Jim DeMint

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2046.

Mr. DeMINT. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DeMINT. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Collins be given 30 seconds to explain her position.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, this amendment is the Paycheck Protection Act, and it protects the first amendment rights of postal workers by requiring postal labor unions to obtain prior approval from their workers before they spend their dues money on behalf of political parties, political candidates or other political advocacy. Unions are the only organizations in many States that cannot only force people to join but forcibly use their dues for political purposes without the permission of the members. Sixty percent of union members object to their dues being spent for political purposes without their permission. This amendment protects their right to have their dues used in the way they intend them to be used. So I encourage my colleagues to support this freedom, this protection of constitutional rights. It is consistent with the Supreme Court ruling in Communications Workers v. Beck. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time to Senator Collins.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I object. I would like a rollcall vote. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the new Federal regulation that many may or may not be aware of. According to the Department of Justice, every swimming pool of ``public accommodation,'' meaning any pool at a hotel, motel, lodging establishment, recreation center, YMCA, apartment complex, condominium complex, school, or community pool, is to install a large, expensive permanent pool lift for the disabled, or else face steep fines from the Department of Justice and the threat of lawsuits. We must make sure that we have accommodations for the disabled in every public place. This is happening around the country. But to do this with very little thought of the implications and the cost and the actual service to the disabled is a huge problem. As we have seen time and time again, one-size-fits-all mandates from Washington don't work. We want public pools to have the flexibility to work with people with disabilities to ensure success. On January 31 of this year, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division published revised requirements for swimming pools and their means of entry and exit. This was 2 months ago. The DOJ has now put forth new requirements for all facilities ``of public accommodation'' that go beyond those contained in the final rule issued in 2010 giving hotels and other residential communities insufficient time to comply with this burdensome new rule. We need to think about it for a minute, because their lack of planning here is pretty evident by the fact that they are suggesting that this already be in place in less than 2 months, when the equipment is not even available in the country to do it. So it is clear that they have not thought through how to best serve the disabled, how to make sure that these services are available, and to do it in a way that does not put an undue burden on businesses that want to provide this service. Senator Graham and I have a bill that nullifies the requirement and stops the Attorney General from enforcing this requirement or any ``guidance'' associated with it. It also prevents against any third party using this rule or guidance in any manner. To be clear, our bill will allow public pools to work directly with people with disabilities to meet their specific needs. Hotels, motels, and other public pools already have financial incentives to meet the needs of people with disabilities that use their facilities. They have been working diligently to do that. Our bill simply says the DOJ should not impose a national mandate for a one-size-fits-all solution that may not be appropriate for every facility. This new burdensome rule seriously changes the obligations of public facilities around the country. There are an estimated 309,000 public spas and pools in the United States. The number of businesses--and not just the large hotels and resorts--that will have to comply is staggering. The rule requires a permanent pool lift be installed for every pool or spa. So if a hotel, resort, or community association has more than one pool, they will have to get multiple lifts, instead of what is being done now, which is using a portable lift that can be moved around the facilities as needed. A pool lift can run from $4,000 to $10,000, and the installation could run $5,000 to $10,000, depending on how much work needs to be done. So we are talking about billions of dollars being spent on something that could perhaps help the disabled but also become an obstacle and danger to others using the pool if this is not thought out and done in a careful manner. The last thing we need to do right now is to add burdensome rules and requirements on businesses across the country. Hotel owners want to work in good faith to make sure pools are accessible to everybody, but we have to make sure that here at the Federal level we are not killing off more businesses by imposing mandates. Mandates such as these are burdensome on businesses, and we all know these costs will be passed on to consumers--including the disabled--in the form of higher hotel costs for rooms and services. The Department of Justice has left many questions from the hotel industry and others unanswered on issues such as compliance ability, timeframe, and economic cost, as well as rising insurance premiums. It is clear that the deadline for compliance should be extended to allow hotels and other places of public accommodation flexibility in providing access to guests with disabilities. We should start over. They have given a 60-day relief period, but that is not enough time for this to be planned or for the equipment to be manufactured. The companies cannot comply in this period of time. We need to guarantee that services are available to the disabled, but the quickest way to do the wrong thing is the way the Justice Department is doing it now. So instead of us letting this go into effect and letting large fines be put on businesses all around the country, even community pools and YMCAs, let's set this judgment aside by unanimous consent today, and if we want to debate and work with the Department of Justice to come up with a rule that works for the disabled and works for America, we can do that. But I have a unanimous consent request here that I wish to read. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 336, S. 2191, that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at this point in the Record.

