Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, the legislation on the floor of the Senate is the FAA reauthorization bill. Senator Rockefeller is here, Senator Hutchison has been here, and we are working now, trying to find a way to move the legislation. It has attracted a lot of amendments that have nothing at all to do with the subject. It is as if some believe this is not urgent or important. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. There is an urgency to this legislation. I know it is not, perhaps, the highest profile legislation in the Congress these days, but we have a requirement to reauthorize the activities of the FAA. We have now failed to do that and instead had to extend their authorization 11 successive times. But because we extend it, we then do not improve the authorization and do the things that are necessary for improving airline safety, the things that are necessary to include the passenger bill of rights which is in this bill, airport improvement funds, and particularly modernization of the air traffic control system. I mentioned yesterday the urgency of moving on what is called NextGen; that is, next-generation air traffic control. In this country, we now fly to ground-based radar. We have all of these airplanes in the sky. Most of them have a transponder or something that puts a mark on a controller's screen somewhere in an air traffic control sector, and it says, this is where the airplane is. Well, that is technically right at that nanosecond, that is where the airplane is, but instantly thereafter the airplane is somewhere else, and for the next 7 seconds or so, as the sweep of the radar occurs, that airplane, particularly if it is a jet, is long gone from that little spot. So because we do not know exactly where the airplane is-- we know about where the airplane is--we have routes that are flown that are much less direct than they should be. We use more fuel than we should. Rather than have direct flights, we cost the passengers time and we pollute the air by keeping that airplane in the sky longer because we cannot fly direct routes because we do not fly by GPS. Our children can operate by GPS with their cell phones, but we cannot fly or we do not fly a system of GPS. We fly a system of ground-based radar for our navigation, and that has been around forever. I mentioned yesterday the circumstances of being able to control air traffic in this country. When people began to learn how to fly and they started flying airplanes and figured out they could make money by carrying the mail, they could only do that when the Sun was up because they could not figure out how to fly at night. So they started building bonfires, and then they would fly to a bonfire, put a big- old bonfire out there 50 miles away and fly to a bonfire and then land. Then they put up light stanchions with the lights into the air so they could fly toward the lights. Then they invented radar. Then they fly based on and guided by ground-based radar. But we are way beyond ground-based radar right now. That is what we still use. But you do not drive a car out here with ground-based radar; you drive a car with GPS. Talk about all of the people who are driving their vehicles using this little monitor--that is GPS. Your kids have GPS on their cell phones, but if you are on a 757 with 250 people behind the cockpit flying from Washington, DC, to Seattle, you are not flying by GPS because they do not have the technology, they do not have the equipage in the planes, in most cases, and they do not have the capability on the ground through the FAA to convert from ground-based radar to GPS and something called Next Generation, modernization of the air traffic control system. If we pass this legislation, finally, at long last, we will move in that direction aggressively. I have met with the Europeans and others who are moving aggressively on Next Generation, and we just keep extending--11 times--the FAA reauthorization bill. So we bring it to the floor. It includes safety, which I will talk about in a moment, it includes investment in the airport infrastructure in this country, which means jobs, putting people back to work. But we bring the bill to the floor at long last, I think 3 years after it should have been done but we could not do it because it got extended. Now we have amendments that have nothing at all to do with this-- earmark moratoriums, discretionary spending limits, school vouchers for Washington, DC, coastal impact programs for drilling. They do not have the foggiest thing to do with the bill that is on the floor of the Senate, which is why it is so hard to get things done. I have often said, you know, the difference between a glacier and the Senate is at least you can see a glacier move from time to time. It is so hard to get things done. And this is a demonstration of it right now. People come trotting to the floor of the Senate and say: Oh, we are working on aviation safety. You know what. Why don't I offer an amendment on something that has nothing to do with it at all and then go back to my office. It is unbelievable to me. Let me talk for a moment about safety because that also represents the urgency in this bill. I chaired the hearing--several of them now--on the tragic crash that occurred in Buffalo, NY, 1 year ago. It took 50 lives--the captain, the copilot, flight attendants, passengers, and 1 person died on the ground. This is a case where, when we investigate it, as we have, a lot of things went wrong. We have a very safe system, very few accidents, but if you investigate what happened that night flying into Buffalo, NY, you understand we are not far away from another accident unless we fix some of these things. Here is a Dash 8 airplane, propeller airplane, flying at night in icy conditions in the winter, about to land in Buffalo, NY. Here is what we have learned. I don't know whether it is just this case, just this cockpit, just this airplane, but I doubt it. What we learned is the captain of the plane had not slept in a bed 2 nights previous. The copilot had not slept in a bed the night before. Two people in the cockpit had not slept in a bed the night before the flight. Why? The copilot flew from Seattle all the way to Newark to be at the duty station because that is where she went to work. She flew all night long on a plane that stopped in Memphis to get to the duty station. This is a young woman making between $20,000 and $23,000 a year in salary. Do we think a young pilot making $20,000 or $23,000-- which raises another question about compensation, low compensation--do we think that person, if that person travels all night, is going to have the money to pay for a hotel? I don't think so. Two people in that cockpit flying at night in the winter with icing conditions. We now know that what are supposed to be sterile conditions in the cockpit, speaking only below 10,000 feet and only about what is happening with that airplane, that sterile condition was violated repeatedly, talking about other things, careers and so on. We know now there was a training deficiency with respect to the issue of the stick push and the stick shaker which engaged when the icing became significant. We now know that the most wanted list of airline safety requirements from the NTSB, they have had on their most wanted list several things that deal with fatigue, with icing that have been there for 10, 15 years. All of these things come together and raise questions about how do you fix this, how do you make sure this doesn't happen again. I am not suggesting that regional airlines are unsafe, although I think evidence suggests that the most recent crashes have been regional carriers. There are questions about the number of hours required to be able to sit in the right seat on a regional carrier. There are questions about whether the majors that hire a regional carrier to carry passengers have some responsibility for that. I believe they should. But when someone gets on a regional carrier, which carries 50 percent of the passengers in the country, all they see is the fuselage and the marking that says United, Continental, Delta, USAIR. That is all they see. But that may not be the company that is transporting them. It may be a very different company, a regional airline company. The question is, that trunk carrier whose brand exists on the fuselage, have they required the same set of standards? Is there one level of safety? That is a requirement dating back at the time in the mid-1990s, one level of safety. When you step on an airplane, you should have the opportunity to believe that in that cockpit, on that plane, with the training and so on, there is one level expected. I think this crash in Buffalo raises serious questions about whether that exists. I had a chart that describes a combination of a couple of issues. One is duty time. The other is fatigue. The third is commuting. In this case, with this tragedy, I want to show what has occurred. It requires us to address this issue. I want to show a chart that shows Colgan Air pilots. This could be a chart of virtually any airline, the major carriers or the regional carriers. What it shows is where the Colgan pilots were commuting from in order to get to the work station at Newark, living in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and commuting to work all the way across the country. It is not unusual. Commuting has been going on for a long time. But the issue of commuting is a reasonable issue for us to try to understand and do something about. It also relates to the issue of fatigue. Do you think in that cockpit on that airplane, with a pilot who hadn't slept in a bed for 2 nights and a copilot that hadn't slept in a bed the night previous, there was not fatigue? It seems pretty unlikely that that group was not fatigued. We don't in this bill address the issue of commuting. Randy Babbitt, the FAA Administrator, now has sent to OMB a rulemaking on fatigue which is important. My point is, this crash, this tragedy a year ago raised so many questions. You can make the point that this is a very safe system. All of us fly all the time. Most every weekend we get on airplanes believing that we are being transported safely. I am not trying to scare anybody to say that is not the case. I am saying you can decide to ignore some of the things we have discovered about the Colgan crash, but we do that at our risk, at the risk of reducing that margin of safety. Here is what a pilot said in a Wall Street Journal article on the subject. This is an 18-year veteran pilot describing the routine of commuter flights with short layovers in the middle of night: Take a shower, brush your teeth, then pretend you slept. An important issue for those who fly airplanes, an important issue in terms of the question, are pilots fatigued? This shows a pilot watching a movie on his computer at a crash house in Sterling Park, VA. It houses up to 20 to 24 occupants and is designed to give flight crews from regional airlines a quiet place to sleep near their base. Many can't afford hotels. The copilot made between $20,000 and $23,000 a year. That was her salary. She had a part-time job working at a coffee shop. She got on the airplane in Seattle to fly to Newark to begin her workday because that is where her duty station was. She flew all night long to do it. The fact is, crews who are making that amount of money, particularly those who are flying right seat in an airplane, did not have the funding to get a motel room. My point is, Senator Rockefeller and I and others have worked on this FAA reauthorization bill to try to address a wide range of issues. This is one, the issue of safety. In addition, the captain of this plane had failed a number of different exams along the way to getting accredited. But the airline that hired the pilot was not able to have the information to understand that. This legislation changes that. This airline has said: Had we known about the failure of those exams, this pilot would not have been hired. But he was because the company didn't know. This legislation fixes that. If you want to hire a pilot, you know everything there is to know about the record of that pilot. My point is, Senator Rockefeller and I, Senator Hutchison and others, have brought this bill to the floor of the Senate at long last hoping that perhaps we can get a bill passed. There is an urgency here with respect to safety and other things. I hope Senator Rockefeller and others can expect some cooperation. It is very hard to get cooperation here on the floor of the Senate, but if ever there is something we might decide to cooperate on, how about making certain there is an extra margin of safety in the skies by passing legislation that addresses, among other issues, aviation safety. If we do that, we will give the American people some measure of confidence on this important subject. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first of all, I am pleased with the work the chairman and ranking member of the Commerce Committee have done. I am chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee and have worked closely with them to produce a piece of legislation that I think is bipartisan, is a very important and urgent piece of legislation that will strengthen this country's system of air travel. I want to talk some about that today. A couple of things this legislation will do. I am not going to repeat everything my colleagues have said, but it will advance aviation safety, which I think is very important. It will accelerate the modernization of the air traffic control system. It is going to support jobs by investing in aviation infrastructure; that is, airports and runways and the kinds of functions that accommodate our air travel system. It will ensure that our rural communities in States such as North Dakota, my home State, have continued access to the Nation's aviation system. So I am very pleased with this bill. Since the last FAA reauthorization bill expired in 2007, the Congress has passed 11 separate extensions of this law. There was a suggestion that we pass another 1-year extension, which I opposed. We do not need to extend this; what we need to do is pass new authorizing legislation that addresses the fundamental issues that we need to address with respect to air travel in this country. The Federal Aviation Administration is charged with operating what I think is the world's most complex airspace system in the world. By and large, they do an outstanding job. The United States has the safest skies in the world. There is no question about that. But we have seen changes in the aviation industry, in the airline industry, that have impacted safety, and we need to take action to deal with and address it. The FAA predicts that air travel in this country will increase by 50 percent in the coming decade. That brings it to probably 1 billion passengers a year. That is a big system, a system that is very strained at this point. As the economy recovers, we will see substantial increases in demand. As we do that, we desperately need to modernize this system. Let me describe the circumstances of commercial air travel, and then I am also going to talk about general aviation. I learned how to fly many years ago. I was not much of a pilot, so I did not keep it up. But I learned how to take off in an airplane and go fly up someplace and land. It is an extraordinary feeling. It is one of those moments in life that you never forget, when your instructor gets out of the plane and says: All right, now you go fly the airplane by yourself. When you take off wearing this metal suit with an engine, you think: Oh, my gosh, it is pretty unbelievable to be able to fly an airplane. General aviation, people flying their own planes around for recreation, for business, is a very important part of our air travel system. I wish to talk about that at another time during this discussion. Commercial aviation is the companies that put together the structure, the capital and the airplanes and then haul people around the country and the world at scheduled times and places. That is very important. It is significant that in many areas of our country now, such as in my home State, Bismarck, ND, when you go out and see that strip of runway, maybe 6,000, maybe 8,000, maybe 10,000 feet of runway, you are one stop away from anyplace in the world. Because you take off on that runway and one stop later change a plane and go to South America, go to Europe, go to Asia, you are one stop away from the world. That is what air travel has done for us. It is extraordinary. Go back to the origins of commercial air travel. Airplanes were used originally to haul the mail. Go all the way back to December 17, 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright left the ground for the first time. It was only 59 seconds, but what an extraordinary achievement. They learned to fly. They didn't just learn to fly that day. They had tried 700 times, again and again and again and again, continually failing until one day at Kitty Hawk the engine took hold. The pilot was lying on the fuselage of this rickety-looking structure, and they flew above the ground in powered human flight for 59 seconds. It was quite an extraordinary achievement. It was not too long after that, having decided we can shape a wing that can allow us, with power, to escape gravity and fly, we were flying in combat. American pilots were in Europe flying in combat. We began flying mail with commercial airplanes. Then you could only fly during the daytime because you couldn't see at night. So you couldn't fly an airplane at night because where would you land. As they began to haul the mail, what they began to do was to build bonfires every 50 miles or 100 miles, big old fires. Then a pilot could fly in the dark of night toward a fire and land. So you hauled the mail at night. Then when they decided they could do something better, they put up light stanchions and shined lights into the sky. So the pilot would fly to the lights flashing into the sky. Then they invented radar. Then you have ground-based radar so we can determine here is an airplane in the sky. We can direct that airplane and put a light on the runway. All that changed air travel 24 hours a day, during the daylight hours but also at night. Ground-based radar was extraordinary. So if you get up in an airplane today, there is going to be a control tower someplace. In your cockpit, you will have perhaps a transponder. Your cockpit from that airplane is going to send a signal. You have 125 people who are riding in the back, and you are sending a signal that goes to a control tower and is on a screen. It is a little dot on the screen that blinks, and that is your airplane, except all that does is say: Here is where that airplane is right this nanosecond. But in the next nanosecond, that airplane is somewhere else, especially if it is a jet. All we know is, at this moment, the airplane is here, and for the next 7 or 8 seconds, as the sweep goes around on the monitor, that airplane is somewhere else, perhaps 1 mile, perhaps 8 miles away, but the airplane is somewhere else. We know about where an airplane is based on ground-based radar. Because we don't know exactly where it is, we space those airplanes for safety and have them fly certain routes for safety. Contrast that ground-based radar with your child. Your child has a cell phone. If your child has the right cell phone at this moment--and there are cell phones with this technology--your child can ask 10 of their best friends, do you want to track each other of our whereabouts with GPS. If the friends say yes, 10 of them could decide to link up with cell phones and figure out where their friend Mary is or where Lester is, and the GPS will tell them exactly where Mary and Lester are because they have their phones with them, so we know exactly where they are. Our kids can do that with GPS with cell phones. We don't do it yet with commercial airliners. Isn't that unbelievable? That is what this is about, modernization, next-generation air traffic control, ground- based radar to GPS. It is complicated. It is difficult. But it is where we are going. We are not going there in the next 20, 30, 40 years. We want to go there soon. I have met with the Europeans and others. They are moving in exactly the same direction. Here is what it will allow us to do. If we know exactly where an airplane is, as we know where a car is with GPS--a lot of people have GPS in their vehicles and get directions from it, so you know exactly where that vehicle is at every moment--if we do that for airplanes, we can have more direct routing from one city to another and less spacing between planes because we know exactly where they are. We save energy. We have less pollution in the air. We get there faster. It does all the things that are advantageous for everybody. It is called NextGen, next-generation air traffic control modernization. We could have extended this bill for another year, as some wanted to do, but instead what I wanted to do, and what my colleagues, Senators Rockefeller and Hutchison and others want to do, is to get about the business of getting this done, modernizing our air traffic control system, bringing it into the modern age. That is what this is about. I will describe briefly what we do with that. We set up timelines on such things as Required Navigation Performance, and the Area Navigation or RNAV system at 35 airports must be completed by 2014. We will create circumstances where the entire national airspace system is to be covered by 2018. We ask FAA to study providing best-served status for those providing the right equipage for their planes and come in with GPS, best equipped, best served. We create a NextGen officer at the FAA. It is a new position to help guide and create these programs for modernization. We are doing all these things. It is so important we complete them and truncate the time with which to complete them. The other issue that is important is the issue of aviation safety. We have worked a lot on that. I have done now eight hearings on aviation safety, especially focusing on issues we have now discovered from the Colgan Air crash, which tragically killed 50 people in Buffalo, NY. The Colgan crash raised a lot of questions. Let me describe the circumstances. As I do, I think I speak for all my colleagues on the committee that the relatives, the families of those who were killed in the Colgan crash have made it their mission to be at every hearing, to be involved in every decision about this issue of air safety. God bless them. The fact is, their diligence and work is making a difference. It made a difference in this bill. There are provisions in this bill as a result of their diligence and concern. Let me describe the circumstances of that particular crash. It was an evening flight in weather that was not so good, with icing conditions for an airplane. They were flying a propeller airplane called a Dash 8. Colgan flight 3407, 2 pilots, 2 flight attendants, and 45 passengers lost their lives, and one person on the ground. It was a Bombardier Q400 airplane, operated by a captain and copilot. What we discovered in reviewing the circumstances of that crash was quite extraordinary. The pilot had not slept in a bed the two previous nights. The copilot had not slept in a bed the night before. The pilot commuted from his home in Florida to his duty station at Newark in order to begin flying. The copilot flew from Seattle, WA, deadheaded on a FedEx plane that stopped in Memphis, TN, and then continued on to New York in order to reach her duty station at Newark, an all-night flight. There is no evidence, the night before the flight, that either the pilot or the copilot did anything other than stay in the crew lounge, and there is no bed there. For the pilot, it was two nights, no record of him sleeping in a bed. So you have two pilots who commuted long distances just to get to work without any evidence that they had a night's sleep in a bed prior to the flight and were on the airplane. If you read the transcript of the voice recorder, a series of problems existed in that cockpit. There was not a sterile cockpit below 10,000 feet, which is supposed to be the case. There was visiting about careers and a range of things as they were flying through icy conditions, violative of the regulations. The copilot, it is said, was a young woman who worked two jobs in order to make ends meet. The copilot was paid something in the neighborhood of between $20,000 and $23,000 a year, commuting all across the country just to get to work. When they ran into icing conditions, there was a stick pusher that engaged, a stick shaker as well. It turns out there had not been adequate training with respect to that. A whole series of things occurred with respect to that flight that raise lots of questions about training, about fatigue, a whole series of things. As a result of that, just that case to try to understand what does this mean for others, what does it mean for regulations that are necessary. Randy Babbitt, new head of the FAA, someone for whom I have great respect, has just finished a rulemaking on fatigue. I believe that now exists at the Office of Management and Budget, awaiting action by OMB--a step in the right direction, in my judgment. This bill has another piece that needed to be done that we discovered as a result of this crash. The pilot, over the years, had failed a number of competency tests and then subsequently succeeded or passed those tests. But nonetheless, he had a number of failures. The airline that hired that pilot didn't know that because the records were not transparent. The airline has since said, had we known that record of failures, that pilot would not have been hired by us. But they didn't know. This legislation will correct that. When you are hiring a pilot, you will know the entire range of experience that pilot has had, including the tests and the passage or failure of certain competencies along the way. That is a very important provision in this piece of legislation. Pilot training and experience is another issue we are talking about and working with. It is not an irrelevant issue. There is supposed to be one standard and one level of safety with respect to airlines. Regional carriers are now carrying 50 percent of the passengers in our country. They get on the airplane, and they see the airplane, and it is painted Continental or US Airways or United or Delta, but that may not be the company that is flying that airplane. It may be Pinnacle. It may be Mesaba. It may be any number of other regional carriers. The passenger doesn't know. All the passenger sees is what is marked on the side of that fuselage. This legislation will also require information on the tickets of who is transporting that passenger. There are a number of things this legislation does in the area of safety that are very important. We prohibit the personal use of wireless communication devices and laptop computers in the cockpit. We all remember the pilots who were flying to Minneapolis and flew well into Wisconsin, well past the city of destination, and didn't know where they were, apparently. They indicated they were busy visiting or they were busy on their laptop computers. But whatever the circumstances, while it is, in many cases, an airline requirement that they not do that, there is no FAA requirement that personal use of wireless communication and laptops in the cockpit is prohibited. We do that. We also require enhanced safety oversight at foreign repair stations. That also is very important. The outsourcing of maintenance, repair, and overhaul work is now a routine practice. Much of it is outsourced in this country by the major carriers, and our legislation will require enhanced safety oversight and inspections with respect to that outsourcing. So those are a few of the items that are included in the bill. I should also point out this bill includes the passenger bill of rights, which I think is important. I have just mentioned a couple of the provisions, but one of them that has gotten the most attention is to say: You have a requirement as an airline and you have a right as a passenger not to be stuck on an airplane for 6 hours, sitting out on a runway somewhere. This is a 3-hour requirement, as part of the passenger bill of rights. They are not going to be able to keep you on an airplane 5 or 6 hours, sitting on a runway, waiting in the middle of a big storm. Three hours: back to the gate and allow the passengers to deplane. We also have substantial amounts of airport improvement funding here. This authorizes the AIP. It streamlines what is called the passenger facility charge, the PFC. We provide greater flexibility of the use of the PFC. We improve the airline service in small community service provisions. Some communities in this country rely on essential airline services called EAS, which is the way for them to get the services they were guaranteed when we deregulated in this country, which is, by the way, another subject for perhaps another day. Although I again say, as I have said on the floor previously, deregulation might have been a wonderful boon for those who live in very large cities and travel to other large cities. If you do, you are given a lot of opportunity. You are given many opportunities for different carriers and different pricing. I would bet if we left the floor at this moment and decided to go to one of these search engines and buy a ticket from Washington, DC to Los Angeles, in order to visit Mickey Mouse at Disneyland or we decided we will have two alternative tickets: We will purchase one from Washington, DC to Los Angeles to visit Mickey Mouse or we will go to Bismarck, ND, which is only half as far, to see the World's Largest Holstein Cow sitting on a hill over New Salem, ND, called Salem Sue. So the choice: to go twice as far