Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 602, submitted earlier today.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble 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. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the following postal-naming bills en bloc: Calendar Nos. 489, 490, and 491--S. 3567, H.R. 5278, and H.R. 5395.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bills be read a third time and passed en bloc; that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate; and that any statements relating to the bills be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, for the past 10 years I have had the privilege of working with Elizabeth Gore, the chief of staff of my U.S. Senate office. Today, as Elizabeth leaves her job to pursue other career opportunities, I want to pay tribute to her extraordinary work. Elizabeth Gore has made important contributions not only to the effective management of my Senate office, but also to the creation of good public policy for our country. Elizabeth joined my staff 10 years ago following a career that included work in both the U.S. House of Representatives and for the White House. She possesses that wide range of skills that is always necessary for success. She is smart, tough, honest, and has demonstrated an uncanny sense of good judgment. I know the American people view the U.S. Senate through the lives of those of us who are elected to serve here. But, frankly, every U.S. Senator will admit that a substantial amount of the credit for their accomplishments in the Senate belong to some very talented staff. That has been especially true of Elizabeth in my office. She has directed a complicated set of issues in an office full of activity with great skill. The term ``regular hours'' would not fit any job description in most Senate offices. Long hours, family sacrifices, and devotion to getting the job done describes everything about the commitment Elizabeth made to me, my staff, and the people of North Dakota over the past decade. I know Elizabeth will now add another chapter to what is already an illustrious career and others will discover the joy of working with her. I join all of my staff members in saying thank you to Elizabeth Gore for having spent the past decade working in my office. All of us owe her a great debt of gratitude.

Mr. DORGAN

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 to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about a piece of legislation that perhaps is not on the front pages of the newspapers today but is very important in this Congress and to the American people. It is very important that we pass this legislation. We have been waiting and waiting, and we continue to wait. It is called the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration bill. We have been working on this for a long time. This is not just reauthorization for some bureaucracy; this is about safety for the American public who is flying today. Let me put up a chart that shows where the airplanes are in the skies today. I think I have a chart on that which describes the number of flights in this country. The air is literally packed with airplanes flying all across this country. The question is, How are they controlled? Ground-based radar systems are keeping track of all of these flights. This is a map that shows the airplanes that are flying in the country at a given time--very crowded skies. This FAA reauthorization bill has a lot to do with safety. The reason it is so important--I am going to talk about the safety piece first, and then I will talk about why it has been blocked and how we finally get some action on this and why I finally have had a bellyful of trying to persuade people that we ought to pass legislation that I think is critically important to save lives in this country. Let me remind all of my colleagues about February 12 last year. February 12 of last year was the tragic crash of Colgan Air flight 3407. That crash should not have happened. That crash took the lives of 45 passengers, 2 flight attendants, 2 pilots, and 1 person on the ground. It should never, ever have happened. The families of the victims of Colgan Air flight 3407 have consistently been to every hearing I have held on safety dealing with aviation. They have been, at every moment possible, here in the Capitol Building, office to office, door to door, saying: Pass this legislation to reauthorize the FAA, including the dramatic safety changes we propose. They provided a chart board that shows photographs of their loved ones, those who climbed on that airplane that evening to fly from Newark to Buffalo, NY. It was a night flight on a Bombardier-8. During that flight, icing occurred on the wings. I have read the transcript from that cockpit between the pilot and the copilot. Let me describe a couple of things we learned. The young pilot lived in Seattle, WA, and commuted to work to Newark. She deadheaded all night long on a FedEx plane stopping in Memphis, landed in Newark--no evidence that she slept--and then she boarded an airplane to haul passengers to Buffalo, NY. That was the copilot. The copilot, I understand, earned somewhere around $20,000, $22,000 a year and had a second job in a coffee job to make ends meet. My understanding was she lived with her parents. That was the copilot. The pilot commuted from Florida. There is no evidence that the pilot slept the night before. He spent time in the crew lounge, where there is no bed. That pilot boarded the same plane. That raises all kinds of issues about fatigue and commuting--commuting all night to board an airplane to haul passengers. When you read the transcript of what occurred in that cockpit, you also understand there were very serious issues about training--the stick pusher and the stick shaker and flying into ice and not following procedures, all of these issues. Forty-five passengers died that night. The question is, Is there one level of safety in this country when you get on an airplane and you look in that cockpit? Is there one level of safety if you are on a large plane or carrier versus a small regional carrier? Do you have the same experience in the cockpit, the same level of training? Where have the crews come from? Did they fly all night all across the country just to get to their work station? Well, the Colgan crash told us a lot. Here is what happened that evening. There was ice on the wings. This was the crash site near Buffalo, NY, on February 12, 2009. Here is another photograph of the crash site. This crash should never have happened. Those victims should not have died. They should have been safely on the ground with their loved ones. What has gone wrong here? Let me at least describe a few things that I think. One was fatigue. Clearly, that played a role. Here is a quote that NBC News ran from a pilot on a 737 jet flying to Denver, CO: I had been doing everything in my power to stay awake: coffee, gum, candy. But as we entered one of the most critical phases of flight, I had been up for 20 straight hours. Fatigue. Is this someone in a working condition who is sharp, on edge, landing a plane with perhaps 150 people on board? Here is another quote from an 18-year veteran pilot, describing the routine of commuter flights with short layovers in the middle of the night: Take a shower, brush your teeth, and pretend you slept. He said that is the way it works. Here is another quote from a pilot: I was bathed in sweat and scared to death. That is an 18-year pilot describing the approach to the runway after numerous early morning commuter flights over 3 