Mr. DeMINT

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

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the amendment that we call the Transportation Empowerment Act. This is actually legislation that has been worked on for over 10 years. Our ranking member, Senator Inhofe, helped to develop this legislation, and it is essentially the same as when he introduced it 10 years ago. He pointed out that he had long believed that the best decisions are those made at the local level. Unfortunately, many of the transportation choices made by cities and States are governed by Federal rules and regulations. This bill returns to the States the responsibility and resources to make their own transportation decisions--those were Senator Inhofe's words. I think we all know, as a Nation, that we are not going to solve our spending and debt problems unless we are willing to begin to move some public services from Washington back to the States where they can be done more effectively and less expensively, and one of those public services is transportation. I would point out that the Transportation Department at the Federal level was formed almost 60 years ago to build our Interstate Highway System and this system is essentially complete. The States maintain most of the interstate highways now with some Federal support. The problem we have now is that 18 cents out of every gallon of gasoline comes to Washington and a majority of States get back less than they send. We have what I think could be called an infrastructure crisis in America. Roads and bridges are decaying everywhere and we are behind on our maintenance in the building of new roads, so it is obvious that what we are doing is not working. Instead of solving the problems with real reforms, the underlying bill is adding to what we are spending above the trust fund--above the 18 cents--without any real reforms to make the system work better. So I think I can conclude that the current Federal transportation finance system is broken. Since 2007, rather than evaluate true infrastructure priorities and attempt to live within our means by eliminating special interest programs, Congress has bailed out the highway trust fund to the tune of $35 billion. With the pending reauthorization, the trust fund will require a bailout of another $13 billion. At the end of this big-spending 2-year reauthorization, Congress will be back at the drawing board scrambling for additional budgetary gimmicks and offsets to keep this charade from imploding. If this were a traditional 6- year highway bill, at this rate of runaway spending it would require a bailout of $39 billion from the general fund. There is a better way. It is time to get the Washington bureaucracy and costly regulations out of the way and empower States to be the primary decisionmakers for their own local and State infrastructure. My amendment allows for States to keep their gas taxes and set their own priorities while avoiding an additional layer of Washington bureaucracy. We should devolve the Federal highway program from Washington to the States. We can dramatically cut the Federal gas tax to a few pennies, which would be enough to fund the limited number of highway programs that serve a clear national purpose. In turn, States could adjust their own gas taxes to make their own construction and repair decisions without costly rules such as Davis-Bacon regulations and without having to funnel the money through Washington's wasteful bureaucracy and some self-serving politicians. My amendment would free States from the wasteful and corrupt Davis- Bacon Act, which needlessly focuses or forces the government to pay labor union wages for construction projects. Davis-Bacon harms workers who choose not to join unions, and it raised the costs to taxpayers last year by nearly $11 billion. Our Nation's fiscal situation is perilous, with a $15 trillion debt set to double to $30 trillion in the next decade. Bipartisan compromises on spending like this bill got us into this mess and we will never get out of it if we don't embrace bold commonsense reforms. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and empower the States by giving them the flexibility they need to maintain their infrastructures. If I could take a second to summarize, I know some Members have stepped into this legislation that has been under development for many years. It is one that has been talked about by the States, with over half of our States what we consider donor States. If we were able to not only remove the Federal bureaucracy but also the regulations that force States to spend money in ways they don't like, the overwhelming majority of States would have a lot more money to spend on roads and bridges than they do now. We are not talking about cutting spending on transportation. What we are talking about is actually increasing it by moving this service back to the States where it can be guided with a lot more on-the-ground knowledge of what needs to be done, without all of the political maneuvering in Washington to send money to one State versus another. This is a way to maintain our Federal priority with a small part of the gas tax and allow the States to basically keep the rest of the gas tax to serve their own needs. If we cannot do this, I don't see any way that we are going to be able to deal with our national debt. If we can recognize there is an obvious service here that can be done better and less expensively and quicker at the State and local level and we can move that bureaucracy out of Washington, we can make the highway trust fund solvent. If we can't do something that makes this much common sense and saves the taxpayers money and actually delivers a better service, it is difficult for me to understand how we are ever going to deal with the huge debt and spending problem we have now in Washington. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, we have all complained about the big corporations that don't pay any taxes, only to find that many times that is because we offer some tax subsidy that allows them to get out of taxes. We have complained about subsidies for Big Oil, Big Natural Gas. We have given subsidies to companies that go out of business because we are trying to pick winners and losers. Temporary tax policy for whatever we are trying to do does not work. This amendment eliminates the tax subsidies, the loopholes we talk about not just for Big Oil but for all of the energy tax credits. Folks, if we let the market work, we are going to have wind, we are going to have solar, but we are going to have it in a way that does not waste the money of hard-working taxpayers. So I encourage my colleagues' support. I know a lot of my colleagues have new subsidies they are proposing, but it is no way to run a free market economy, to try to run it from this room. Let's get rid of subsidies, lower the corporate tax rate, and let our country work. I reserve the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that the actions of a few make it necessary for us to create more rules for the many honest people who serve in Congress, but we must reassure Americans that we are here to serve them and not ourselves. Congressmen and Senators have lots of power and we know that power corrupts. The longer we stay in office the more power we have. Unfortunately, we have seen that power, over a period of time, creates more opportunity and temptation for us to benefit ourselves rather than our constituents. All of the cases of corruption and bribery I have seen unfortunately come from more senior Members. No offense to my senior Members, please. But this is one of many reasons why we should have term limits in Congress. My amendment is not a statute. It is a sense of the Senate that says we should have some form of constitutional limit on our terms in office. We are not specific in the number of years, the number of terms. It is a sense of the Senate that we should have some limit on the amount of time we serve. I encourage my colleagues to at least support this and get the debate started. I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment. I have amendment No. 1488 at the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I allowed that to be read because it is so short. I think all of us know that in just about all areas of life power corrupts. And despite the good people in the Congress, the good intentions here, we have found that the longer folks stay in Washington the more likely their associations with interest groups and other temptations often cause bad behavior. What we are working on here with this STOCK Act is just treating the symptoms again when what we need to do is work on the root causes. If we bring a professional class of politicians to Washington, and we know incumbents always have the advantage in reelections, elections are not the only way to limit terms. If we want good government, if we want representation of the people, then we need to have folks represented in the House and the Senate who are from the people and not from an elite class of politicians in Washington. That is why for years many of us on both sides of the aisle have worked on this idea of term limits. My amendment is not a law. It does not set any specific term limits for the House or the Senate. It is a sense of the Senate that says we should pass a constitutional amendment that allows the States to ratify some limit on the terms of office. We know this would likely attract people who want to make representation a calling and not a career. So I would hope that as we look at this total bill, and certainly we do not want insider trading, Congressmen and Senators benefiting from their service in any personal way, if we want to get at the root cause of many of the problems here, many of the problems between parties across the aisle, many of the false differences, we need to limit the terms of people who come to Washington and bring in some fresh voices from all over the country. I think we will get better government, certainly less corruption. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. I wish to thank my colleague from Louisiana, who has made great points about where we are. I do think it is good news that we are talking about balancing the budget, but unfortunately, as we often do, this is really a political show more than a real attempt to actually balance the budget. The whole process is set up to fail. We know the President has said that we don't need to balance our budget and that it is an extreme idea. The majority leader here in the Senate has called a bill that cuts spending and caps spending and sends a balanced budget amendment to the States to ratify the worst legislation he has ever seen. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, has said that to balance the budget would cost jobs and that we would do it on the backs of the poor. Now we are to believe that our colleagues on the Democratic side here are serious about working with us to balance the budget. The situation is too serious to just play politics, and I know from talking to a number of my Democratic colleagues that they feel the same way, that they know we need to balance the budget. It is very difficult for them as a party because a lot of their platform is based on more promises for government and more government spending. In effect, a balanced budget amendment that meant we couldn't spend more than we were bringing in would change politics in Washington forever, which is something we have to do. But at least we are discussing the idea of balancing the budget. We know that the President's budget, the only budget we have seen--we haven't seen one out of the Senate in the last several years--increased our debt another $10 trillion over the next 10 years. It didn't balance it. Just about every Republican voted for a budget, a 10-year budget offered by Senator Pat Toomey that balanced in 10 years without cutting Social Security or Medicare. So we can do it. We can do it without hurting Americans. If we do it now, we can actually control our own destiny rather than what we see across the Atlantic in Greece and other European countries. They lost control of their destiny. They are now in the control of other countries and of fate. But America is still in a position that, if we make the decisions now to begin the process to balance our budget, even if it took 10 years, we could save our country and perhaps save freedom for the world. But there is no question that if we continue on the same course we are on today, we will bankrupt our Nation, lose control of our destiny, and change the world forever. But at least we are talking about balancing the budget, and maybe that is a good first step. Today, the Democrats have offered a weak alternative to the Republican balanced budget so that they can say they are for it. Again, I think that is important to get on record, that we are at least for the idea of stopping spending more than we are bringing in. For the past 2\1/2\ years, as I mentioned, the Senate Democrats, who are in charge here, haven't even produced a budget, let alone the idea of balancing one. President Obama, as I said, proposed a budget that doubled the national debt in the next 10 years. That is not responsible leadership at a time when we are already at an unsustainable debt level. Despite all the bipartisan promises to cut spending, Washington is still voting to make government bigger and more expensive than ever. And this includes some Republicans joining the fray here to just increase spending. Federal spending went up 5 percent in the first 9 months of the year despite all the hoopla about us doing something about spending. There is one way to judge whether we are cutting spending or not, despite all the rhetoric here and the Washington-speak. If we want to know whether we are spending more, we just have to ask ourselves: Are we spending more than we did last year? The answer is yes. And we are going to spend more next year than we did this year, based on the bills we are passing this week and next. So this isn't austerity. It is gluttony. It is political gluttony. Since Obama became President, the debt limit has been raised four times. The debt is rising faster and higher than ever. Yet the Senate refuses to pass a budget or cut spending. We must budget and balance the budget or we are going to bring down our whole country. Republicans have offered a strong balanced budget amendment that limits government spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product-- GDP--and requires a two-thirds majority to raise taxes, and it has earned the support of every Republican in the Senate. That is pretty unusual for us. Passage of that amendment should have been tied to the last increase in the debt limit, but it wasn't. President Obama was given another $2 trillion to borrow, and Americans received nothing in return, no cuts in spending. The Democratic amendment differs in three ways from the Republican amendment. What Republicans are trying to do is to reduce the level of spending relative to our total economy and to make sure it is difficult to raise taxes to balance the budget. And we should all agree on that. We shouldn't go back to the taxpayer every time we spend too much. The emphasis should be on reducing our spending. But the Democratic amendment doesn't cap spending to the historical levels, which means we can balance the budget by raising taxes and continuing to increase spending. So our amendment is designed to cap that spending at a certain level. Secondly, the Democratic balanced budget amendment does not require a supermajority to raise taxes. So during regular order here, we can increase taxes to meet the requirement to balance the budget. It would be a nice safeguard for the American taxpayer that we would at least have to get a supermajority to raise taxes in order to balance the budget. For some reason, the Democratic balanced budget amendment inserts just an element of class warfare, saying that we cannot decrease taxes on those making over $1 million. It doesn't sound like something we would do anyway, but it is not something that should be part of a constitutional amendment that we send to the States to ratify. The strong Republican balanced budget amendment would force both parties to find ways to cut spending and reform entitlements. Those are the things we have to do. The weaker Democratic version does not do that because it preserves the status quo where it is easier to raise taxes than cut spending, which is where we are today. For the past 2\1/2\ years, Senate