to see Mickey Mouse or go half as far to see the World's Largest Holstein Cow--I will bet the search engine on the computer will tell us we get to pay half as much to go twice as far, and twice as much to go half as far. So think of that. You get to pay half price to go double the miles or you get to pay twice the price to go half the miles. Yet that is the kind of circumstance we have in our country today. The higher yield tickets are on the end of a spoke in a hub-and-spoke system, where there is little or no competition. So we are not addressing that. It was just therapeutic for me to talk about that again. We are not addressing that on the floor of the Senate today. But it is something I think is of great concern. Because if you are flying from Chicago to Los Angeles, you have plenty of competition, plenty of price competition and opportunities to get better prices. That is not the case for a number of small States on the back end of a hub-and-spoke system. Well, there are many other provisions. As I indicated earlier, I am going to speak some at another point on the subject of general aviation because while we focus a lot on the issue of commercial aviation, general aviation is a very important part of this country's air travel system. The folks who live out on a farm some place and have a small airplane in a shed--from those folks, to people who fly corporate planes and move people around so they can leave in the morning from Washington, DC, and fly to Los Angeles, down to Dallas, and get back-- that is general aviation and a very important part of our air travel system. I am going to talk about that at some point later. Let me again say I think we have at last, at long, long last, put a piece of legislation together that avoids some of the controversy of past attempts, that will substantially improve infrastructure, substantially address the safety issues. I will talk a little later about pilot hours and some related issues we have been talking about that we hope would be in a managers' package. But all of these things I think finally bring to the floor in this bill a victory for those who want to modernize the system. I know there will be some amendments. We have not addressed some issues that are in the House bill. But our concern is to try to get a bill through the Senate, into conference with the House, and get something signed by the President to get something done. We will be dramatically advantaged as a country if we can enhance the efforts in a shorter period of time to modernize the system and go to a completely different air traffic control system called NextGen, which works off of the GPS system. It will save energy, create safety in the skies, and allow people to be transported more directly with less time. I think it will be very positive for our country. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I withhold that suggestion. I did want to make one additional point. I did not do this when I talked about the issue of the Colgan tragedy. The larger question is not addressed directly in this legislation. We address many of these issues, but we do not address the larger question of commuting. I want to show, if I might, something Senator Rockefeller and I and others have used in the Commerce Committee. This map describes where the Colgan pilots commute from. But do you know what. This chart could probably have been describing almost any regional airline or any trunk airline or major airline, for that matter. Pilots live in one part of the country and work out of another part of the country. The fact is, with respect to this tragedy, the Colgan crash, I am convinced that mattered. I am convinced that flying through difficult nighttime icy conditions--with two pilots, neither of whom had slept in a bed the night previous--I am convinced this kind of commuting has caused significant difficulties. There was a Wall Street Journal piece that pretty much says it all. This was an veteran pilot describing the routine of commuter flights with short layovers in the middle of the night, which is pretty typical. He said: Take a shower, brush your teeth, pretend you slept. That is something we have to pay some attention to. I am not suggesting today that you cannot commute. We do not in this legislation prohibit commutes. But I think these are instructive pieces. As shown in this picture, this is what is called a crash pad. I was completely unaware of a crash pad until we began to hold these hearings. But this is a pilot watching a movie on his computer at a crash house in Sterling Park, VA. They can have up to 20 to 24 occupants at a time. They are designed to give flight crews from regional airlines a quiet place to sleep near their base airports. Many cannot afford hotels so they use crash houses where the rent is $200 a month for a bed. When I described the copilot of the Colgan tragedy--a copilot who is making $20,000 or $23,000 a year, traveling across the country, all night long, if that copilot had traveled the day before, are they in a situation to be able to purchase a hotel room at an airport when they are making $20,000 or $23,000 a year? In fact, I believe there is a substantial cargo operator that pays for hotel rooms for their pilots who come in the night before. I do not believe there is an airliner that does that. But I did not make the point during the Colgan discussion. I wanted to make the point that I think fatigue, commuting, and other issues, are serious and significant. I know Administrator Babbitt believes as well that we need to continue to look at these issues. We need to visit with pilot organizations and others to understand how we might see if we can reduce some of the risks here. We have a safe system of air travel, to be sure. But the Colgan crash and all of the details and circumstances of it should remind us not everything is as it seems, and we need to take action from time to time to address some of those important issues. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me just make a point. This is an authorization bill that is on the floor, the FAA reauthorization. We have waited a long time to get it here. We have had 11 extensions to get this bill to the floor. The Senator who offers the amendment certainly is allowed to offer it on this bill. Of course, his amendment really doesn't relate to passing an FAA reauthorization bill, so I hope he will withhold at some point and do this at another moment on another piece of legislation because I fear that--at long last, trying to get an FAA reauthorization bill 3 years after it previously expired, with 11 different extensions, my hope is we can stay on the FAA reauthorization, have amendments that relate to this bill, debate them, and then vote on those amendments. That would be my hope. I understand the Senator has a right to do that. Somebody could bring an amendment on abortion or whatever somebody wants to the floor of the Senate on an open authorization bill. The Senator has had two other opportunities to offer this. I hope he will find a third at some point. The budget deficit is a very serious problem. We are on an unsustainable path. Let me give just a slightly different observation on the subject as long as I am on my feet. It is true that 10 years ago our country was running a budget surplus. It is true that 10 years ago we had a budget surplus. It is also the case that when President George W. Bush came to town, he said: You know what, we have a budget surplus. Alan Greenspan is not going to sleep at night, he said, because he worried that the surplus was going to pay down the Federal debt too fast. He literally said that. He worried about paying down the Federal debt too fast, so we need to be a little careful about accruing these surpluses. So President Bush said: What we need to do is have a very large tax cut. I stood here on this floor of the Senate and said: You know what, these surpluses exist this year only and the next 10 years of projected surpluses don't yet exist. They are simply projections. Let's be a bit conservative. What if something happens? They said: ``Katy, bar the door,'' we are going to do this anyway, and did it--very large tax cuts, very substantial reductions in Federal revenue. About 50 percent of the structural budget deficit at the moment is as a result of reducing the revenue base 10 years ago--9 years ago. I said on the floor of the Senate: You know, let's be a little conservative. What if something happens? Well, guess what happened almost immediately. We passed the tax cuts--not with my vote--the majority of which, the bulk of which went to the wealthiest Americans. Very quickly, we discovered we were in a recession. Very quickly, there was an attack on our country on 9/11. Then we were in a war in Afghanistan and then a war in Iraq. We sent young men and women off to war and did not pay for one penny of it--not a penny. So we cut the revenue base very substantially. We experienced a recession, an attack against our country, engaged in two wars, sent men and women to other parts of the world to fight, and did not pay for a penny of it. We added it all to the debt and increased deficits. I happen to think the Senator's presentation about the danger of the deficits is very real. I agree with that. But in order to reduce these deficits--this is not rocket science--if we are going to send young men and women to Afghanistan to risk their lives, if they are going to get up this morning and put on body armor because they are going to face real live bullets, pay for every bit of it. Pay for it. Let's ask the American people to sacrifice, not just the soldiers. We are going to cut spending? Then let's really cut spending. I offered an amendment on the floor and lost it. I said: Let's cut TV Marti. I couldn't get it passed. TV Marti broadcasts signals into Cuba, spends $\1/4\ billion broadcasting television signals into Cuba that the Cuban people can't see. From 3 in the morning until 7 in the morning, we spend taxpayers' dollars broadcasting television signals into Cuba that Cuba blocks and the Cuban people can't see. We spent $\1/4\ billion, and we can't cut the spending? I don't understand that at all. The prescription drug amendment I offered on the floor of the Senate would have saved the Federal Government $20 billion in spending, and I lost it. If we are going to cut the deficit, we have to cut real things. When those things come to the floor and we have an opportunity to really cut spending, let's do that. By the way, it is not just spending. We need to work on spending, and I have offered amendments to cut spending, but it is also the revenues. I hope the Senator would agree with me that when the richest--well, let me rephrase that. When the person in America in 2008 who made the highest income--$3.6 billion running a hedge fund--when that person pays the lowest income tax rate, would the Senator agree with me that perhaps we ought to increase that rate? This person comes home, and his spouse says: Honey, how are we doing? He says: Well, pretty good--$3.6 billion. That is $300 million a month; that is $10 million a day. Honey, how we are doing? Well, pretty good. I made $10 million. But guess what. I get to pay the lowest income tax rate in the country because I declare it as carried interest. Do we want to plug that loophole and ask that person to pay the same income tax rate that the people who get up and go to work and then have to shower after work because they have dirt under their fingernails have to pay? How about making those changes? I am for all of those things. I want to work with the Senator from Alabama and every other Senator who wants to do all of these things. What happened at the start of this past decade is, somebody put sand in the gas tank and the car will not run and we are up in the engine department trying to figure out how the carburetor works. This is not difficult. You are going to go to war, pay for it. You are going to cut spending, then take a look at the most egregious abuses and pay for those by cutting the spending. Take a look at the history on this floor. We have been through a long, tortured decade of what I consider irresponsible fiscal policy. I understand it is not the case where one side is all to blame and the other side not. I understand all that. But I also understand this: I was on this floor saying: Let's pay for the cost of war. I did 20 hearings on the most egregious waste, fraud, and abuse in this country by contractors doing work in Iraq and Afghanistan. I spoke dozens of times on this floor on those issues and could not get much support: cutting spending for contractors who were abusing the American people by sending contaminated water--more contaminated than raw water from the Euphrates River--to the military bases in Iraq for the soldiers to use and getting paid for it; getting paid bonuses to do electrical work at the military camps in Iraq and Afghanistan that was so shoddy--done by third country nationals hired by our contractors--such shoddy electrical work that Mr. Maseth, a Green Beret, goes in to take a shower and he is electrocuted, killed in a shower. We paid bonuses to that contractor for that work. It is unbelievable to me. We have a lot to answer for--all of us do. Every single Member on the floor of this Senate has a lot to answer for. But we can work together on spending and asking those who are not paying their fair share of taxes--by the way, the President, when he gave his State of the Union Address in the House Chamber, said something I have had a vote on four times on the floor of the Senate and lost all four times. The President said: Let's shut down the tax break that gives tax breaks to companies that shut down their American manufacturing plants, fire their workers, and move to China or some other foreign country. Do you know we do that? We have tried to shut that down. We give a tax break. If you lock up your manufacturing plant, shut the plant, fire every single worker, and move your manufacturing to China, we give you a big, fat tax break for doing it. That is unbelievably ignorant. The President said in his State of the Union Address: Shut that down. I have been trying to shut that down for many years and have been unable to do it. It is not as if there are not candidates for some common sense and some sanity in fiscal policy to bring us back into some balance. We need a revenue base that is a reasonable revenue base. We took a lot of that away about 9 years ago with a vote that I did not cast. Then we need to tighten our belt on spending and get rid of the things that do not work. I know I have gone far afield, and the Senator from Alabama--I have not heard him gritting his teeth, but he probably is. My point is this: He raises an important subject--an unsustainable fiscal policy. This President inherited an economic wreck; there is no question about that. We are trying to get out of this. But you cannot look out 5 and 10 years and see what we see without understanding this is unsustainable and all of us have to work together to fix it--all of us. I am committed to doing that. I say to the Senator from Alabama, I hope he will find another vehicle in the next few days on which to offer this amendment because Senator Rockefeller and I have put together this FAA reauthorization bill along with Senator Hutchison. We have worked very hard after so many years to finally get it to the floor of the Senate. We want to get this bill passed. Air safety, modernization--all of it--depends on us getting this legislation through the Senate soon. I thank the Senator from Alabama for staying and listening. I expect he will retort or respond. Again, these are all important issues, but we must get this FAA reauthorization bill done.