days. Here is a photograph of a pilot crash pad. He watches a movie on his computer at a crash house in Sterling Park, VA, which is not far from here. These houses, which can have 20 to 24 occupants at a time, are designed to give flight crews from regional airlines a quiet place to sleep near their base airports. Many can't afford hotels, so they use crash houses where they pay $200 a month for a bed. I described the young lady who was the copilot on the Colgan Air flight that crashed. She commuted from Seattle, WA to Newark to get to her duty station. There was no evidence that she had slept in a bed. It raises a lot of questions. At hearings I held, I held up this chart to show where the Colgan pilots were commuting from flying on that particular regional airline. They were flying out of Newark. You could see where they are commuting from, such as home stations in Los Angeles, in Seattle, in Texas, and they commuted to work all the way across the country. I describe these charts only to talk about one phase of the investigation of the Colgan crash, and that is fatigue and rest--crew rest. We have a piece of legislation that addresses a number of these issues: What is the experience of the pilot in the cockpit? How many hours must that pilot have of relevant experience and training to sit in that cockpit and haul passengers on a commercial airplane? We addressed that and so many other critical areas of safety. That is in the FAA reauthorization bill--a piece of legislation we passed in the Senate Commerce Committee long ago. Now it is awaiting action on the floor of the Senate. Yet, we have not been able to get it done. I want to talk a little about the importance of this legislation. No. 1, it creates jobs. It is investment in infrastructure, airport improvement funds--investing in the infrastructure of this country. Let me describe the central elements of this bill. Airport Improvement Program. That is tens of thousands of jobs around this country. Aviation safety. I have touched on that. Air traffic control modernization. A passenger bill of rights. Small community air service. Let me talk for a moment about the air traffic control modernization. I showed a chart with all of those airplanes in the air. Every single passenger on every one of those planes could be flying in safer conditions now if we were moving, as we should, with this bill, in modernizing the air traffic control system. Our kids carry cell phones around that have GPS capability. Those of the commercial airliners in this country are flying to ground-based radar, not GPS. They don't utilize what our kids have in their cell phones in commercial airplanes, which would allow them to fly safer routes, fly more direct routes. Modernization of the air traffic control system is long overdue, and it has a lot to do with aviation safety. It is in this bill. This bill must get done. To not move forward on this--Europeans are, and others--and to have us fall further behind is unthinkable to me. The passenger bill of rights--we include that in this bill, and it says some very important things. The passenger bill of rights says that they are not going to be able to keep you on an airplane for 6 or 8 hours when they have trouble on the runway and you sit on the tarmac for 6 or 8 hours. Three hours. We set the conditions under the passenger bill of rights, airplanes--that is, the aircraft companies, airline companies, must comply with the rules that we have established. This legislation provides consumer benefits for 700 million plane trips per year taken by the American people. We have heard horror stories from around this country: passengers stuck on the tarmac for 6 hours, 8 hours, bathrooms not working, out of water. The fact is, this bill will improve that and the disclosure of flight information to passengers, impose certain burdens on the airlines, and that is the right approach. All of these things are in this FAA reauthorization bill. What is holding up the bill? Well, first and foremost, in the Senate, we passed the bill with the understanding that there is a controversy called slots and perimeter rules at Washington National Airport. When we passed it through the Senate, 93 to 0, we understood that we didn't resolve the slots and perimeter rule issue. The House has additional slots at DC National, but we didn't do anything on it. We didn't do zero. We understood that we passed the bill and would negotiate it later, and negotiations have ensued. Now we have several representations saying: I represent my area, my region, or my airport, and therefore I object. Do you know what. It is fine to represent your interests in your region, but it is not fine to block the bill. It is not fine to block this bill. In fact, the latest discussions that have been held, with respect to slots at DC airport, are 16 additional slots--not new flights in or out of DC National Airport, but flights that would have flown within the perimeter that would now fly outside of the perimeter. I know that is lost on most people because this perimeter rule limits the number of miles you can fly from DC National Airport. This would convert flights inside the perimeter to flights outside of it--16 flights. So it is no new traffic to DC National. Those who proposed it said: We would agree that we would have the same size airplanes flying the flights. Yet, we have massive amounts of controversy around here with people saying: Well, I am going to block this and that. Let me say this: If you care much about safety in the skies and at long last you want to pass an FAA bill to improve safety, if you care about the airport improvement program and infrastructure and airports and runways and building the infrastructure and creating tens of thousands of jobs, and if you care about small community air services, a passenger bill of rights and having America keep up with air traffic control modernization, you can't possibly be blocking this bill. I am not going to describe who it is, with names and so on. This is not about Democrats or Republicans, or conservatives or liberals; this is about, are we going to fail again? I have watched so many failures because people have decided they are going to block this or that. What we have had in this entire Congress is one side of the aisle blocking most everything for a long period of time. This bill happens to be bipartisan. There is no excuse, no reason to block this legislation. It appears to me that a couple things are likely to happen. If interests that have been involved in these discussions continue to block this, this bill will fail, and the American people will be flying in skies that are less safe than they could be. We will not have made the improvements we should make. We will not make the investments and create the jobs we should create. I suppose those who block it will think they have done something meritorious for the country, but they will have injured this country's interests. My hope is that in the coming couple of days, those who have said they are going to block this legislation will think again and understand that this place only works through compromise; it only works if we are willing to understand that everybody has different views on these things, and let's find a way to effectively compromise and pass legislation that strengthens this country. If I sound a little irritated, I am, because I have had a belly full of the intransigence that exists in this Chamber. Nobody fights harder for their interests than I do. But I also understand, having served here long enough, that there is a need to make this place work by