Democrats have not produced a budget, let alone a balanced one. President Obama proposed a budget this year that doubled the national debt. Again, that is not a budget; that is a loan application and this country cannot continue to operate based on more borrowed money and more spending and more threats of raising taxes. If we want to get the economy going and balance our budget, we have to cut spending. That is the whole idea of the Republican balanced budget amendment. Let's get serious about saving our country and the freedoms for which so many have fought. If we do not do it soon, we will lose control of our destiny. I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, all of us regret when there is a situation where one of us has to oppose a nomination of a President, and 1,198 nominations have gone through without being contested. But this is one that rises to the level of concern. Republicans have been asking questions about this nominee for months--in fact, much longer than that--going back to why she refused to take a lie detector test, why she withdrew her name when she was first nominated for ambassador under Clinton, and why the files have not been properly updated. We have asked the White House for private meetings with the FBI and CIA to give us updated knowledge of what happened in this circumstance so we can make a good decision. But there was never an offer to do that. We had offers of low-level folks to come talk only to me, not to Republicans on the committee. But there are enough questions here for honest answers, and we have not gotten them. I encourage my colleagues to vote against this nomination.

Mr. DeMINT

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

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I was just listening to the news in my office, and I heard the report that the United States has gone over $15 trillion in debt. Of course, that is just our short-term debt. It doesn't really include our unfunded liabilities, which some estimate to be $100 trillion. But, nonetheless, $15 trillion is the size of our total economy--a condition that would mean certain bankruptcy for almost any business. All of us in these Chambers have stood in awe, I guess, looking across the Atlantic at Greece and Italy and some of our European trading partners, and it seems amazing to us that despite their terrible fiscal condition, the politicians in Greece cannot even cut spending. They talk about cutting it, but the government employees are out in the street demonstrating, and one just has to think, can't they see what is happening? Why do they want to keep spending? It is like there is an addiction. But here we are in the land of the free, the city on the hill for the world as far as the country that sets the example for free markets and free enterprise--a country that has fought wars to keep the rest of the world free--and here we are in a situation where we have to borrow well over $100 billion every month just to keep the lights on in this place, just to keep our country going. All year long, we have been having these public showdowns about how we need to cut spending. We have threatened government shutdowns over the continuing resolutions and over increasing the debt limit. One would think that by this point we would be cutting spending to some degree. We have established this supercommittee, supposedly to deal with our huge deficits. Yet we are passing spending bills this week-- today--that increase spending versus last year. Last year, we spent 5 percent more than the year before. In reality, in some ways, our country is worse off than Europe because we have Federal debt, we have State debt, we have municipal debt, we have counties declaring bankruptcy, we have States approaching bankruptcy, and yet we continue to spend more now than we did last year. After all of the fuss and fighting and brinkmanship and supercommittees, we can't seem to cut anything here. In fact, we are increasing spending. The goal of the supercommittee is not to cut spending; it is not to cut our debt at all. The goal of the supercommittee is to reduce the amount we are going to borrow over 10 years--maybe reduce it from $10 trillion to $8 trillion or $9 trillion. We are not even on the same page with reality right now. We have increased spending so dramatically over the last few years--we have added $4 trillion to our debt since President Obama came into office, we passed a $1 trillion stimulus, and we passed ObamaCare, adding trillions of dollars in spending. Instead of talking about cutting, the debate now seems to be, how can we take more from the American people in taxes to feed our addiction? We have focused our guns on those very people who create our jobs and create most of the opportunity in our country, people who are already paying the largest portion of national taxes of any country in the world because we have shifted so much of the tax burden onto the top income earners. We are blaming them for the wealth gap when, in fact, the real blame for the wealth gap comes from the government taking so much out of the private sector, regulating with such a heavy hand, and having the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. The problem with the middle class is not those who are making too much money; it is a Federal Government that doesn't understand that the more we spend and borrow, the fewer jobs there are going to be in our country today. Yet that is the big argument here. Instead of cutting spending, we are actually talking