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, earlier today we passed some legislation in the Senate that is important and will create jobs in our country, and I filed an amendment that was not considered. I know that was the case with many amendments on the bill. One of the amendments I filed that was never considered, unfortunately, and I hope will be considered in the future deals with the recommendation the President made during his State of the Union Address. In the State of the Union Address, the President spoke about jobs and said one of the things we ought to do to try to preserve and keep and create jobs in our country is to shut down or eliminate the tax loophole that rewards companies for moving jobs overseas. The President specifically asked in his State of the Union Address for the Congress to eliminate that tax loophole. I have tried to eliminate that loophole I think on four different occasions on the floor of the Senate. We have had four votes. On each occasion, I have failed. One might ask, well, how on Earth can you fail on an amendment such as that? Well, there are a lot of big companies and groups in this town--the Chamber of Commerce is an example--that like that loophole and want it retained, and they fight very hard to keep the loophole. Here is what we have. We actually do have a circumstance where if you are on one side of a street corner and you have a competitor on the other side of the street making the identical product you do, earning the identical income you earn, and you decide you are going to move your plant to China, fire your workers, put a padlock on the front door of your manufacturing plant and move to China, the only difference between you and the person across the street that you used to compete with and still do is that you now have lower labor costs but you also have a tax break given to you by the Federal Government. It is astounding that exists, but regrettably it does. The President's call to eliminate the tax break is very important, and we ought to heed that call. I filed an amendment on the last bill, the one that passed today. I did not get a vote on it. I intend to file it again on other pieces of legislation because this Congress, at a time when so many millions of people get up in the morning and put on their clothes and go out looking for work and cannot find work, this Congress has a responsibility to deal with this issue. Think of this issue of trying to find jobs that are necessary to put 17 million people back to work as trying to fill a bathtub. We are working on a faucet to incentivize and create new jobs, but the drain is wide open, the drain of existing jobs going overseas; in fact, going overseas in search of cheap labor because this country actually rewards you if you move your jobs overseas. This is Hershey's chocolate. Many people have eaten York Peppermint Patties. York Peppermint Patties were made in a Pennsylvania plant but no longer. It is now Mexican food. This is a newly built plant in Monterey, Mexico, now making York Peppermint Patties. On its Web site, Hershey's says: That cool refreshing taste of mint, dipped in dark chocolate will take you miles away. Apparently meaning even Mexico. So an American brand goes south. That is not terribly unusual. Hallmark Cards: ``When you care enough to send the very best.'' It is a privately held Kansas City company. It has been around 100 years. It was founded by a high school dropout who started the company in 1910 with a shoe box of postcards he sold while living out of a YMCA. It is an unbelievable success story, Hallmark Cards. The company became far and away the most successful greeting card company in America, with a reputation of treating its workers fairly--a very good company. But under current management, with annual revenues over $4 billion, they started to move jobs from Kansas City to three plants in China. It moved thousands of jobs overseas, though it is not required to disclose the specific numbers. What kind of a card do you send to a Hallmark worker whose job is now in China? The very best? We have a right in this country to be concerned about that. I have talked at length about Radio Flyer, the little red wagon, gone from Illinois to China; Huffy bicycle gone from Ohio to China. I spoke about those at length. But there are new ones as well. Whirlpool. At a time when we are losing so many jobs because of the deep recession, Whirlpool announced last year it was shutting down a 1,100-worker factory in Evansville, IN, and moving the work to a factory in Mexico. Whirlpool made this decision even though the company accepted a $19.3 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Recovery Act to develop ``smart appliances.'' By the way, this is a picture of a Whirlpool worker walking out of his place of employment, the last walk on the last day. One can wonder what was going through his mind as he understood he was going to have to tell his family he is now out of work. His job still exists, but it exists in a foreign country. This is Natalie. Natalie worked for Whirlpool. She is 42 years old. She worked at the Whirlpool appliance plant in Evansville for 19 years and in November of last year was told her job is moving to Mexico; $17 an hour was too much to pay, and you can get cheaper labor elsewhere. She described that plant closing ``like a punch in the gut.'' You can imagine what it is like. I am told local workers and local officials did everything they could to try to keep that Whirlpool plant in Evansville, IN, but they were unsuccessful. We do see a lot of people wearing football jerseys. This is a Reebok Peyton Manning jersey. My guess is they sell a lot of those things. There is not a better quarterback in professional football. He is quite an extraordinary football player. Reebok makes this jersey. This jersey is made in El Salvador by a Chinese-owned company. This jersey is sold for $80 in the United States and workers are paid 10 cents for the work they do in El Salvador to make it. Let me say that again. The workers get 10 cents, one thin dime, and the customers pay $80 for the Peyton Manning Reebok football jersey. Here is a photograph that shows the conditions of a sweatshop in El Salvador owned by the Chinese. According to the National Labor Committee that investigates these things, workers are forced to put in 12 to 15 hours of unpaid overtime each week. They earn wages that are 77 percent lower than the basic subsistence wage for the region. This is the photograph of the home of a worker at one of the Chinese-owned sweatshops. You can see the repressive poverty that exists there, and they get a dime for a jersey the company is paid $80 for on the store shelf in the United States. La-Z-Boy chairs announced it would eliminate 1,050 employees in Dayton, OH, and move production plants to Mexico. I have spoken about La-Z-Boy previously. A few days ago when I talked about jobs, I talked about how La-Z-Boy went to Pennsylvania and bought Pennsylvania House Furniture. Pennsylvania House Furniture is a high-end furniture company, using special Pennsylvania wood to make terrific furniture. They had great craftsmen who worked at that company. La-Z-Boy bought the company. They did not want to have competition for La-Z-Boy in the country, so they moved Pennsylvania House Furniture to China and shipped the Pennsylvania wood to China, put the furniture together, and shipped the furniture back to the United States. On the last day of work at the Pennsylvania House Factory, a company that had been around for 100 years, on the last day the plant was open, all those craftsmen who were proud of their jobs and proud of their work, when the last piece of Pennsylvania House Furniture came off the assembly line, they turned it over, and on the bottom of that last piece of furniture, every single worker at that plant came over and took the pen and signed their name. Somebody in this country has a piece of furniture that they do not quite understand. It has, on its bottom, the signature of craftsmen who worked for a company that for 100 years made fine furniture in America. They wanted to do that because they wanted to sign their name to a quality piece of furniture made by an American worker who was proud of their job. La-Z-Boy chairs sent Pennsylvania House Furniture to China. Now we understand La-Z-Boy furniture has announced it will eliminate 1,050 jobs in Dayton, OH, and move the production to a plant in Mexico. They moved other jobs to China. In a statement describing the 2008 layoffs, the company said: We regret the impact these moves will have on families and the lives of employees affected and so on. I have demonstrated enough. I have a lot of examples of this, and I have, over the years, provided a lot of examples. But I wish to demonstrate that on Wednesday, today, 17 million or so people got up, wanted a job and couldn't find it, struggling to try to figure out how on Earth they can make a living, how they can provide for their family. Here is part of what is happening. This shows the deepening trade deficits our country is experiencing. All this red demonstrates jobs moving elsewhere--American jobs moving elsewhere. This is a description of our trade deficit with China, the largest, single bilateral deficit in the history of humankind. I know where some of these jobs have gone. I know where they make Huffy bicycles. I know where they make Radio Flyer little red wagons. I know where they make Etch A Sketch. I know where they went. They went to China, and I know why they went there. Because they can hire people at 50 cents an hour. They can work them 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. The people in Ohio are told: You cannot compete with that. We have to pay you $11 an hour to make bicycles; you can't compete; sorry, you are out of here. The question of a century, when we have developed safe plants, minimum wage, retirement benefits to lift America up, when we developed those standards, retirement programs, health benefits, the question at the end of a century is: Do we decide those standards don't matter, the lifting of those American workers to good jobs that pay well doesn't matter because we are now saying to them: You compete with Third World conditions, you compete with Chinese sweatshops in El Salvador making football jerseys, you compete with people living 12 in a room, sleeping at night, when they do get a chance to sleep, in cinder blocks in China in Shinsen making children's toys; is that what we are saying is the kind of competition with which we want the American people to have to compete? Because they cannot. Nobody can make a living working for 50 cents an hour here. You cannot make a living here if they strip away your retirement and health care and give you 50 cents an hour and tell you to work 7 days a week. The reason I raise this point is because the President said a month and a half ago, when he spoke to the Nation and spoke to the Congress: Close this tax break that rewards companies that move their jobs overseas. My position is not antibusiness. I want American businesses to succeed. I want them to make profits and create jobs. I just want an understanding that trade agreements must be fair agreements in order for us to compete. I will give an example. This is an example of automobiles in Korea. Ninety-eight percent of the automobiles driven on the streets of South Korea are made in South Korea. Is that an accident? Of course not. That is exactly the way the Koreans want it. They want to ship Korean cars to be sold in America, but they don't want American cars to be sold in Korea. That has always been their position. The same is true with China. We now have an agreement with China by which, in the next couple years, we will have a massive influx of cheap Chinese goods coming into this country in the form of automobiles. They probably want me to say less expensive automobiles from China. We have an agreement that when Chinese automobiles come here, we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff. If we ship cars to China, they will impose a 25-percent tariff, and we agree to that. That is fundamentally ignorant of our economic interests. Those are the kinds of issues we have to address. If we care about jobs, we need to do two things: One, work on the legislation of the type we are working on. Senator Reid, Senator Durbin, myself, and others have worked very hard on legislation to try to incentivize the creation of new jobs in our country. We passed a bill about a week and a half ago and passed another bill today that is job creating. That is the faucet. We are trying to turn the faucet on to put jobs into this tub here. The problem is, the drain is wide open and we have jobs moving out just as aggressively. We have to plug the drain by saying: Trade matters, fair trade matters most. You must stand for the interests of good jobs that pay well in America. That is a fact. I will speak more about this issue at another time. I did wish to say I filed the amendment on the bill we finished today and was not able to call it up, as was the case with many amendments. I intend to file it again on another bill. I hope very much we will get a vote on it, and I hope, when we get a vote on it, that given the things I just described that are happening to jobs in America, given the fact the President has said let us at least plug this unbelievably pernicious, ill-advised tax break for companies that ship jobs overseas, let's at least get that done. Let's try to save some jobs in this country. If we can do that, we will have done something very significant for the people who awaken in the morning jobless and who hope to find work at some future date as we restart the engine and start putting American workers back on the payroll again. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 706, 707, 708, 709, 713, 714, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719, 720, 721, 723, 724, 725, 727, 734, 735, and all nominations on the Secretary's Desk in the Foreign Service; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; that no further motions be in order; that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 228, S. 1067.