being willing to compromise your interests in a fair way. We have gone at this now for some weeks. It has been a long while since the Senate passed this bill. It is very close to a point where, I believe, we will not have the time to continue working on this, and what we will see is that this bill will, once again, fail, and we will extend, once again, the FAA reauthorization bill for a short time, and then until the next Congress. God bless everybody who dug their heels in and decided they could only live with what they could live with and would not compromise, but they have done no favor to this country. They can all chew on that for a while. I hope that in the coming days, yes, families of the victims of Colgan will perhaps have some ability to influence those who want to block this legislation. Perhaps those who are out of work and would get work with the airport improvement funds will influence them. Maybe those who care about continued air service to small communities would have some ability to influence them. Maybe those who care about the passengers bill of rights--at long last, maybe they will be persuasive. One way or another, I hope that finally we will see if maybe there is a public spiritedness in this Chamber and also an interest in doing the right thing and pass the FAA reauthorization bill. I understand my colleague from Kansas is here ready to speak. I will defer until later. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I may, I know the Senator from Kansas spoke about this issue that we worked on in the Energy Committee over a year ago. We worked together to get what is called a renewable electricity standard, some people also call it a renewable portfolio standard--through the committee process. A renewable electricity standard is a requirement that a certain percentage of electricity delivered be from renewable sources--wind, solar, and so on. I believe that it is very important to do that. I appreciate the Senator from Kansas and his position. There is an old saying: If you don't care where you are going, you are never going to be lost. If our country does not describe the route we want to take, if we don't say here is where we want to go as a country, then wherever we find ourselves 5 and 10 years from now, that is where we are, I guess. I believe however, that it ought to be a circumstance where we decide what our energy future looks like. I believe that we should incentivize the development of renewable energy. How do we maximize the development of wind and solar energy? By creating a renewable electricity standard that drives the development and by building the transmission that allows us to produce it in one area and move it to a load center in another area. We did that in the bill that passed the Energy Committee just over a year ago. I fully support the notion of the Senator from Kansas that the 15- percent renewable electricity standard we created in committee ought to advanced in any energy bill. In fact, I don't know whether we will part company on this point, but I have always indicated that I support a 20- percent renewable electricity standard. I believe our country ought to push very hard to move in the direction of maximizing the capability to produce renewable energy where the wind blows and the Sun shines, and put it on the wires and move it to the load centers. That is exactly what we ought to be doing. The Senator and I sure agree on the philosophy of this issue and the need for this provision in an energy bill.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. The fact is, I happen to support limiting or capping carbon. I will support a price on carbon. I do not support cap and trade as a mechanism, as a way of doing that, or giving Wall Street the ability to trade carbon securities. But that is another side to this. Because we have not been able to do climate change legislation and develop a consensus on broader climate change legislation in this country, I have always felt we should bring the Energy bill to the floor which was, in fact, bipartisan and which would, in fact, do the very things we would want done to limit carbon. Take energy from the wind--that limits carbon. You develop energy without putting carbon into the air, just as an example. I know Senator Reid is trying very hard to do a couple of things. No. 1, he is trying to get this session moving on issues that matter. He has a lot of things on his plate. The Senator from Kansas knows--I am not being partisan when I say this--that a lot of things have been blocked, even motions to proceed. So the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, has a difficult job getting legislation to the floor and getting them moving. He has indicated he wants to bring to the floor an energy bill that includes a lot of items with which the Senator from Kansas and I would agree. We need to do something about oilspill regulation and safety and try to address those issues in the right way, and we do need to address a number of the other issues the Senator from Nevada suggested. I happen to think that using natural gas for long-haul vehicles on the interstate roadways makes a lot of sense. He has proposed a number of items, including electric vehicles. The bill I introduced, along with my colleagues, Senator Alexander and Senator Merkley, that we passed through the Energy Committee last week, begins incentivizing and moving toward an electric vehicle fleet. All of those things are good. I support that, and I commend the Senator from Nevada for doing that. To the extent we can, if we can find ways to add other things that have a broad bipartisan consensus, that makes a lot of sense to me. I think that is what the Senator from Kansas is saying. In order for a renewable electricity standard to be added, it would take 60 votes because things just take 60 votes around here. I went to a small school, and I thought a majority was just a majority, but it is not these days. But if we have the 60 votes--and I think there is some evidence that may exist--then adding a renewable electricity standard will substantially improve, I believe, the potential to pass an energy bill that would matter to America. I want to say quickly that I understand Senator Reid is trying very hard to get something done, to get it up, get it passed, and get it done. I commend him for that. I do not want to be critical at all. But I commend the Senator from Kansas as well because he and I agree: If we can add a renewable electricity standard to this legislation, we will advance our country's energy interests in a very significant way.