innovations. Recently, the commission on R&D in the U.S. Intelligence Committee reviewed our current and future R&D capacity to support our intelligence community's vital work. Their unclassified report shows, in fact, that we have insufficient funding and a critical deficiency of human capital, of skilled workers, and the cutting-edge thinkers we need in this area. Specifically, for one example it said we may not have the kind and number of people we need to build the next generation of satellites to gather and process the intelligence upon which our national security relies. There is currently a program run by the Department of Defense designed to address one element of this problem. It is called the Science, Mathematics & Research for Transformation Scholarship Program, or the SMART Scholarship Program. This amendment calls on the Secretary of Defense to report back to Congress on two things: Whether the SMART Scholarship Program, or similar fellowship and scholarship programs, are, in fact, providing the necessary number of undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math to meet the recommendations of the commission's report, and to recommend how those programs can be concretely improved. Those amendments have already passed the House of Representatives by a voice vote and would be an important if small step toward paving the way toward job creation and ensuring our national security now and into the future. I urge my colleagues to support these amendments. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate on these important issues. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Bryan Stephan, an intern in my office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.