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the committee-reported substitute amendment be considered; that a Feingold amendment which is at the desk be agreed to; the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to; the bill as amended be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 158, and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a Kerry amendment to the resolution, which is at the desk, be agreed to; the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; that a Kerry amendment to the preamble, which is at the desk, be agreed to; the preamble, as amended, be agreed to; the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; and any statements related to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 11; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate proceed to a period of morning business for 1 hour with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the majority controlling the first 30 minutes and the Republicans controlling the next 30 minutes; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 1586, the legislative vehicle for the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, rollcall votes are expected to occur throughout the day tomorrow. Senators will be notified when any votes are scheduled.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, my understanding is that following my presentation, Senator Gregg is going to be recognized, or a Republican speaker. I ask unanimous consent that following the Republican speaker, Senator Stabenow be recognized on our side. I do that with the consent of the chairman of the committee.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wish to discuss two amendments, one of which I have filed and one of which I will file shortly. Before I do that, I have spoken with Senator Inouye, Senator Feinstein, and some others about something that is very important. It is the settlement of the Cobell lawsuit. The Cobell lawsuit has been in the Federal courts for 13 years. After a long period of negotiation between the Secretary of the Interior, other parts of our Federal Government, and the plaintiffs in lawsuit, there is finally an agreement that has been reached. The agreement would provide $3.4 billion to settle outstanding claims and address issues going back well over 100 years in which the Federal Government was supposed to be taking care of the trust accounts of American Indians. Some of those trust accounts were fleeced, stolen, and mismanaged. This lawsuit has been going on for a long period. The agreement settles the claims of American Indians who lost their money, lost their assets, and lost their income. Many American Indians have died during the process of this lawsuit. Now that a settlement has been reached, there is an April 16 deadline. The parties to the settlement agreement set an end date by which the Congress must act, or the parties may return to litigation. My hope is that the Congress will be able to meet that deadline. We really do need to put this issue behind us. It is a sorry chapter in this country's history. For over a century we have mismanaged the property, income, and royalties of American Indians. All of this resulted in the filing of a lawsuit. I commend the Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Salazar, who has worked so hard to reach this agreement. Having said that, let me describe two amendments I wish to offer to this legislation. One is an amendment I have offered on a number of occasions over the years. It is important to offer it again this year and get it done. President Obama mentioned during his State of the Union Address that he wanted this legislation passed by the Congress. It is painfully simple. My amendment says when an American business shuts down its manufacturing plant in this country, locks the doors, fires the workers, and then moves the jobs overseas someplace for the purpose of selling the product they produce overseas back into our country, they should not get a tax break. Yet, under today's Tax Code, they, in fact, are rewarded with a tax break. This amendment would end that ill-advised tax break and say: You are not going to be rewarded anymore in our Tax Code by shipping jobs overseas and then selling the product back into our marketplace. This should have been corrected long ago. It should be corrected now. The amendment I filed is amendment No. 3375. My hope is we will be able to debate and vote on this amendment. I described the other day this issue we have of trying to find new jobs and seeing how we can incentivize the creation of new jobs in our country. About 17 million people woke up this morning in this country without work, without a job, and wanting a job and are going to spend today looking for work and not be able to find it. We are trying to find ways to incentivize the creation of jobs. That bill is the faucet, trying to put more jobs in this economy. What about the drain? What about all these jobs leaking out of this economy to China and elsewhere? Let me describe some of them, if I might. These are well known. I have told other stories on the floor many times. Levis, the product of America. America invented Levis. People wear Levis all around the world, except Levis are made virtually everywhere in the world except the United States. They are all gone. We do not make one pair of Levis in the United States. Fruit of the Loom underwear; gone to Mexico; gone to Asia. Samsonite went to Mexico, then to China. Maytag now makes their appliances in Mexico and Korea. Hershey's chocolate. You know, Hershey's chocolate advertises York Peppermint Patties and they say: The cool, refreshing taste of mint dipped in dark chocolate will take you miles away. Well, apparently so many miles it ends up in Mexico--Mexico. I have mentioned often the cookies made by the Nabisco Company--Fig Newtons. If somebody says to you: How about going to have a Mexican dinner, just buy a package of Fig Newtons. They left New Jersey and went to Mexico. I don't know if it is cheaper to shovel fig paste in Mexico than it is in New Jersey, but it is made by a company called Nabisco. You know what that stands for? The National Biscuit Company. Except the national biscuit, in this case, is made in Mexico. Well, the list goes on and on and on. Hallmark Cards. Hallmark Cards was here for a century--a privately held Kansas City, MO, company, founded by a high school dropout who started the company in 1910 with a shoebox full of postcards. He made a living by selling them while working out of a YMCA in Kansas City, and it became an unbelievably successful greeting card company. All of us know that. Under its current management, despite annual revenues, I understand, of over $4 billion, they started to move jobs from Kansas City to three plants in China. You know, the company who cares enough to send you the very best? In this case, it sends you the very best from China. My point is that I understand there are a whole lot of companies going to search for people who work for 50 cents an hour and whom they can work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day, and that is better for their bottom line. It enhances their profit when they can do that. But when they leave America, deciding they are going to produce Etch A Sketch in Shenzhen, China, and then ship it back to a Walmart here in the United States to sell--when that happens, and that town in Ohio that was known for producing Etch A Sketch, the little toy that all of us have used as a child--we ought not be saying good for you, we will give you a tax break. When the Radio Flyer little red wagon--the wagon we have all ridden in, started by a guy in Chicago, and for 110 years they made Radio Flyer little red wagons in the United States--when they moved the production of little red wagons to China, we shouldn't give a tax break for those that are sold back into this country--a company that moves their jobs elsewhere in order to produce and then sell back into our country. We ought to say: You know what, you are not going to get a tax break for that. Let me give an example of two companies, and two companies that make bicycles; all right? They are made in factories that are on the same street corner but on different sides of the street. One is called Huffy Bicycles. Most people have known the Huffy Bicycles and ridden them in their youth. The other is ABC Bicycle, hypothetically. Huffy Bicycles decides they are paying $11 an hour to their American workers, plus benefits, and they think that is way too much to pay an American worker so they leave America and go to China. And by the way, that is true. They did. The other company stays here and says: No, we are going to keep our American workers and keep our American plant open and keep these jobs in America. What is the difference between the two? When they are competing at Sears or Walmart or Kmart in this country, what is the difference between the two bicycles? Well, one was rewarded with a tax break because their production was sent overseas, and the other has a competitive disadvantage because it was made here by American workers. And that ought not stand. This President asked during his State of the Union Address for us to plug this hole. It raises money, reduces the Federal budget deficit and finally says to American workers: We are on your side. We are not going to give a tax break to companies that ship their jobs overseas and sell their products back in America. It is a very simple amendment. I don't know anyone who would wish to vote against this amendment. Yet, interestingly enough, I have offered it for many years and have not been successful for a number of reasons. Occasionally, we have had a vote, but most often it gets thrown off in a parliamentary procedure of some type. But this is a bill that is open to amendment on revenue issues, and my hope is that at last--at long, long last--at a time when so many millions of Americans wish they had a job and don't, at a time when we still have so many companies moving their jobs away from our country to other countries only to sell back into our country that which they made in China or elsewhere, my hope is that finally we will say we won't allow this to happen any more with a reward in our Tax Code for those that do it. I was on an airplane a while back, and I sat next to a guy who was wearing casual clothes--sweat pants and so on--and we said hello to each other. I said: Where are you headed? He said: Asia. That is why I am dressed this way; I have 25 more hours of flying. I said: What are you going to do when you reach Asia? He said: Well, I am going to Thailand, Singapore, and I am going to China. He said: What we are trying to do with my company is we are trying to move our jobs from the United States to Asian locations and save some money in the production of these products we make. So I am going out now to Thailand and Singapore and China to scout out locations for our new manufacturing plants in Asia because we are going to move our jobs. I was sitting next to this guy thinking: You know, there will be hundreds and hundreds of American workers who, that morning, instead of getting on an airplane as he and I did, are going to a manufacturing plant somewhere to make a product for his company, but they don't know yet that he is on an airplane to try to find a way how to move their jobs to Singapore or to China or to Thailand. And isn't that a shame? Some will listen to this and say: Well, that is just protectionism. Listen, closing a tax break that rewards people from moving jobs overseas isn't protectionism. Keeping that tax break open is, in my judgment, ignorance. Standing up for fair play and standing up for American jobs is not protectionism, it is doing everything we ought to do to be supportive of the kind of economy we want and the kind of good jobs we want in this country's future. That is one amendment. The second amendment deals with an issue that most people, I am sure, can hardly believe their ears when they hear about it. This is an issue I have spoken about previously, and some of this issue has been resolved but not all of it. As is usually the case when something abusive is happening, it gets shut down in part but not in total, because you say: Okay, let's stop it as of this date. I am talking about something called SILOs and LILOs especially SILOs, or sale-in/lease out transactions. Most people don't know what that means--sale in, lease out. It doesn't mean they aren't smart. It is a title in the Tax Code that describes an activity that was created by some people who wanted to avoid paying U.S. taxes. They want everything America has to offer, they just don't want to pay taxes to their country. Let me describe what has been happening in the last couple of decades, and this is almost a perfect description of the perversion in our economy and the greed in our economy by some--not all, but by some--who steered this place into the ditch. Here it is: A cross-border lease of Dortmund, Germany's streetcars--a company called First Union Bank, which is now something else because it has been bought two additional times. So First Union Bank in America wants to lease streetcars in Germany. Why would it want to lease streetcars in Germany? Because it wants to run German streetcars? No, because from a German city it can lease the city's streetcars and take those assets in a lease-in/ leaseback transaction and get tax breaks so it can avoid paying U.S. taxes. Transactions involving streetcars is one thing, but here is a tunnel that one of our American companies bought--a tunnel in Antwerp, Belgium. Think of that, an American company deciding to buy a tunnel in Antwerp, Belgium. Why? Because they like tunnels, know something about tunnels? They don't have the foggiest idea about Belgian tunnels. It is a sale leaseback transaction used to avoid paying U.S. taxes. But here is one that really struck my interest. Wachovia Bank which, by the way, has now been purchased by someone else. They ended up with a belly full of bad assets. And we ought to ask the question how did that happen? How did it happen that a massive amount of toxic bad assets landed in the belly of this bank--Wachovia Bank? But Wachovia Bank bought a sewer system in Bochum, Germany. Why would Wachovia Bank want to own a sewer in Germany? Because they have people on the board of directors who are experts in German sewers? I don't think so. Do we think maybe they have hired a new class of MBAs who are specialists in sewer valuations in Germany? I don't think so. An American bank wants to buy a German sewer system for the fact that it is a sale and leaseback. The German sewer system is sold to an American bank. Does this bank ever go over and seize possession of a sewer pipe? They never even see a sewer pipe. All they want is a paper transaction so they can depreciate the property to avoid paying U.S. taxes. And