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened with some interest to my colleague from Arizona, the minority whip, discuss his notion about the economic issues confronting our country. I wish to respond a bit to them with great respect, of course, because I think the opportunity to have competing ideas about our country's future is a very important opportunity here on the floor of the Senate. Some long while ago I wrote in a book that I published about Stanley Newberg. I wrote in the book that I had read about Stanley in a very small New York Times article, but it so piqued my interest that I decided to try to find out about Stanley, so I did. I found that Stanley had come to this country as a young boy to escape the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. He, with his father, sold fish, I believe, on the Lower East Side of New York City, in Manhattan. He followed his dad selling fish. He learned English. He went to school. Then he was able to do well in school and go to college. His parents had saved for him. He went to college and graduated from college and then went to work. He got a law degree and then he went to work for an aluminum company. He did so well he rose up and finally managed the aluminum company and then purchased the aluminum company. When he died, they opened his will. In his will he said he wanted to leave his $5.7 million to the United States of America for the privilege of living in this great country, and that was Stanley Newberg's will. I thought: That is really unusual for someone to die and in their will leave their money to this country with gratitude for the privilege of living in this great country. What a remarkable thing to remind all of us that being an American is something we shouldn't take for granted Monday through Friday or all week long, for that matter. It is the case, I think, for most of us that when we grew up, we understood this country was the biggest, the strongest, the best, destined to expand opportunity for our children, and things would always be better for the next generation than for the last. That is how we viewed this country of ours. But it is the case, it seems to me, these days that America has lost a step. There is great concern about whether the kids will have it better than we had it. There is great concern about the economy and the fact that there are probably 18 million to 20 million people who woke up this morning either without a job, or with less of a job than they could easily handle. They are underemployed or unemployed--18 million to 20 million people. People woke up this morning and saw the news that we are deep in debt and getting deeper in debt. They are concerned about the federal debt, and they should be, there is no question about that. Let me, for a moment--because I want to engage on the proposition by my colleague from Arizona--transport us back to 2001. In 2001, on the floor of the Senate, during that period, we had a pretty raucous debate. That debate on the Senate floor was about the first budget surplus in 30 years under the last year of President Bill Clinton--a budget surplus of a couple hundred billion dollars. Alan Greenspan was not sleeping at night because he was worried that we were going to pay down the Federal debt too rapidly and that would injure the economy. Many of my colleagues said we have a surplus now, and the economists project that we are going to have surpluses for 10 years--as far as the eye can see. You have heard the old line that if you were to lay all the economists end to end, they would never reach a conclusion. Individually, almost all of them said we have a surplus, and now we will have one as far as the eye can see. Many of my colleagues supported George W. Bush's proposal to provide tax cuts for the next 10 years. They said: Let's provide tax cuts for the next 10 years because we need to give this surplus back to the American people. I stood on the floor of the Senate then and said I don't think we ought to give back tax funds that don't yet exist. These surpluses are only projections. What if something would happen? How about being a little conservative about this? But, no, Katy bar the door; they said we are going to provide large tax cuts, and the largest to the wealthiest Americans, such that if you made $1 million a year in income, you got an $80,000 or so a year tax cut. That was the proposal. It passed--without my support, but it passed. So that was the experience in 2001. Fast forward to 2010. Where are we? We are $13 trillion in debt. By the way, this is testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance by Leonard Burman, who is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University: If the Bush tax cuts had never been enacted, the debt held by the public at the end of 2009 would have been 30 percent lower, to about $5.2 trillion . . . This was less than the level of debt at the end of 1999. The question is--and this is what brought me to the Senate floor--my colleague says we have to extend the tax cuts that were provided in 2001. The President says let's extend the tax cuts for middle-income folks making $250,000 a year, or below. My colleague from Arizona, and others, say, no, let's extend all of Bush's tax cuts from 2001. Let's extend them all. The difference is about $1 trillion added to the debt over the next decade. Extending those tax cuts for roughly 2 percent of the wealthiest U.S. households will cost, with interest, about $1 trillion. My colleague says if you don't do that, then you are increasing taxes on upper income people, and that is going to retard economic growth. Let me talk for a bit about that, because it is interesting to me that those who are on the floor saying let us not let the tax cuts expire-- by the way, these were tax cuts for upper income people, who got the largest tax cuts, and they were given because we were trying to give a surplus back. Does anybody see a surplus around here? Has anybody seen a surplus for 9 years? Right after the Senate and the Congress passed legislation to provide significant tax cuts for wealthy Americans, we had a recession in 2001, on 9/11 we had a devastating terrorist attack, and then we went to war in Afghanistan, and then we went to war in Iraq, and we had a continuing war against terrorism. We never saw a surplus beyond that year. That deficit and debt went up, up, up, and up. At the same time all of that was happening, this new administration that came in in 2001 not only said we are going to cut taxes largely for the wealthy, but they said we are going to hire a bunch of regulators in this town who will promise not to look. You do what you want and we won't watch. Wall Street went wild. It was an unbelievable carnival of greed. We had trillions and trillions of dollars of financial vehicles being created that had never been created before, such as naked credit default swaps, synthetic CDOs--you name it--and they were trading back and forth. As Will Rogers said, people were trading things they never got from people who never had it. Everybody was making a lot of money on Wall Street, like hogs in slop, as they say on the farm. The fact is that the house of cards they created came tumbling down. When this President crossed the threshold of the White House in January of last year, had he taken a Rip Van Winkle nap for a year and done nothing, the budget deficit he inherited was going to be $1.3 trillion. Now we have a $13 trillion Federal budget deficit, and now we have the circumstances of a tax cut, the bulk of which went to the wealthy, that was described by the minority 9 years ago as being essential to give back the surplus that doesn't exist. The question is, will that tax cut be extended for the wealthiest Americans? Phrased another way, shall we add another $1 trillion in Federal debt in order to give tax cuts at $80,000 a year to someone who makes $1 million a year? At the same time our colleagues say that is essential to do, they say if you don't do that, you will have an unbelievable impact on small business, because that is who will pay these taxes. That is not true at all--just not true. About 3 percent of small business income, would be captured by that; 97 percent would not. Those are the facts. At the same time we have people pushing for that--adding $1 trillion to the debt by giving the highest income earners in the country extended tax cuts--the same folks are coming to the floor and saying, by the way, one of our highest priorities is not only to extend the tax cuts for the highest income earners, it is to make sure we repeal permanently the estate tax. They