about taking more from hard-working American taxpayers and bringing it in here and giving it to the people who have created that $15 trillion in debt. How could anyone make sense of that? It is really pretty amazing, after all the promises we have made to the American people, that we are watching our debt go up like this-- passing $15 trillion--and we still can't talk about any substantive cuts. Let me give one example of something that makes so much sense. Over the last two decades, we have seen welfare spending increase nearly 300 percent. There are 77 means-tested welfare programs, and over the last couple of decades, since welfare reform, the spending has increased nearly 300 percent. That is more than the combined increase of Social Security and Medicare. It is more than the increases in education or in defense. Are we helping people? Not at all. We have more people in poverty than we ever have had, and we are discouraging self-sufficiency while encouraging dependency on government. In the last 4 years alone, we have nearly doubled what we are paying for food stamps, from $40 billion to $80 billion in this year's budget. If all we did was return welfare spending to 2007 levels, we could save almost $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years. That is twice the goal of the supercommittee in cuts. But are we even thinking about it? Is it even on the table? Absolutely not, because the one thing I have seen with this place is we are very good at getting bipartisan agreement on increasing spending in areas of need, but we seldom see bipartisan agreement on any cuts. Would we look at responsible caps on welfare spending? Not even a chance. It is not even on the table with the supercommittee discussions. With Medicaid alone, if we return spending to 2007 levels, we could save more than the goal of the supercommittee of $1.2 trillion, but we are not willing to discuss cuts. I think it is a sad day for America that we are plowing past $15 trillion, pretending to be responsible to the American people, while last week and this week and on into the rest of the year, we are going to be passing spending bills that spend more than we spent last year. At the same time, we are supposedly in a recession, Americans are tightening their belts, many are out of work, and what we are talking about here is, let's continue to spend and take more from hard-working, tax-paying Americans so we can keep our spending addiction going here in Washington. It is utterly irresponsible, what we are doing. All the President can do is point at those whom he calls millionaires, who are generally the people who are creating the jobs, running the small businesses, and having the most to do with creating the investment that makes our economy grow, and try to blame them for the problems we create here in Washington. It is time we keep our promises to the American people. I know it is hard for some in these Chambers to cut spending because dependency on government often means a dependable vote for many politicians. It is time we look at the future and the debt that we are loading onto ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. This country will not survive the types of policies we are producing here in Washington today. This supercommittee should look at real cuts in spending. If our Democratic colleagues are not willing to go along with responsible spending caps on programs such as welfare, then we need to walk away from the table and take our case to the American people and tell them what is really the truth, which is that the elections in 2012 may be our last chance to turn this around. We cannot keep spending at this level and keep taking more and more from the private sector, from the job producers in our country, bringing it here to Washington, and spending it on wasteful programs that are fraught with fraud and duplication and not even ever consider cutting any of them. Last week, Dr. Coburn had a couple of amendments to an appropriations bill that had some very small cuts to what had been deemed wasteful, ineffective programs. On one of his amendments, he only got 13 votes. So this is clearly a bipartisan problem. We need to cut spending. Washington has a spending problem, it does not have a low-tax problem. It is time we focus our attention on reducing the size and scope of the Federal Government and having it live within constitutional boundaries. We need to eliminate programs that are wasteful, return others to the States, and trim our budget to the point where we can pay for what we are spending so that we will not keep adding trillions and trillions of dollars of debt on to our country and our citizens and our next generation. Madam President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I want to speak for a few minutes about the proposed veterans tax credit. I know what I am about to discuss will not make me very popular. I will probably be accused of not supporting veterans by the politicians pandering for their votes, but I am not going to be intimidated into voting for something that may make sense politically but is inherently unfair, and it is not going to work. The measure the Senate is now considering at President Obama's urging is to offer tax credits to employers who hire unemployed veterans. It might sound like good politics, but it is not good policy. We have learned over the past few years since President Obama took office that employers hire based on their long-term plans, not short- term stimulus. It costs an employer about $63,000 