in this case it is reported on Frontline that Wachovia Bank saved $175 million by this scam of buying a German city's sewer system. Unbelievable. By the way, this has been going on for some while before we were able to shut most of it down. I would also say that I often speak of the fact that there are some companies that are now stepping forward to the IRS--I believe about 45 companies have now stepped forward--and said they are willing to pay for the benefits they received, even prior to the time this was shut down. But there are some transactions that were allowed to continue, and we have American companies that continue to get the benefit of those transactions. My position is simple: This is abusive, it is unmitigated greed, and it should have been shut down-- all of it shut down. The Internal Revenue Service, by the way, is still going back even beyond that date which was in the Federal law and challenging these in court. In fact, there are a couple of very large companies at this point that are still disputing this and saying these are perfectly reasonable transactions. Shame on them. This doesn't meet a third grade laugh test--an American company picking up a German sewer system. In fact, one American company bought a city hall from a German town, and the auditor in that town said: Well, we don't understand it, but if that is what the Americans want to do with their money, God bless them. It wasn't their money. What they were doing was sucking money out of the coffers of this government, because in many cases they are companies that are trying to find every way possible to avoid their Federal tax obligations. Yes, they want all the benefits America has to offer, except they don't want the obligation of paying their full measure of taxes, as most people do. Most people who go to work in the mornings work an honest day, they come home, and at the end of the year, when it is time, they file their tax return. They have had their withholdings and they pay their taxes to our country, to our government. But there are a whole lot of interests that are much bigger that find ways to send people around the world not only to move their jobs to where they can find 50-cent-an- hour labor, but perhaps while they are there, they might pick up a sewer system to boot so they can avoid paying U.S. taxes. That way they can move your job overseas and avoid paying taxes at the same time, because you get a tax break for shutting your American plant down and moving your American jobs overseas, which I hope to shut down with my first amendment; and then you get a tax break by buying a German sewer system and depreciating it and getting a tax break under the Tax Code. Both of these amendments deserve to be passed. Both would raise money for the Federal Government, both would reduce the Federal deficit and both have substantial merit. Will I get a vote on these? I hope so. One is now filed and the other will be filed in a short period of time. I hope very much that I will be able to get the opportunity to have a vote here in the Senate and close these tax breaks. Let me say that there are a whole lot of businesses in this country that are working very hard to make it. Many American businesses have had to steer through very difficult times. This is the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and there are a lot of businesses, large, medium, and small, that are struggling every day to try to navigate through this deep economic abyss. Boy, I give them great credit. Many of these owners have risked their entire life savings to run their business. They get up in the morning and put the key in the door and open their businesses. So, look, what I want to have happen is for us to recognize good businesses in this country that do the right thing every day--that hire American workers, produce products and strengthen this country's economy. My point is those businesses are at a significant disadvantage if we continue to say to the business across the street: Move to China and produce these products in China and, by the way, we will give you a tax break for doing it. And we say to those who stay here: You know what, you shouldn't have stayed here, because you would have gotten a tax break if you had left. That is exactly the wrong message. What we should do for those who stay is to reward them. They are the heroes. They make up the economy, the foundation, the strength of what America is, instead of rewarding those who do exactly the wrong thing for this country. These are my two amendments that I would like to offer. Let me just, finally, say this. I know I get upset sometimes when I talk about the abusive pieces of this tax policy and the abuse, I think, of trade policy that has resulted in the loss of more than 5 million manufacturing jobs. By the way, the loss of 1.5 million manufacturing jobs in the last 12 to 15 months--think of that. Think of 1.5 million households in which someone wakes up and says: I am jobless. I don't have a job anymore. I used to make furniture but that furniture manufacturer is gone. I used to make tool and die machines-- gone. You name it. I told the story the other day on the floor of the Senate about Pennsylvania House furniture, which is such a great example of what is happening in this country. Governor Wendell did everything he could to keep this great furniture company in Pennsylvania. They use Pennsylvania wood, so Pennsylvania House furniture was known as an upscale furniture manufacturer that used special wood from Pennsylvania. Then they were purchased by La-Z-Boy. By the way, La-Z- Boy is also leaving, but that is a different story. They were purchased by La-Z-Boy, and La-Z-Boy decided they were moving Pennsylvania House furniture to China and just going to ship the Pennsylvania wood to China and put together the furniture and ship the furniture back. Governor Wendell did everything he could to prevent that from happening, but it happened. The last day of work at the factory where they had spent a century, the craftsmen who put that furniture together got together, and the last piece of Pennsylvania House furniture that came off the manufacturing line every employee in that company gathered around, they tipped it upside-down, and every one of them signed the bottom. Somebody in this country, perhaps, has a piece of furniture they don't quite understand. It has the signature of every last craftsman to work in that manufacturing plant in this country. That pride of production and contribution to this country is by workers who just want a job, who want a country that does not move its manufacturing jobs elsewhere but values its manufacturing jobs in this country. In 2008, La-Z-Boy said in the next 2 years it would move 1,050 employees in Dayton, OH, to the plant in the Mexican State of Coahuila. They previously moved other jobs to China, but they did say this: We regret the impact the moves will have on the families and lives of those employed affected, and greatly appreciate the contribution each of them made with their dedicated services. So 1,050 people discovered their jobs were gone. But the same company, then, is the one who moved the Pennsylvania House furniture long before that. We have a lot to fix in this country, but we will. I am convinced our country's better days are ahead if we make the right judgments. If we pass both of these amendments I have offered, it will make a contribution significantly toward things that matter a lot in American families: good jobs that pay well that give them some confidence in the future. I suspect I can't ask unanimous consent to pass both pieces, both amendments at the moment, so I will negotiate with the chairman of the committee to see if we can't get votes on both in the days to come. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the legislation on the floor of the Senate at this point includes legislation that I have worked on with my colleagues for about 3 years. It is a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Travel Promotion Act. I wish to talk just a bit about it today, but before I do, let me describe the reasons for its importance. When we began to put this together--as I said, 3 years ago last month, working with a good number of sectors in our economy to try to evaluate how do we promote international tourism to the United States-- we were not in a very deep recession. We were in a period of economic growth. In the intervening period, our country has fallen into a very significant and deep recession. It makes the urgency all that much greater to create new jobs and to do so as soon as possible. Somewhere around 15 million to 17 million people, according to official estimates, woke up this morning in this country of ours without a job. They want a job. They want work. They have looked for work, but they can't find a job in the United States of America. Now, that number of 15 million to 17 million is ominous enough. Just think of one person this morning who woke up not able to work because they can't find a job, and then think of 15 million or 17 million, and then fast-forward and think of perhaps 25 million to 26 million, which is what is estimated to be the total population of people who are unemployed in America, many of whom have stopped looking for work because they couldn't find work at all. This is a very big problem, and it affects our country in many ways. It affects the economy in a devastating way. It is very hard on American families when they are not able to find work to be able to take care of themselves. It results in more Federal spending for unemployment insurance and the other things. So we are trying to find ways to put people back to work. Earlier this week we passed, with the leadership of Senator Reid and many others--work that I and Senator Durbin, Senator Schumer, and many others have done--a jobs bill that will begin putting people back to work when it is signed by the President. The legislation that Senator Reid brought to the floor today includes the Travel Promotion Act, which will also put people back to work. I wish to talk through this and explain why this is important. Let me begin by saying that on 9/11/2001, we were the victims of a devastating terrorist attack on our country. Thousands of Americans were killed that day. As a result, since that period of time we have been engaged in an effort to prevent terrorism, to track down the terrorists and destroy the terrorist networks that would visit that kind of tragedy upon our country. But also during that period and following, it became clear to the rest of the world that our country was clamping down on visitation to our country. Many people believed: The United States doesn't want us to visit them anymore. It is harder to get a visa to come to the United States. We are not welcome in the United States. So what happened was, there was a dramatic reduction in visitation to our country by overseas travelers. Why is that important? When you have millions of people who are traveling around the world to go experience and see the sights and take vacations and so on, they are spending a fair amount of money on those trips. They are creating jobs in many areas, not just hotels and cars and restaurants and so on but in many other areas as well. Our country, for the last 6 to 8 years, has had the experience in which the rest of the world has said: We are going to visit Italy, France, Japan, and India. But fewer of us are going to visit the United States of America. In fact, we have seen a circumstance where after 9/11, we had fewer and fewer visitors coming to our country; that is, fewer than came before, and last year, in 2009, we had 2.4 million fewer people visit our country than visited our country in the year 2000. Let me say that again because I think it is important. We had 2.4 million fewer people come to the United States of America to visit as overseas travelers than visited in the year 2000. The Presiding Officer is from the State of New Mexico. It is a wonderful State, and I know it is a State that attracts a lot of visitation not only from people in our country but from people who come from outside of America to see the wonders of New Mexico. But it doesn't matter whether it is the wonders of New Mexico or Old Faithful in Yellowstone or Niagara Falls or you name it--the cities or the wonders of our country, the great national parks--2.4 million fewer people showed up last year to visit our country. Let me explain why that has happened. Here are some headlines. The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia, headline: ``Coming to America Isn't Easy.'' It describes the difficulty of getting visas and coming to America. The Guardian in England says: ``America: More Hassle Than it's Worth?'' Again, difficulty coming to America. The Sunday Times in London: ``Travel to America? No Thanks,'' says the headline. The newspaper says: It is already a nightmare, but now they want to make entry into the U.S. tougher, so let's not go. Well, let me describe what is happening in other countries at the same time we are taking leave on this issue. Other countries are very busy advertising to the world to say: Are you traveling? Are you taking a vacation? Are you seeing the world? Come to our country. Come to see what is happening. The poster says: Looking for an experience to remember? Be part of an adventure you will never forget. Come and see Australia. See the wonders. It is true what they say: To find yourself sometimes you need to lose yourself. In Australia they call this ``going walkabout.'' So a big campaign: If you are traveling, come to Australia. Come and see what we have to offer. A campaign for the Emerald Isle: Go where Ireland takes you. If you are taking a trip, be sure and visit Ireland. Come to Ireland, it says. It is an international campaign. Japan says: Sweet secrets from Japan. With its many unique culinary arts, they entice travelers; a stunning array of specialties, and on and on. Come to Japan. Thinking of traveling? Show up in Japan. Are you taking a trip with your family? How about coming to the Eiffel Tower. Come to France in 2009. Vive la France. So France and Japan and India and Ireland say: Come and see us. Belgium's national campaign says: If you are traveling with your family, come to Belgium where fun is always in fashion. Brussels, sophisticated simplicity, the capital of cool. I think you get the point. This one says: One special reason to visit India in 2009. Any time is a good time to visit the land of Taj, but there is no time like now. So we have millions of people traveling around the world. On average, overseas travelers spend over $4,000. All of these countries are saying to those overseas travelers: Come to our country. See our country and the wonders of what we have to offer the world. In the United States of America, we have not done that. That is why, in my judgment, at least in part, we had 2.4 million fewer visitors last year than