don't call it that; they call it the ``death tax.'' Why do they do that? Because a pollster did a poll and said if you call it the ``death tax,'' you can fool the American people who will believe there is a tax on death. But of course, there is not; there is a tax on inherited wealth. It seems to me that is an interesting set of priorities. They say we are concerned about the Federal deficit and debt--and, by the way, we want to add $1 trillion to the debt by opposing President Obama's request that we not extend the tax cuts for people making over $250,000. We want to add $1 trillion to the debt, and we also want to repeal the entire estate tax. I don't know how one believes that set of priorities represents the best interests of our country. I am for lower taxes. I would love it if people could pay minimal taxes across this country. But I am also for a country that works, and a country that matters, and a country that invests in itself and its future. Someone once asked the question: If you were given the assignment to write an obituary and the only information you had about the deceased was their check register, what would you write? So you look at that check register and find out what did they spend money on? What was their value system? What was important to them? The same is true with the Federal budget and the priorities we described by taxing and spending. What will historians say when looking back and seeing that we were in deep trouble, with 20 million people out of work or underemployed, a $13 trillion debt, and the minority was saying the highest priority was to cut taxes for those earning $250,000, and more, and to repeal the tax on inherited wealth? That is unbelievable. You know, the only way, as of last year, you would pay any tax on inherited wealth is if you had more than $7 million a year. How many families have more than $7 million net per year? By the way, this year, the inheritance tax is zero, and it springs back the next year. That goofy set of circumstances was arranged by the same people who wrote the tax cut bill in 2001 to give back a surplus that turned out not to exist. So we have a zero tax year this year, and four billionaires have died so far. By the way, their estate will pay a zero rate, and my colleagues come to the floor and say that money has already been taxed. Wrong, it has not. Much of it is growth appreciation of property or tax, and it has never borne a tax. It is just the folks who go to work every day and pay their taxes on time; they pay for their kids' schools, and roads, and police, and fire protection, and the Defense Department, and the CDC--they are the ones paying the taxes. But do you know what? If you find the people who have 10, 15, 20, and $50 million in assets--I will show you that the bulk of that has come through growth appreciation that has never borne a tax at all in this country. That is the highest priority for the minority--to eliminate the tax on inherited wealth. That is unbelievable to me. We in this country have a very serious set of problems. We need to cut Federal spending, there is no question about that. Federal agencies are big and, in some cases, bloated. I mentioned the other day that I think I have done pretty well myself. I want to spend in this country to invest in good things that will make this a better country. I want us to continue building and improving our roads, our schools, and the things that make this a better country. But I also believe we ought to cut back where we should. In my State, some years ago, there was a proposal to build a new courthouse, and $46 million was put into an appropriations bill, which passed, to build a new courthouse in the largest city of my State. I thought it was way overboard, so I cut it to $23 million--in half. It was built for $19 million. Some people say: That is strange, cutting funding for your own State. But I thought it was excessive spending. I don't care whether it is my State, or other States; we need to tighten our belts and cut spending. We can cut in areas where we are spending too much, no question about that. You don't address this unbelievable burden of debt deficit and by deciding you are going to cut your revenue as well. You cannot do that. Who will pay for this country and what it needs? We have some people at the top of the income ladder in this country who are only paying a 15- percent income tax rate--the highest income earner, 2 years ago, earned $3.6 billion--that is $300 million a month--and paid a 15-percent tax rate. Most working people don't get to pay a tax rate that low. Some of those folks are running their companies through tax haven countries, with deferred compensation deals to even avoid paying a 15-percent rate. Somebody has to pay some taxes to invest in the future of this country. We need to invest in our children and in our infrastructure. Somebody has to pay those taxes. I understand that nobody likes to pay them very much, but we have to get control of this deficit, no question about that. We have to decide as a country that you can't ask men and women to lace up their boots and put on ceramic body armor and go halfway around the world and take a gun and fight and be shot at and, by the way, we ask you to do that in the name of our country, and we will not pay for a penny of it. We will add it to the debt. We have done that for 8 years. We cannot continue to do that. Americans know better than that. Let me finish by saying that, as I said earlier, we should not necessarily believe that everything will be all right just because we live here in America. This country deserves good judgment and tough decisions to put the country back on track. In the book McCullough wrote on John Adams, they were putting this new country together and he was traveling in Europe. The record of all of that is in his letters to Abigail. He would write back as he was traveling abroad and ask the plaintive question: Where will the leadership come from to build this new country? From where will the leadership come? Who will be the leaders as we try to put this new country together? Then, in the next letter, he would answer the question. There is only us to provide the leadership. There is me. There is Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Madison, Mason. In the rearview mirror of history, the ``only us'' represents some pretty unbelievable human talent who risked their lives, risked their fortunes, risked all they had to do the right thing for this country. The question for us now, with a $13 trillion debt, an anemic economy, great partisan divides that exist between the political parties, and elections coming up in November, the question is, From where will the leadership come? Who really is willing to lead this country by saying: Here is what we have to do? It is not pleasant always. But who is willing to make those judgments to say we cannot just always take for granted what America's future might be based on what it was? This country deserves better. I am not here to say one party is all right and one party is all wrong. I heard my colleagues say: If you do this, it is bad for small businesses. That is not the case in any event. We have had a bill on the Senate floor that would provide assistance, help, and investment to small businesses. It has been on the floor 3 weeks, and the very people who say they are for small businesses have been blocking it for 3 weeks. All we need is some straight talk from time to time. I would like everybody to pay the lowest possible tax rate. I would like our government to be the most efficient. I would like us to