a year to create an average private sector job. A new tax credit for a couple thousand dollars is simply not enough to increase employment. We have to recognize the fact that businesses are not going to hire until the government gets out of their way and creates a stable environment where businesses can thrive. Let's be clear: I want veterans to have work opportunities. Once a man or woman has completed his or her service to our country, I hope they are welcomed into the job market. But veterans are not hired simply because they are veterans. By and large, they demonstrate admirable qualities that are invaluable in the workforce, such as selflessness, hard work, and dedication to improving oneself. Many other Americans who are suffering in this same bad economy--such as single moms, young graduates, and minorities--also demonstrate these same commendable character traits. The best way to get our veterans back to work is by doing what will help the economy and get all Americans back to work. Sadly, this tax credit does not do that. The government has tried offering credits to hire particular categories of people many times before. A Government Accountability Office report studied the targeted jobs tax credit that was passed back in 1978. The credit was intended to encourage companies to favor the disadvantaged in hiring, but a followup study found that it was not ``effective or economical'' in helping the targeted group. The program was eventually allowed to expire. Unfortunately, that tax credit was quickly replaced with the welfare- to-work and work opportunity tax credits in 1996. The Urban Institute- Brookings Tax Policy Center studied these credits, which were intended to help the needy, low-income veterans, inner-city youth, and ex- felons. But it found that the credits had ``not had a meaningful effect on employment rates among the disadvantaged.'' President Obama signed another law, the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, in March of 2010 to give companies a tax credit to hire unemployed workers. There is no evidence this encouraged employers to hire, as unemployment has remained stubbornly high since President Obama came into office, especially over the last year while this credit was available. Despite the overwhelming evidence that these tax credits do not stimulate hiring for targeted groups, the Obama administration continues to push Congress to pass another tax credit, this time exclusively for veterans. By using a politically sensitive group the day before Veterans Day, the Democrats are hoping they can trick Republicans into further complicating the Tax Code, when we should be doing everything possible to simplify it. If we want to help veterans and all Americans, we need to get serious about fixing our economy. There are almost 14 million unemployed Americans and another 10 million underemployed and discouraged workers who need work. We need a simpler tax code that businesses can navigate, not a more complicated one, riddled with incentives for employers to hire one particular group over another. The endless morass of tax credits and loopholes is exactly what is wrong with our Tax Code. We should also repeal ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, which are proven job killers. We will have a chance to vote on that later today. We need to open more domestic energy resources. The answers are right in front of our faces. But, instead, we are pandering to different political groups with programs that have proven to be ineffective. We are giving more false promises to Americans in order to benefit political ends. All Americans deserve the same opportunity to get hired. I cannot support this tax credit because I do not believe the government should privilege one American over another when it comes to work. I am deeply thankful for the courageous and selfless service of our veterans. They have performed for our country a service, and we will always be indebted to them. Above all, I am thankful for their sacrifices to protect freedom and equal opportunity in America. But we do not pay them back for their service and sacrifice with false promises of government programs that have been proven not to work. Let's be honest with our veterans and with all Americans and do what we need to do to fix this economy. Thank you, Madam President. I yield back and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. I thank the Chair. I thank Senator Hutchison for her efforts here in stopping another regulatory nightmare. I am beginning to think the FCC stands for Fabricating a Crisis Commission because they are trying to create a new regulation for a problem that does not exist. The overriding problem here is, as the government intervenes increasingly into the Internet and the investment in the Internet, that investment is going to dry up as uncertainty is increased. I have seen in my State where private investors have put together the money with companies to put down broadband in rural areas only to find that there are some companies operating with a government grant or some government money to compete with them. Under President Obama, the FCC has become an activist bureaucracy that is inventing a crisis here in order to take control of the Internet. The Internet is one thing in our country that is working vibrantly. It is a showcase of free enterprise. It does not need to be regulated. For years liberals have warned us that, if the government does not take action, the Internet will not be competitive or accessible. The