we had in 2000. That is pretty unbelievable. This proposition is simple. There is a problem. The number of people between the years 2000 and 2009 visiting other countries--overseas travel--has increased by 31 percent. During the same period the number of overseas travelers coming to the United States has decreased nearly 10 percent. So overseas travel is up, but travel to America is down. There is another important point here. There has been a lot of polling done, and it is clear that to visit America is to have great respect for and love for this country. There is almost no one who comes to this country and tours and travels and visits our country who doesn't leave America with a special understanding of the wonders of this great place. At a time when we want people to understand more about our country, we ought to be inviting them here and saying: Come to America, see what we have to offer. We ought to be engaged in this process, but we are not. This legislation we are bringing to the floor of the Senate is legislation that will actually increase jobs, we think, by close to 40,000 jobs, according to the estimates. So you will increase 40,000 jobs and, in addition to that, the CBO says this will reduce the Federal budget deficit by nearly $\1/2\ billion. How many pieces of legislation come to the floor of the Senate that will both create jobs and reduce the budget deficit and also give us the opportunity to tell the rest of the world what a wonderful and great place this country is? That is the reason for this legislation. As we build, one step at a time, opportunities to create additional jobs, this is part of it. The Congressional Budget Office has said that enacting S. 1023 would reduce the budget deficit. I think it will do that and help our country. The specifics of this legislation will encourage international travel to all parts of this country. I think it will provide economic growth to all parts of our country. This creates a corporation for travel promotion. That is what we create--an independent, nonprofit corporation to be governed by an 11-member board of directors appointed by the Secretary of Commerce, and it creates the Office of Travel Promotion in the Department of Commerce--one that used to exist but no longer does, and it hasn't for a long while. The purpose of this is to engage in the kind of campaign that exists in most other countries in the world and to say to those traveling around the world: Come here. You are welcome here. We want you here. Come and understand and experience this country called the United States of America. Let me pay special attention to the work Senator Reid has done, and Senator Ensign who is a cosponsor and worked on this in the Commerce Committee with me, Senator Inouye, Senator Vitter, and Senator Klobuchar. Let me say that Senator Klobuchar, in the Commerce Committee working on tourism following my chairmanship of the tourism subcommittee, has taken on this issue with gusto and is a very important part of getting this done. My hope is that when we finish this, when the President signs this bill, all of us will understand that at a time when there is so much partisanship, and when it appears to the American people that so little can be agreed upon and that so little gets done--there is all that notion out there--the fact is, this is bipartisan, good for the country, will reduce the budget deficit, and it will increase jobs and put people back to work. If ever something had all of the things that are necessary to have merit and to be worthy, this legislation surely does that. My colleague from Minnesota, Senator Klobuchar, as I indicated, has done yeoman's work with me and others to put this together. We hope, of course, those who would come to our country would especially visit North Dakota and Minnesota and stay for a very long period of time-- yes, we all have parochial interests--and perhaps North Dakota even more than Minnesota, I might say from my own perspective. I do think it is seldom that we can come to the floor and say here is a piece of legislation that Republicans and Democrats support. We had one vote on it already. It had 79 votes in support in the Senate. Seldom can we say here is a bill that is bipartisan that does a lot of good things for our country. Thanks to the majority leader for putting this back on the floor. I congratulate him for his work on it and my colleague Senator Klobuchar as well. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I mentioned that there are incremental ways to create jobs, which is important. Senator Reid has taken the lead to bring bills to the floor to do that with, earlier this week, the jobs bill that was passed and, in addition, the Travel Promotion Act. I want to mention as well that the majority leader indicated he intends to bring the FAA Preauthorization Act to the floor of the Senate, probably during this work period. It is also going to be job creating. I chaired the Aviation Subcommittee in the Senate. It is very important that we reauthorize the FAA and pass the legislation called NextGen, to do the next generation of air traffic control systems. We have an archaic system of ground-based radar that controls the airplanes in the American skies. Most people are walking around with cell phones that have a much more sophisticated way of tracking anything--a GPS. Most kids have the opportunity to be able to track--if their friends want them to--the location of their friends at any moment. They can track up to 20 friends. Teenage kids can track their friends, but we cannot track an airplane in the sky with a GPS. More commercial airliners are not equipped. We don't have the NextGen system that would modernize our air traffic control system and allow them to fly more direct routes from place to place, with less spacing, using less fuel, better for the environment. All of those things will be capable when we modernize the air traffic control system and go from a ground-based system to a GPS system for aviation flights. That is so very important. It is very job creating. I appreciate the majority leader saying that needs to be a priority to bring to the floor, get to a conference with the House, and get a bill passed and signed by the President. There are also safety issues we have to deal with in the FAA Reauthorization Act. Tomorrow I will be chairing a hearing in the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation on the Colgan crash in Buffalo, NY, the tragedy that occurred on that winter icy evening, in which the Dash 8 crashed and took the lives of so many wonderful people and took the life of the pilot and copilot as well. There are so many questions about that flight and the circumstances that led to the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board will be testifying tomorrow at my subcommittee. I will not go into all of the issues, but the issue of pilot fatigue, the issue of training--so many different issues--the icing issue that occurred that evening. It will be a very important hearing tomorrow. The reason I raise it is the safety issue is so important. Yes, we have a system in which we fly people all over this country and the world. We have not had fatal accidents, by and large, in commercial aviation. It has been enormously safe. The most recent accidents have been accidents that have been very substantially investigated. The Colgan crash in Buffalo, NY, has been investigated now at great length, and we will have the results of that and a discussion of that at our subcommittee hearing tomorrow. That will also give us a roadmap of what we might need to address in the FAA reauthorization bill on the safety issues. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for as much time as I may consume.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, later this afternoon, the Senate will consider a piece of legislation to try to create some jobs. I understand that the Federal Government, by passing legislation, doesn't automatically create jobs, although it can in some circumstances. For example, a summer youth program can put some kids to work in the summer if the Federal Government or State government sponsors it. By and large, the private sector creates jobs. This piece of legislation this afternoon is a payroll tax exemption-- trying to encourage small- and medium-sized businesses that are ready to expand and capable to expand--giving them extra incentive to hire people and put them back to work. Section 179, business expensing, is another incentive to business. The highway trust fund extension--we know building highways puts people to work almost instantly. We have plenty of backlog in highway and bridge repair. This is a piece of legislation that will put people back to work and create the incentives for companies--whether it is highway contractors or small- and medium-sized businesses--to hire those employees. Why is that important? Because we have probably somewhere around 25 million people today who wake up without a job. The hard-core unemployment, as known in the statistics, is about 17 million people. But 20 million to 26 million people are effectively unemployed in this country. They woke up this morning wanting a job and looking for a job but cannot find a job. I recognize that one of the prevailing moods in the Congress is to do nothing. Those are the two words that best describe what we have seen, particularly from the minority recently, ``do nothing.'' It is a pretty easy position to take, but it is so wrong. Generally, it has always been wrong on the significant issues of the day. If this country doesn't believe that having 20 million, 25 or 26 million people out of work--and they don't believe that is something that is significantly wrong, something that weakens our country, then there is something wrong with their thinking. This is a serious and urgent priority the Congress must address. The do-nothing approach to public policy is something we have seen before. It goes all the way back to the basic rights of people--women's rights, civil rights, workers' rights. I have spoken on the floor previously, talking about the struggles to improve in those areas. Those struggles were against those who said let's do nothing. Women didn't have the right to vote for over the first half of this country's existence. They weren't allowed to vote. It took the beating in Occoquan Prison in 1917, when Lucy Burns, at night, was manacled and a chain between her wrists, hung over a cell door, with blood running down her arms all night long; and Alice Paul, a tube forced down her throat, force-feeding, to where she nearly drowned in her own vomit. She and 33 other women were arrested and chained to the White House gate. That is how women got the right to vote in this country. It is not because we had people who said let's do nothing, it is fine that women cannot vote. People pushed back and said what is going on is wrong. Workers' rights. I wrote a book about the struggle to get workers' rights in this country. I said James Fyler died of lead poisoning. James Fyler was shot 54 times. Why? He felt people who went underground to mine for coal ought to be paid a fair wage. Think of the struggle for workers' rights and civil rights. I served in the Congress with John Lewis in the House of Representatives, who was beaten in Montgomery, AL. He was beaten because he believed one ought to be able to sit at a lunch counter as an African American. In some areas, it was against the law to drink from certain water fountains and ride in the front of the bus. It was against the law to sit at the lunch counter at Woolworth's. Workers rights, civil rights, women's rights--all these things were struggles. There were those all along the way who said let's do nothing. Today, they say let's do nothing about the fact that 25 million or 26 million Americans are out of work. By the way, here is a new report that shows that not everybody is out of work. We know that. A lot of people are working. In fact, there is full employment, according to the Northeastern Center for Labor Studies, among those who earn more than $150,000 a year. Their unemployment is 3 percent, but that is called full employment. Not everybody is having trouble. The more affluent Americans have full employment. It is a lot of folks at the bottom who are struggling and getting laid off and are out looking for work. So change is very hard. The question is, Is this Congress going to do something about it? Does it care about it? In every case, you can go back a century, and the wailing and the whining of those who have opposed everything for the first time and said it can't be done, it will not work, it will ruin our country--they are the ones who dug in their heels and said let's do nothing. What about today? What is our responsibility today? Well, it seems to me, in this economic crisis--a crisis, by the way, that is not some natural disaster; this wasn't some massive storm that enveloped America, some tornado or cyclone or some massive natural event that occurred. This was an economic wreck that was caused by unbelievable avarice and greed in some of our Nation's largest institutions. There was nearly criminal negligence on the part of regulators who wouldn't regulate. There was shameful, greedy behavior by people at the top of the financial food chain, whose business philosophy was to maximize profits at any cost, it doesn't matter. Now we find ourselves in a desperate position. Yes, I think we have a foundation where we have found the bottom and are going to try to build from this point on. The question is, How do we move this process along to give hope to people who, at this point, get up this morning and don't have a job? Some say let's work on the faucet--that is what this bill is today, and I will support it. Let's work on the faucet that will put more jobs in this tank. I say also let's work on the drain because you can turn the faucet on, if the drain is wide open you are not going to make much headway. I will talk about the drain, but first I will talk about the faucet. There is no social program as important as a good job that pays well. That is why this needs to be a priority with us. It is why we should pass this piece of legislation this afternoon. No, it is not going to fix every issue. I understand that. I mentioned we have full employment with the people on the top. What about the people who shower after work--the people who work hard all day and have to take a shower after work to get rid of the evidence of that work? Well, let's talk about them for a moment. I met with a group of people who were losing their jobs just before Christmas this year--500 people who worked for a company that made one of America's best products. They were told their plant was going to close down--500 of them. Can you imagine the Christmas they spent with their families, because there were no other jobs in that area. Yet 500 jobs is a reasonably small amount of the total