invest in the future of our country. I would like all those things to happen. I would like it if we were not at war. I watched yesterday down at a place called the Newseum. Once again, I watched the video of 9/11/2001. That was not brought on by us; that was brought on by others, and we did not have a choice but to address these issues. When we do these things, we must do them as a country that cares about our future. We cannot just spend money, send soldiers to war, do all these things and say: We don't have to pay for any of it and you all will understand. That is not leadership. This President inherited a pretty tough situation. Now he is criticized for saying he inherited a tough situation. The history books will write what he inherited. He is trying pretty hard but does not get agreement on much of anything these days. At the very least we ought to say we agree, let's extend tax cuts for middle-class Americans. This is a pretty tough time for them. But we had some of the highest rates of growth in this country when the wealthiest Americans were paying the tax rate that previously existed. Extending tax cuts for the wealthy at a time when we are at war and we say we would like to extend to them an $80,000-a-year tax cut if they have a $1 million a year income? That is not leadership, in my judgment. This country deserves better, this country can do better, and this Congress can do better with a little less partisanship and a little more thought and see if we can come together to represent the future of this country. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I forgot to put my chart up again. Every day I want to remind people what this is all about. Will Rogers, 80 years ago, said what applies today. He said: The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we'll get around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK. We will get around to the unemployed as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK. I am part of the Old West out in the northern Great Plains. They used to say about wagon trains: You don't move a wagon train ahead by leaving some wagons behind. This country is best when it works together. Will Rogers described this in the 1930s: The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we'll get around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK. Wall Street got fixed up with hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars and untold trillions from the back door of the Federal Reserve Board. They got fixed up. Now they are seeing record profits again. There are a whole lot of folks at the bottom of the economic ladder who are not fixed up and are out of work--not from their fault, nothing they did; they are just out of work because they lost their jobs during a severe economic downturn. It seems to me that is what requires our leadership. In this Chamber, at this moment, nobody is out of work. Everybody puts on a white shirt, a suit, and comes to work. Nobody is out of work. But a whole lot of Americans are. We ought to keep our priorities on that every single day. This country works best when we are able to put people back to work. There is no social program this Senate is involved in, no social program as important as a good job that pays well. That is what makes everything else possible. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Indian Affairs will meet on Thursday, July 29, 2010, at 9:30 a.m. in room 628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Indian Gaming.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion on the floor of the Senate in the last couple of days about small business legislation and various things dealing with jobs, and clearly we need a lot of jobs in this country. We have gone through a very steep economic decline that has victimized lots of Americans. Because of that, we have a lot of people who are waking up in the mornings without work and wondering what to do next. They feel helpless and hopeless and are trying to get their feet on the ground. But they need some help from this Congress; that is, we do not create jobs, but we do create conditions under which jobs can be created by the private sector. So I want to talk a little about the issue of what might give the American people some confidence because confidence is everything. If they are confident about the future, it means our economy can expand. If people are not confident about the future, our economy will contract. It is that simple. There is no question that this country now, having gone through the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, has the largest Federal budget deficits we have ever had. In the last couple of years there have been enormous budget deficits. In fact, the budget was in deficit by $1 trillion by the end of June in this fiscal year. But our colleagues--some of whom voted for all the war funding over these last years and voted for the big tax cuts to reduce the government's revenue, and all of those issues--are now rushing to the floor with everything but suspenders and proclaiming that now the deficit is a big problem. Well, I will tell you why it is a big problem. It is a big problem because 10 years ago a lot of folks in here decided to cut the revenue steeply, and cut taxes mostly for wealthy Americans, and cut them in a very significant way. So the government had less revenue. They did that because they believed we had budget surpluses that were going to exist for 10 years. We had not had a budget surplus for 30 years in this country. We ran deficits for 30 years. Then, all of a sudden, at the end of the Clinton administration, we had a budget surplus of a couple hundred billion dollars. I am pleased about that because I voted for the economic plan that helped create that. We put that in place in the middle 1990s, and we got to a budget surplus. When that happened, in the year 2000 we had a bunch of folks say, when a new President came into office in 2001: Do you know what? We have a budget surplus. We have a bunch of hotshot economists telling us we are going to have budget surpluses as far as the eye can see. We are going to have budget surpluses for the next 10 years. Then Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said he could not sleep because he was worried we were going to have surpluses too large and we were going to pay down the Federal debt too quickly. That is right. I know it sounds like a joke, but the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board worried we would pay down our debt too quickly. So the President came to town in 2001 and said: Let's have very big tax cuts, and I and others said: Let's probably not do that because at this point we don't know what is going to happen for 10 years. We had economists who could not remember their telephone number for 3 hours telling us what was going to happen for 10 years. So they said: We are going to have 10 years of surpluses. Let's have very big tax cuts. So the President constructed very big tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and here we are. What happened as a result of that? Well, almost immediately we were in a recession in 2001. Then we had a terrorist attack against this country in September of that year. Then we were at war in Afghanistan and at war in Iraq and in a war against terrorists. So we sent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad, and we rotated them in and out for 8 years and never paid for a penny of it because the President said: We are going to spend emergency funding, which means we do not pay for it; we just put it on the debt. We did that for