opposite has happened. More people are using the Internet and have access to cutting-edge technology and devices than ever. This is yet another misguided big-government solution in search of a problem. Last year, the courts ruled in the Comcast decision that the FCC does not have the authority to mandate how private companies can enter into business agreements and limit the ways they provide Internet services. The FCC did not learn its lesson and instead is at it again with its Open Internet Order, which is vague, baseless, and built on an even weaker legal foundation than their activities in Comcast. Congress did not authorize such actions and the courts have ruled against them. The FCC should not try to get around it by redefining clear legislative language passed by Congress. There has been no demonstrable harm to which the FCC needs to respond. They cannot give us a case where competition is not growing, where the expansion of broadband is not growing. In fact, new technologies are exceeding the pace that the FCC can even keep up with. We do not need to come in and slow down the growth. If the FCC wants to take action, it should prove there is legitimate harm in the marketplace. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have a number of laws and regulations to enforce in the name of protecting consumers who use the Internet and competition among companies involved in the market. If those laws are lacking, the FCC should show how and ask Congress to provide it with statutory authority. The FCC has not done so. They have not shown us that harm has taken place and that they need to take control, essentially, of the Internet. Congress has yet again been cut out of the picture, and many of my colleagues in the majority seem comfortable with abandoning their role. The FCC's bad logic needs to be recognized. They admit these new rules were not imposed due to any previous or existing wrongdoing. That is important for us to recognize. If a regulatory agency is issuing an order that intervenes into the private sector, there needs to be some substantial harm being addressed. The FCC claims the government must regulate the Internet in order to protect consumers from future harms that could occur. That is not the point of the regulatory structure. I heard all of these arguments back in 2006 when the Senate was debating how to update our telecommunications laws. If the regulation advocates had won in 2006, today we would have the Internet of 2006. I do not want the Internet of 2006 in 2011, and I do not want the Internet of 2011 in 2016. I want it to grow and improve and evolve just as it is doing now. The government cannot possibly manage the development of the Internet, which the FCC is trying to do. The Internet does not need a government stimulus. It is a free market industry that is working. Right now, the technology sector has a 3.3- percent unemployment rate, far below the national average. Over the years, communications companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in broadband technology and development, and no deficit-expanding stimulus was required! If the government really wants to allow the Internet and related businesses to prosper and thrive, it should stay out of it. The Internet is not broken, but our government is. The private telecommunications sector knows how to create jobs; our government does not. The things that work best in our society--businesses, charities, volunteer organizations--are the things that government does not control. Consumers should be in control, not unelected activist bureaucrats intent on taking over the most successful parts of our economy. I encourage my colleagues to support this resolution to undo the FCC's power grab. Three unelected bureaucrats should not be permitted to simply give themselves the power to regulate the Internet's infrastructure in the face of clear statutory language directing them to do just the opposite. The FCC should not be permitted to circumvent Congress and essentially enact laws that will impact vital services we all depend on. To keep the Internet economy thriving, this decision must be reversed. I commend Senator Hutchison for bringing this up and using the powers of Congress to take back control of our legislative responsibility. I yield the floor.

Mr. DeMINT

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, 3 million Americans use over-the-counter inhalers to control asthma and other respiratory problems. Three years ago, the EPA came out with a ruling that bans these over-the-counter inhalers which takes effect this----

Mr. DeMINT. The EPA has banned these inhalers, even though they acknowledged negligible impact on the environment. My amendment just keeps this rule from going into effect until the manufacturer can complete its work with the FDA to change its propellent. Let's allow Americans to continue their quality of life while we solve the problem. We don't need to do that this January. It will be solved without the FDA enforcing this rule. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, how much time do I have left?

Mr. DeMINT. Certainly, there are many doctors who want folks to come in and get prescriptions. There are many manufacturers who make prescription drugs, but let 3 million Americans access these inhalers. They do not cause any problems with the environment. The EPA has recognized it is negligible and the manufacturer will have this worked out over the next few years.

Mr. DeMINT. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.