number of jobs we have been losing. That describes the drain on this economy of ours with respect to jobs. Let me talk a bit about that. I am talking about particularly jobs in which Americans make something, produce something. Our manufacturing sector is rapidly losing steam. We have lost 5\1/2\ million manufacturing jobs since 2000. We now have 11.7 million manufacturing jobs left. That is the fewest number of manufacturing jobs since the early 1940s. Since 2001, we have seen the closing of 42,000 factories in America. One-third of all the factories that employ over 1,000 people have closed since 2001 in this country. They are gone. Some people blame the workers because they want a living wage. They say: If you cannot compete with 50 cents an hour in China, tough luck, you don't deserve to compete. It is an international economic system and if you cannot compete, that is too bad. That is a pretty ignorant way to look at it. This is a global economy, but who decided, after spending a century lifting standards, requiring safe workplaces, better labor standards, better wages and benefits, that all that should be washed away because we can't compete with somebody who worked for 50 cents an hour, somebody who works in a factory where they live in cinder block, little rooms, with 12 in a room at night, and they work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day--who decided that ought to be the standard with which we have to compete? That doesn't make sense to me. I guess there are people who believe that ``made in the USA'' doesn't matter anymore. We don't have to be a country that manufactures. If we don't have a strong manufacturing base, we will not long remain a world economic power. That is a fact. This manufacturing base of ours is being sequentially and systematically destroyed. We have, essentially, lost the area of producing machine tools in this country. We have lost electronics. We have lost automobile parts. We have lost furniture manufacturing. We have lost telecom. We have lost appliances. I am talking about the manufacture of these things. In 1960, 30 percent of our GDP in this country was manufacturing. Now it is 11 percent. There are 1.2 billion cell phones sold on this planet every year. Not one is made in America--1.2 billion and not one is made in America. We have lost 60 percent of the furniture manufacturing. You don't need to know all the stories, but I have spoken about the one we lost in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania House Furniture, which was an upscale fine furniture company. Governor Rendell did everything he could to stop it from moving to China. They used a special Pennsylvania wood to make this furniture. What they did is closed the plant and shipped the wood to China, made the furniture there and shipped it back and called it American production. The last piece of furniture that came down off the line--for a company that lasted 100 years, making top-of-the-line furniture--the very last piece of furniture, those workmen in that plant turned it over and all the people who worked in the plant signed their names because they said there would not be furniture such as this made again. Their jobs were gone in an instant, and 60 percent of furniture manufacturing is gone. The list goes on and on and on. Eighty-four percent of the circuit boards, which used to be ours--we developed circuit boards--are now made in Asia. We defend, as all of us understand, our military security aggressively. Do we care about our economic security--that we are hollowing out the manufacturing base of our country? Apparently not. In this economic recovery bill that was passed, I included on the Senate side something called ``Buy American.'' One would have thought I was exploding all of the relationships that existed around the globe. People here even had apoplectic seizures: What are you doing? Are you trying to start a trade war? No, I was not. ``Buy American'' is perfectly permitted in the WTO trade rules. In fact, Mr. Pascal Lamy, the WTO chief, says ``Buy American meets world trade rules.'' If we had not put a ``Buy American'' provision in so State and local governments and the Federal Government, when contracting to buy steel and to buy products with which to make highways and other items we are investing in, had we not done that, we would be spending our taxpayers' money to purchase from China, to import the steel from China. I thought we were doing that to put Americans back to work. So I put in a ``Buy American'' provision. If you read the New York Times and the Washington Post, you just thought they were having seizures about it. Unbelievable, they say. No, it is not unbelievable to me. If you are going to try to get economic recovery in this country, you do not do that by incentivizing production in China and Japan. By the way, in their programs in China and Japan, they have their own provisions to purchase at home. Here is the trade deficit we have with the world. This is why I say I support trying to do something with the faucet about jobs, to put more jobs in this economy. I am going to vote this afternoon on the proposal coming before the Senate. But here is the drain. Even as we do that, more and more jobs are leaving this country. Anybody who talks about fiscal policy deficits and is really worried that these fiscal policy deficits are going to sink this country, you can make a case--I used to teach a little economics in college--you can make a case that the fiscal policy deficit is money we owe to ourselves. You cannot make a case that this amount of red--these red lines go down, down, down, $800 billion a year for the last 3 years in a row. That is money we owe to other countries. That is money that will be repaid by a lower standard of living in the United States. I say to all of those who care about fiscal policy deficits--and I do--you better care about this as well because this is a description of moving American jobs overseas in addition to indebting ourselves deep in debt to especially China, as this chart shows. This chart shows the red lines. This is only China, a country with which we have a $260 billion trade deficit and growing every single year. By the way, we have with the country of China a reasonably ignorant bilateral which says to China--I am taking one piece of it now--it says: You are ramping up a very large automobile export industry, and we will very soon see Chinese cars on the streets of America. When they come to America under our agreement with you, you have a very large deficit with us, China, so when you ship us your cars--and they are coming--we will impose a 2.5-percent tariff on automobiles from China into the United States. We agree that if we ship cars made in the United States to China, you may impose a 25-percent tariff. A country with which we have a $260 billion trade deficit, we agreed to give them a 10-to-1 advantage on tariffs on bilateral automobile trading. I don't know how other people define ignorance, but I believe that is ignorant of our country's economic interest. That is the reason I indicated in the economic recovery--what is called the stimulus program--that if we are going to spend money to try to restart this economy, to try to get this engine restarted and put people back to work, we at least ought to have some understanding that the products we are purchasing with that are not purchased from China and Japan, with which we have these very large budget deficits. Since repetition is so very important here--I received a letter the other day from someone who said: Mr. Senator, if you are, at the end of your third term in the Senate this year, going to leave the Senate, who is going to speak for Huffy bicycles? I said: I don't know who is going to speak for Huffy bicycles, but I am going to continue to do so until the end of the year because it is a perfect description of what is wrong in this country with respect to this so-called bathtub which should hold jobs but has a wide open drain. Huffy was an Ohio company. Not anymore. They all got fired, all of them, because all these bicycles are produced in China. Why? Because the folks in Ohio were making $11 an hour and that is way too much money to pay an American worker. I know where they are made now. They are made in China for 50 cents an hour by people who work 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. The poignant story about Huffy bicycles is when the last factory closed and the last Huffy bicycle was made in America, all the workers, as they drove out of the parking lot, left a pair of empty shoes in the space where their car once parked. It was the only way they could send a message to the company: You can ship our jobs to China, but you are never really going to fill this space of ours. So no more Huffy bicycles. The list is endless. Huffy bicycles and Radio Flyer, the little red wagon every child has ridden in, are examples of what we do not make here anymore. Radio Flyer was made in Illinois for 110 years. The little red wagon was made by an immigrant who came to this country who not only loved airplanes--and so he named a red wagon ``Radio Flyer''-- but was a very good businessman. Every American child sat in those little red wagons and played in those little red wagons for 110 years, made in America. Not anymore. They are all made in China. My point is this: I am going to vote for this bill this afternoon. It is the right thing to do. We will have people come here and spread the mantra again today as they have for so many weeks and months: Do nothing. Do nothing. Things will be fine. Things are not fine. It is our responsibility to do something to address these issues. I want us to do something to try to create new jobs. I chaired a hearing of the policy committee not too long ago. We had three small to medium-size businesses come testify. All of them were ready to expand and ready to hire new people. All of them were profitable businesses, all of them were ready to expand, and none of them could expand because none of them could find credit from the banks. Think of this: The biggest banks in America are now making record profits. I am talking about the biggest banks on Wall Street. They are making record profits and are prepared to pay record bonuses at a time when small and medium-size businesses that create the jobs in this country cannot find credit to expand even when they are profitable. There is something wrong with this system. This system is not working. There are a lot of reasons for us to care a lot about what has happened in this country. I regret that there has never been the kinds of hearings with subpoena power that develops the master narrative of what has happened in the last 6 or 8 years that caused this economic wreck. The American people need to know. I understand there is now a commission, but that is not a substitute for what the Congress has a responsibility to do. In 200 years in this country, we have gone from times when the productive sector--those who produce and manufacture--had the upper hand to other times when the financing sector had the upper hand. More recently, the financing sector has had the upper hand in this country. Manufacturing is an afterthought, and we are losing, losing, losing our manufacturing base. The financing side, as all of us know, has become much larger. In fact, just about 15, 18 months ago, then-Treasury Secretary Paulson and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board came to the Congress and said: Look, we are facing near imminent collapse of this entire economy. At that time, one of the things they said was that we have too much concentration in the biggest financial firms in the country. Yes, that was true, except, you know what, the concentration is even much greater now, engineered by some of the same people who said there is too much already. This is not rocket science. Too big to fail meant no-fault capitalism. The biggest financial firms in the country got bailed out. Why? Because it was feared they were too big to fail. I think too big to fail is just too big. This is not rocket science. If you are too big to fail, you are too big. Yet the very institutions that are too big to fail are getting bigger, not smaller, imposing more risk. By the way, the biggest ones that are showing significant record profits and ready to pay record bonuses--we are told somewhere around $140 billion to $160 billion--the biggest firms are engaged in the same kind of activity that steered the country into the ditch. We still have the credit default swaps and derivatives out there that represent very substantial risks. If anybody really wants to understand how this relates, just go to Las Vegas or a casino someplace. Look up and understand what a synthetic derivative means. It means you are buying a credit default swap to insure a bond, except this transition does not relate to anything that is real. It is just a wager. That is exactly what has gone on in this country, unimpeded by regulators who did not look, who were woefully blind, and who boasted about it for some years. Who pays the price for all of that? The 25 or 26 million people who got up this morning and could not find a job. In some cases, they got up on a morning a month ago, a morning a year ago, in some cases 2 years ago, and still could not find work. They are the victims. And the very folks at the top who steered this country into the ditch are reporting record profits. The folks at the top, as I just described with the new study from Northeastern University, have full employment. It seems to me there is something wrong with this picture. How does one come to the floor of the Senate this evening and say: Let's do nothing. I have an idea: let's keep doing nothing, they say. We have watched that inaction, and that does not work. The American people deserve better than that. I hope this afternoon we will have most Members of the Senate coming to the floor to say: Let's do something. Let's care today not about the people at the top of the financial food chain who are now making record profits and preparing to pay record bonuses, but let's do something for the folks at the bottom who have lost their jobs--5.5 million manufacturing workers just in the last decade. Let's do something to see if we can find a way to put them back to work. If we do that, maybe we will get a strong vote today for people saying we care about jobs. We would like to work together--Republicans and Democrats--to get the best ideas both have to offer rather than the worst of each and see if we can advance the economic interests of this country once again. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time from 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. today be equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees, with the majority leader controlling the final 15 minutes prior to the 5:30 p.m. cloture vote.

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