a decade. Now, all of a sudden, all the people who voted for the same things-- that is, tax cuts for the wealthy and deciding to send soldiers to war without paying for it--now we hear all this bloviation about how the debt is important. Well, yes, it is important. It was important when they voted to cut taxes for the wealthy as well. It was important when we decided to fight two wars and not pay for a penny of it. The fact is, it is unsustainable now, and we have to find ways to fix it. It is interesting, yesterday, I came to the Senate floor because one of my colleagues came to the floor and said the priority is to eliminate the estate tax. That is the priority. He did not say that. He said ``eliminate the death tax'' because a clever pollster said: If you say ``death tax,'' it invokes a lot of passion. So we are going to eliminate the death tax--not understanding, apparently, or not caring, perhaps, that there is no such thing as a death tax. When you die, there is no tax on your death. In fact, had I been on the Senate floor when my colleague mentioned that--I know my colleague is married--so I would have asked: God forbid something should happen to you. But if it did, tell me what would happen to your estate because I know the answer. The answer is, his spouse would inherit the estate, no matter how large, tax free, because we have a 100-percent spousal exemption. So that Senator's death would have, obviously, been nontaxable. So where is the death tax? We do not have a death tax. We never had a death tax. We have a tax on inherited wealth. That is what we have. So my colleague said, the most important thing at the moment, while we are deep in debt in the country--and with a growing debt and a need to control the debt--the most important thing at the moment is to get rid of the death tax, which means you want to provide tax breaks for billionaires. I did not vote for the proposal in 2001 that put us on a course of changing our tax system with very large tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing the estate tax obligation so that it came down to having zero estate taxes in 2010 and then spring back to a higher estate tax in 2011. I did not vote for that. I thought it was about half nutty. But it passed. Enough people thought, apparently, it was OK, so they voted for it. So now, last year, we had an estate tax that had an exemption of $7 million for husband and wife--$3.5 million each--and a 45-percent rate. This year, the estate tax went to zero; that is, nobody has to pay any estate tax. So we have had four billionaires die this year. The late George Steinbrenner died, the owner of the Yankees. So his estate will not be taxed--well over $1 billion. I have said, this is the ``throw mama from the train year.'' You know the movie ``Throw Mama from the Train.'' This is the year--if somebody has to go, I guess, especially billionaires, they get to pay no taxes this year. Then the estate tax is supposed to spring back to a $1 million exemption, husband and wife, and a 55-percent rate. So my colleague and others now say the highest priority for them is to eliminate the death tax. This year, we will have lost about $15 billion in revenue because there is no estate tax. That is just this year. Over 10 years, it is a very substantial amount. Who is going to benefit if you eliminate the estate tax? Well, if under last year's law you had to have $7 million in total assets to pay an estate tax, how many people would pay it? Very few, less than 1 percent. In fact, I think it is three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people would ever pay an estate tax. Now we are told the highest priority is to eliminate the estate tax, which means that America's billionaires are going to be given a tax break, and those who want to do it say we want to do that because they should not be taxed twice. Well, they are not taxed twice. That estate, in most cases, has never borne a tax. Most of it is growth appreciation from stocks or bonds or property and has never borne the tax that most people have to pay. A lot of people get up in the morning and put on their clothes and go to work, and they work at a manufacturing job all day--although there are fewer these days because we are moving those jobs to China--but they get up and go to work and then they come home and they have withholding on their paychecks and it says they paid taxes. They have to pay taxes for kids to go to school and to build roads and to pay for the police and to pay for the Defense Department and so on--the Centers for Disease Control. They have to bear a burden as an American citizen to help pay for the things we have together. But if we eliminate the estate tax, we say to, for example, Bill Gates--when Bill Gates expires--that $50-some billion or $60-some billion of yours, most of which has never had any kind of a tax burden at all, we believe it ought to be tax free. That is the highest priority? I used the word ``nutty'' before. Let me state again that is just nutty. What are you thinking? Here is something I quoted yesterday from Will Rogers. Will Rogers, 80 years ago, had it right, and it certainly applies to some in this Chamber for sure. Will Rogers said: The unemployed here ain't eating regular, but we'll get around to them as soon as everybody else gets fixed up OK. Well--do you know what?--go back about 18 months and just figure out who got fixed up in this country, who got fixed up OK. Do you think the folks at the top of the economic ladder get fixed up? Yes, yes. In fact, the lowest unemployment rate in America is those at the top of the economic ladder. There is a pretty low unemployment rate actually in the Senate, now that I think of it. We all get up in the morning and put on a white shirt and a suit and a tie, and we all eat three meals a day. But the people at the bottom of the economic ladder--those 5 million Americans who have lost the manufacturing jobs, the people who are looking for jobs and cannot find them, when we are 20 million jobs short; the people who have been laid off, professional people who, in many cases, were laid off and have been searching for work for 2 years and cannot find it--they are the people who seem somehow forgotten. So now we have a priority by some in this Chamber of saying we have to get rid of the death tax--a tax that does not exist. In a bill they filed that would only benefit largely billionaires in this country. It is unbelievable. It is just unbelievable. I do not know, maybe the people who are out of work need to change their names. There are names that signify wealth, at least it sounds like they are from a family that inherited wealth. But it just seems to me to be something that is pretty much in sync with what Will Rogers said a long time ago in terms of what is happening here. The people at the top get fixed up pretty well, and the rest do not matter much. That is a pretty pathetic set of priorities, in my judgement. Tribal Law and Order Act Mr. President, I want to say a word about a piece of legislation the Senate has passed and the House has passed and ought to make all of us feel as if we have done something very admirable and something that is going to save lives. So let me do that in a very positive way. The Tribal Law and Order Act, which we passed--I passed, along with a lot of help from the Indian Affairs Committee, and the Senate passed-- now the House has passed that legislation. That will now be signed by the President into law. Why is that important? Well, let me give you an example. On the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation--that straddles North Dakota and South Dakota--the rate of violent crime is not double or triple the national rate of violent crime. That would be pretty tough to live in a neighborhood where you have double or triple the national rate of violent crime. It is eight times the rate of violent crime for the rest of the country. Live in that circumstance. Be a young child going to school or be an elder trying to get along and live in a neighborhood, live on a reservation, live in a circumstance where the rate of violent crime is eight times the national average. The stories we have heard at the hearings we have held are unbelievable. On the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation--it is almost the size of the State of Connecticut--they had nine full-time police officers to patrol over two million acres of land. It is not possible to do a good job with so few officers. In one area of that reservation, a violent sexual rape, a crime in progress, a robbery, and a call to the police might get someone there later that day, or it might be the next morning, or days later--nine police officers to patrol that land 24/7. That does not work. We have passed a piece of legislation that I think is very good, the tribal law and order bill. It is bipartisan. I am proud of that. Senators Jon Kyl and John Barrasso worked with me to get this legislation through the Senate. Let me mention cosponsors Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Michael Bennet, Jeff Bingaman, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell, Mike Crapo, Al Franken, Tim Johnson, Joe Lieberman, Jeff Merkley, Lisa Murkowski, Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow, John Thune, Mark Udall, Tom Udall, Ron Wyden--so many. But there are so many who worked so long to try to respond to these problems. The legislation deals with cross-deputization of law enforcement officers on Indian reservations and those off the reservation. We deal with the tribal court system and a wide range of provisions that we put in this legislation that are going to make a very big difference. I have said on the floor previously that violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women has reached epidemic levels. We have heard it in the hearings and the testimony. One in three American Indian and Alaska Native women will be the victim of rape during her lifetime--one in three. That is an epidemic of violence. We held 14 hearings in the Committee on Indian Affairs, which I chair, relating to public safety on Indian lands over the past 3 years. I had staff go across the Nation consulting with tribal governments and local law enforcement. Based on those consultations, we put together a piece of legislation that I think will make a very big difference. It strengthens the tribal justice system. It provides tools to law enforcement officers on the Indian reservations. It will require the U.S. Attorney's Office to do its job. Violent crimes on Indian reservations are to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Offices, and in most cases those offices are many, many miles away from a reservation. Crime on Indian reservations becomes just a part of the backwater of work in those offices. We have information that 50 percent of murder cases on Indian reservations are declined for prosecution. They call them declinations. Think of that. In 50 percent of the cases, there is a declination of prosecution for the charge of murder. Nearly three-fourths of the cases for sexual assault are declined to be prosecuted. That is not fair, it is not tolerable, and we shouldn't stand for it. We had a hearing with Chairman Herman Dillon of the Puyallup Tribe in Washington, who testified about the gang activity crisis on their reservation. There are 28 active gangs on that reservation, with members as young as 8 years old. The gangs are involved in drug trafficking, weapons sales, and turf wars where innocent bystanders are injured. This piece of legislation is going to increase the number of law enforcement personnel on reservations and provide better law enforcement training for those personnel. I won't go through the stories we have heard, but they are unbelievable. There are a whole lot of victims out there living in Third World conditions on Indian reservations where they have inadequate health care, housing, and education. We have worked on all of those issues. I am proud to say we passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act earlier this year. It is now signed into law. We did that this year. It is the first time in 17 years that the Congress has dealt with those issues. Now we have passed the Tribal Law and Order Act. This is the most significant of policy changes and legislation affecting the first Americans that has been passed in decades. I want to say to my Republican and Democratic colleagues who worked with me to accomplish this that I believe lives will be saved because of this legislation. I believe this will make a profound difference across this country in addressing these critical issues. We have had hearings about Mexican drug cartels now running drugs through Indian reservations. I just described the circumstances of gangs. There is so much that needs to be done. Finally, at last--at long, long last--we start down the road of improvement by having passed this legislation. I talked to President Obama yesterday and mentioned the passage by the U.S. House of our bill. He campaigned on this issue. It was very strongly supported legislation, and I know he will take great pride in signing it. Finally, with all of the competition and tension, sometimes, between the House and the Senate, let me say how much I appreciate the work the House of Representatives did on this legislation. Let me make one final point about Indian policy as I complete my statement. There is one other issue that is out there that I think desperately needs to be resolved, and that is something called the Cobell lawsuit. It has been languishing for 15 years. Last December, there was an agreement reached between the U.S. Government and the Indians in the Cobell case. We were given 30 days in the Congress to approve the settlement, and it has not happened. We must, must, must find a way to make that happen soon. I showed a picture of a woman living on an Indian reservation with oil wells that were hers that she could see from her house, and she lived in a very small house. Why is that the case? Because she didn't get the money from the oil wells she owned. The U.S. Government created trust accounts for Indians, and manipulated those trusts, stole from those trusts, lost the records from those trusts over 150 years, and that is what resulted in this lawsuit called the Cobell lawsuit. It has gone on for 15 years, and a good many Indians have died while that lawsuit has gone on who should have benefitted from that lawsuit. There was a settlement agreement reached last December between the parties. We were given 30 days by the Federal court to approve the agreement, and now it is 6 months later and nothing has happened. The first Americans don't deserve this treatment. I hope very soon that the Cobell settlement will be a part of a piece of legislation that is passed by the Senate. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DORGAN. I apologize for interrupting the Senator. I didn't catch what she said about votes. Has there been a decision made about votes?

Mr. DORGAN. Well, that is actually fairly specific, though. It was sometime later about some things. I appreciate the Senator for responding to me.

Mr. DORGAN. I understand.